We like living vicariously, especially when it involves a favorite sense, so here are some of my favorite field recordists blogs. And while I appreciate all of their work I’m going to highlight one recording from each which I think you should cue up, close your eyes & enjoy.
And I am totally obliged to say I appreciate the fact that all of these artists place their work online for us all to enjoy, be enlightened & transported by. I suspect it may prove to be the ultimate sign of digital immaturity when people attempt to assign zero value to things they can “get for free” – art is created by those who provide a context for their work and whether its created via a brush, a camera lens or a microphone the experience is everything! Keep up the great work!
Andreas Bick’s Silent Listening – listen to: Dispersion of sound waves in ice sheets
Michael Raphael’s Sepulchra blog – listen to: Plaster City Rockets
Local, Grant Finlays Nature Sounds of New Zealand – listen to: Tawharanui rain
Listen to Africa is Huw Williams and Rebecca Sumners two year 24,000km cycle powered field recording expedition across Africa – listen to: Life in the mangroves
Lastly, of specific relevance: Field Notes is a PDF magazine “concerned with the phenomenon of sound from the most varied perspectives: artists, scientists and sound researchers” – check out the first two issues
And please feel free to reccomend other good field sound blogs – I’m all ears!
UPDATE:
Chuck Russom’s blog
Noise Jockey
Quiet American’s collection
A Quiet Reverie
Soundwalk Blog
Touch Radio
Domestic Soundscape
CSW Blog
Wow! That recording of the dispersion of sound waves in ice sheets is AMAZING! It blew me away! WTF goes on there and why do we spend our lives not even knowing or appreciating the crazy/wonderful sounds that surround us daily! Quite amazing indeed.
I also downloaded those Field Notes PDF’s and recommend it to anyone. There are a lot of nice thoughts and studies on sound and recordings. I especially liked these two phrases from the first article:
“In the beginning was sound…and it never went away”
and
” In sound there is heaven and hell. Sound is not innocent”
Great post! Never heard of these sites before and appreciate the heads up, they’re bookmarked now. My favorite field recording site is the one that really introduced me to the art of it:
http://www.quietamerican.org/
btw, I linked this post on my blog:
http://resonantfilter.blogspot.com/2010/01/field-recording-sites-recommended-by.html
cheers,
L.72
Great links! Really enjoying the Listen to Africa website. I find a lot of good field recordings at freesound.org, although you need to trawl through a lot of stuff to pick out a really good one.
Aye, I know Freesound – definitely an amazing resource!
For reccomendations I was more meaning field recordists blogs – I really enjoy these sites where people regularly update their blog with new recordings, with some photos/info as to what the sounds are & where they were recorded….
an audio exploration of site, solitude & perception:
http://a-quiet-reverie.blogspot.com/
hope you enjoy it too.
Love the Ice recordings. Sounds like the Star Wars Pylon lightsabres. Be interesting to find out what Hydrophone he used.
the ice recordings by andreas are unbelievable! I’ve never got that excited by hydrophones before but this has got me tempted to dip my toe/mic in the water! (sorry, crap joke). After all, even the River Thames is freezing over these days!
touch radio is a favourite of mine for interesting field recordings – they release one a month (not always but often field recordings) and the whole back catalog is available to listen to. Oh and recently i’ve been checking out the soundwalk blog which has a variety of interesting field stuff on it: http://www.soundwalk.com/blog/
http://www.touchradio.org.uk/
Andreas has added a new post with links to a number of other sites with great ice-related sounds:
http://silentlistening.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/ice-recordings-updated/
Thank you so much for flagging these sites… I’ve found this after following the SAM article on the ice sounds.
I love Michael Raphael’s blog nd headed it up on the sound-diaries project website that I co-run with my supervisor. You might like some of the other stuff I put on that list, if it’s of interest. I also perdiodically write about sounds on my own site and will make sure to bookmark those other sites you mentioned above. Always good to get more ideas about where to find the good sounds.
- Felix
Sound Diaries post on useful sites and projects for 2010
A post I wrote about binaural recordings, with photos and sounds