Tag Archive for: Field Recordings

Open Spaces – The Wandering Mind EP

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One of my ambient music aliases, Open Spaces, has released a new EP of works titled The Wandering Mind. The EP is released by the Australian imprint, lo fi spiritual, and can be found on all digital platforms.

This alias focuses on creating ambient spaces and moods that engage the listener in a two way relationship rather than the usual one way consumption of pop music. This ambient release aims to have an ambiguous edge to the music, in other words to create a sonic environment where the listener is unsure of what is part of the music and what is sounds from the outside environment. A metaphor if you will, for the wandering mind, that is shaped and influenced by both the internal and external environment.

The moods of this record therefore rely on a combination of field recordings, synthesis and 360 mixing to create immersive sonic environments.

For those interested in such concepts of ambient music, here’s a great introductory video of one of the ambient music forefathers, Brian Eno, talking about such concepts.

 

Binaural Field Recording

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For those that don’t know, I have been a lecturer in the Audio department at SAE Sydney for the last 5 years. At the close of campus 2020, I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow some field recording gear, namely a Zoom F8 (multi-channel recorder) and a 3DIO binaural microphone. A big thanks to Akshay Kalawar and Mel Bertram for enabling me to access Brisbane’s 3DIO microphone, see the microphone type pictured below.

For those unfamiliar with binaural microphones, they replicate the human binaural (two ear) experience. The presence of two ears enables the microphones (placed in each ear) to capture aural cues such as ITD (interaural time differences) and ILD (interaural level differences). Simply put, the two ear microphone captures differences in arrival time of sounds positioned in space around the listener. For example, a sound to the right of the listener or microphone would arrive at the right ear/microphone before it arrives at the left ear/microphone. Such cues we call ITD (interaural time differences). Similarly, the microphone will pick up level differences between the two ears, for example, a sound to the left of the microphone will be louder in the left ear than in the right, hence capturing ILD (interaural level difference) cues.

There are also microphones such as the Neumann KU-100 that also emulates the shadowing effect of the head in the human aural experience, but will a price tag of 12K or thereabouts, I as yet haven’t had the fortune to use such as a mic. See the KU-100 pictured below.

The objective over the summer break was to capture some natural bush and ocean environments with the equipment on loan from SAE. I am grateful to be living these days on the South Coast and the natural soundscapes in my day-to-day life no only have a calming effect on my person, but an inspiration in my creative audio work. Elements of these recordings will inevitably find themselves woven into future electro-acoustic compositions that I will create.

Until then, I have minimally and cleaned up the recordings for public use and access. The recordings have been minimally edited to remove noises such as mic bumps and wind distortion. A touch of RX 7 Spectral De-Noise has also been used with a Reduction curve to focus on any low-frequency rumble from neighbouring highways and urban noise pollution in general.

If you would like to use these recordings, please do so as I have put them up on freesound.org with the Creative Commons license 0, ie you may use them commercially and do not need to credit me.

For those interested further in binaural recording, I have found on my journey both the written work and field recordings of Gordon Hempton to be highly inspirational. You can listen to his work at his website soundtracker.com, and to hear more about his efforts to preserve silent spaces, spaces devoid of any industrial noise, I’d very much advise listening to a great podcast, One Being, where Gordon is interviewed by the wonderful Krista Tippet.

 

Danga Island Drum Session

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I recently had the pleasure of 3 days of recording drums with session player Mark Spence and producer Joel King.

Mark and I were put up in a lovely house a short stroll across the island from the studio. We worked into the early evening each day and enjoyed an open fire and island life after hours. The studio as you can see from the pictures is a garden studio set amongst fruit trees, a chicken run and a host of vegetable gardens.

Over the three days, we tracked drums for an electronic record, a country record and a pop single. Quite prolific!

Due to the project studio nature of the studio, we only had 8 channels in, but they were very decent indeed, 4 channels SSL Alpha VHD and 4 channel Warm preamp WA412. Both preamps performed well and it was certainly fun exploring the variety of tone colour possible with the VHD (variable harmonic distortion) in the Alpha VHD. For those that haven’t used these preamps before, the control allows you to shift between 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortion, in short, a thickness through to a brighter harmonic saturation.

