Whether you are exploring wildlife or urban soundscapes; or documenting real-world events; or you are a musician, researcher, or podcaster – the detailed advice and information in this book will ensure you get effective results every time. Ideal for beginners, this book focuses on best practice with basic tools, such as budget recorders and mobile phones, and builds toward mastering professional techniques and equipment. This book also explores the fascinating history of field recording and the developments that have made field recording equipment and know-how accessible to everyone. Whether you are just starting out or looking to refine your craft, Field Recording will help you document environmental sound in extraordinary detail, and collect unique sonic materials for use in music or art projects.

INTRODUCTION

This book is designed as a practical guide to field recording for people interested in documenting all forms of environmental sound and recording wildlife. It’s also for musicians and artists who want to use field recording and found sound in creative practice and researchers, podcasters and other practitioners for whom field recording is becoming an increasingly important part of media production and documentation. I address all the key basics before focusing in on advanced topics as we progress through each chapter – so this book is for you if you’re a complete beginner or have some experience of recording with your phone or a hand-held digital recorder. And there’s plenty of content for those who’ve already honed more advanced skills using professional equipment. Note, however, that this book isn’t intended as a training manual for any particular profession, so I won’t be exploring specific trade practices. My primary objective in writing it has been to help you develop a depth of knowledge that will enable you to make creative choices about what, how and when to record.

While the main focus is on recording airborne sound, I’ll also be introducing a range of tools and techniques for recording in environments you may have considered inaccessible – such as capturing underwater sound. I’ve tried to keep to basic, plain English explanations rather than rely on equations; sound, transmission, diffraction, reflection and attenuation are complex phenomena and there are plenty of texts and resources for those who wish to follow the science. Here, my aim has been to use the science where necessary to explain the reasons why some things happen, and others don’t.

So what is a field recording? I always like to propose the broadest possible definition: any recording that takes place outside the specifically prepared environment of a recording studio. Field recordings, almost unintentionally, capture the acoustical traces of landscapes, locations and populations; the potential intertwining of topography, meteorological phenomena, architectural acoustics, fauna, flora and mechanical processes. That’s a very different proposition to a studio recording where we usually aim to isolate sound and music from the outside world in the pursuit of control and fidelity. Yes, we might want to capture the reverberation of an acoustically engineered room to enhance the recording, but nothing else. In the field on the other hand, we are dealing with the sound of the world exactly as it is. That doesn’t mean we don’t make creative and technical choices to achieve the best results in terms of clarity, focus and content capture but we proceed from the situation as we find it. This is one of the things that makes field recording so exciting.

Whether it’s the soundscape of an urban night, a tropical rainforest, a wire fence resonating in the wind or insects moving under the bark of a tree, an understanding of the right tools and the appropriate technique is the key to achieving great results.

The act of listening lies at the very core of field recording practice and the two enjoy a wonderfully reciprocal relationship. Listening informs field recording choices and decisions and the act of recording expands our capacity to focus and really listen to the world around us. This enables us to comprehend depth and nuance in new and exciting ways. Throughout this book I champion the primacy of listening and explore it through the experiences of numerous practitioners and artists.