Thanks to Udo Noll of Radio Aporee via Framework one of my World Listening Day 2013 recordings is on London’s Resonance 104.4 FM “framework at 11pm – World Listening Day 2013“.
Month: July 2013
World Listening Day 2013
It’s R. Murray Schafer‘s birthday today. In 1973 he research the Vancouver soundscape, later extending it to compare five European villages from a soundscape point of view.
The research became the basis of ‘Acoustic Ecology’, a discipline that R. Murray Schafer developed to further investigate ‘soundscapes’, which are understood as the sonic interface between living beings and their environment.
World Listening Day is held on his birthday to celebrate Schafer’s contribution to the art of listeing to the world, rather than just hearing it. I’ve usually aimed to try and isolate sounds, other than in the lo-fi urban environment where you just can’t do that. However, in tribute to R. Murray Schafer’s ideas, I had a go, starting off with the birds at dawn. It’s a bit past the time for the classic dawn chorus, but these birds in a semi-rural location in Rushmere made a decent attempt at a soundscape for me.
XY recording
For a change I tried an urban field recording at Ipswich Marina, this recording starts with oystercatchers at the beginning, to the right is the sound of some construction work that has been restarted after a couple of years. A woman in a RIB motors to her boat moored somewhere in the marina which is mainly to the left. Some foot and bicycle traffic passes. The waterfront has been redeveloped for leisure over the last decade.
Binaural recording with Soundman OKMII
Finally I gave in to the separator in me and recorded the sound of this tarmac laying crew and their machine, in particular the backing up sound.
The reversing sound is an electronic noise played through speaker, which highlighted one of the issues R. Murray Shafer picked up – Continue reading “World Listening Day 2013”
Leeds Victoria Quarter covered arcade
Des Coulam of Soundlandscapes had warmed me up that glass-covered markets had a great ambience. He has a whole section dedicated to the Parisian passages-couvertes so I was chuffed to find this one on a visit to Leeds – the old Victoria Quarter.
Swifts on a warm summer evening
Swifts are one of the fantastic soundmarks of summer, and they sound at their best in the city, with their high-pitched screaming resonating from the houses all around. You get them in rural parts too, but the sound needs the hard surfaces of the city when they come in low at rooftop height in the warm summer evenings. According to the BTO they like towns.
The Devil’s Bird is the devil’s own job to record, too. You don’t try and track them, there’s just no hope to get anything directional on the job, and the screaming groups tend to spread out as they get close too. Just don’t even think of using a parabolic dish or a shotgun mic 😉
This one is basically the Olympus LS-10 with internal mics propped in a first-floor window, and snipped out of a long trawl for swifts, Then I used a parametric EQ to hit some of the town traffic rumble.
Goods Train from Felixstowe, Ipswich St Mary’s
I have some time to do more recording now. Okay, so it’s not hyper-original recording trains but I liked the screech of the wheel flanges as it rounds a fairly gentle bend. I was at the same level as the track across a dip due to the lie of the land
Also a chance to see how this Audioboo thing works… which seems to be pretty well 2018 update – they decided to start charging $9.99 a month. You must be kidding, guys, I may as well pay WordPress £33 a year to be able to get audio facility. There’s no low-end offering.