Other than that it was nice to work in a small room for a change. The surfaces were well treated, not too reflective and not too dead. As a result the drums were tight and had that classic small room drum sound.

Fortunately, I took personal protection earmuffs, as I was sitting within a meter of the ride and floor tom. Loud it definitely was, but with the earmuffs, not ear damage occurred and on a positive note, communication with the drummer was immediate and easy and even allowed giving hand signals to alert the drummer to changes in the tracks.

Below are a few images from the session and the mic input list. The studio boasts a good range of mics, mostly from Audio Technica, baring the very fancy Telefunken U47.

There’s only one beautiful compressor, the UA LA2A, but that wasn’t much of an issue as most of the mixing and compression will be done after the fact.

Due to the vibe, beautiful guitar collection, U47 and LA2A, I can’t wait to return with a folk artist of some description and spend a few days recording vocals and guitars.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, between takes, if one needs inspiration or a break, there is always a boat ride up the Hawkesbury River.

MIC INPUT LIST:

  1. Kick – Audio Technica AE2500 – Warm Audio WA412
  2. Snare Up – Shure SM57 – Warm Audio WA412
  3. Snare Down – Shure SM57 – Warm Audio WA412
  4. Rack Tom – Audio Technica – ATM250 – SSL Alpha VHD
  5. Floor Tom – Audio Technica – ATM250 – SSL Alpha VHD
  6. Overhead L – Audio Technica – AT8471 – SSL Alpha VHD
  7. Overhead R – Audio Technica – AT8471 – SSL Alpha VHD
  8. Room – Telefunken U47 – LA2A – Warm Audio WA412

 

South Coast Dreaming

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My ambient project The Horizontal Society, has released their second record titled South Coast Dreaming on the lo fi spiritual label.

The record is a tapestry of field recordings, bamboo flute, tamboura, and some minimal chanting. Blissed out major scale drones attempt to communicate a deep gratitude for my recent sea change.

My move from Redfern to the NSW South Coast is definitely impacting my art and the sounds I am creating

I hope you find the record to be relaxing, immersive and that it transports you somewhere beautiful.

The release is digitally available from all the usual outlets.

Dub Techno release on Organica Sounds

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In recent news, my Dub Techno alias TEChSLo had a release on Italian label Organica Sounds.

Titled Redfern Nights, the release is somewhat of an ode to my old Redfern neighbourhood. The record takes field recordings taking during the wet Redfern winter of 2018 and weaves them with more typical dub techno instrumentation such as dubbed chord stabs and 4×4 kick patterns.

The record is available on DJ friendly platforms such as Beatport and streaming services such as Spotify.

A film clip was also created which was mostly used for Instagram. I have recently posted a long play version on Youtube for those interested.

The rest of this post shall involve a reflection on the production: 

I used field recordings of rain to emulate the noise floor and textural sounds that I have always loved in seminal records from Basic Channel and other alumni such as Echospace Detroit. 

To achieve the maximal width, these stereo recordings have often been split into mono and placed out of sync to maximise left and right channel differences.

Embracing the Dub Techno emphasis on shifting tonality rather than chord structures, I have used a lot of the Max for Live LFO tool on this record. Specifically, each track has used multiple LFOs to slowly shift filter cut off frequencies and other variables. See my Youtube channel for tutorials relating to such techniques.

Tracks 4 & 5 are interesting to me and reflect my interest in the idea that a remix can be an opportunity to take a reductionist approach to the original sounds; stretching and turning them into their most basic tone or texture. These two reductions were heavily inspired by the works of Variant. 

In researching many of my favourite Dub Techno producers, it has been noted that many of them have used reel to reel tape machines in their production. To emulate this analogue tape warmth, I have recorded all the audio stems to cassette tape and then re-digitised before the final mix. From a production standpoint, it has been interesting to see the harmonic stimulation and the softening of transients that such a technique has resulted in.

That’s probably enough of a nerdy audio reflection on the minutiae. If you have made it this far, I hope some of the above-mentioned technique inspires your own production.

Installation soundscape for Leanne Thompson

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Mid Feb I was contacted for a quick turnaround job create a soundscape for Leanne Thompson’s ‘Water Cradle’ installation as part of Harbour Sculpture. 

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