I make field recordings to document the experience of being in a place. My aim is to produce a binaural ambient soundscape that can transport you to being in the location. These recordings will sound best with headphones. I am still new at field recording, so these may be rough by professional standards. Please bear with me while I learn and improve.
Jump to longer recordings further down the page, or the setup details at the bottom of the page.
There is a dedicated RSS feed for new field-recordings. Many of the longer field recordings are also uploaded to this YouTube playlist which also has an RSS feed.
I got the idea from Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing. Short version: it’s an audio file that is less than a minute, like the sound version of a snapshot picture. I’ll stretch the length to maybe 3 minutes, like a short, radio play, pop song.
Recording, 33 s captured in the afternoon.
A VTA light rail passing and arriving at the platform in Mountain View, California. The sound that I noticed was the rails that the rails make before the train is very close. It’s the sound of the wheels rolling, transmitted through the rails themselves.
WARNING: this one can get LOUD. The sound of a LIRR train arriving at the platform. I did some light compression so that the announcement isn’t so faint against the train arriving.
Took a little more editing to get the church bells out of the noise. I was a block away when they started.
These are longer form recordings, the longer the better in my opinion.
Recording: 12 m, 15 mb, and there is a 28 m version on YouTube, with some video that I’m not too happy about. From
You can see some new equipment in the picture that I am starting to use. I’m pretty happy with it, and the audio. The video that I took with my now getting very old camera is something that I am less happy with.
I had a lot of time on my hands while I was sitting around waiting for the sound to record. One of the things that I thought about was that the daytime sky on a cloudy day is probably pretty similar to what our prehistoric ancestors would have seen. I think this was after someone else had made the point that sea is a similar view that we have and still can share with our oldest forebears. It set me off thinking of what other things we can still share with them, and what things we have lost that they had. In some sense we have traded those things for what we have today that they didn’t and couldn’t have. I’m still thinking about that.
I went backpacking for 4 days in Joshua Tree. Night in the high desert has a lot of crickets. Also a surprising amount of air traffic, both civilian and military. The first night is near enough to town to have a few suburban sounds: dog barking and maybe a car. I think there was an owl, but I’ll have to listen again.
Night in late summer. Passing brief shower, drains, drops on a glass table. Suburban sounds abound: far away traffic, an air conditioner, a dog barks in the distance, a passing jet. There are some crickets in the beginning before the rain.
In the 2nd version I replaced the Rode bar with a 3d printed one, and a lighter octopod.
