Field Recording Jan 4

This was near the town of Granity and twice I ran to pick up the recorder & mics, thinking a freak wave was going to swamp them…. Needless to say my paniced stony beach foots & verbal comments/cursing won’t be in the edited file! As it turns out it was about every 5th or 6th wave that made it up the beach, to the foot of my mics (you can see the darker/wet stones in the fisheye photo below – what was I worried about?) The best sound of all was the lovely granular swell as the sea dragged stones out from the beach, but it only occurred on those big surges in…. Patience is a virtue is an essential part of ambience recording. I set levels so the CSS5 mic matched the 816/70 wider pair, and when I listened with no headphones and then inputs 1&2 vs 3&4 it was the 816/70 pair that ruled supreme. I love wide/discrete mics for interesting ambience recording – good to have the tighter stereo image of the CSS5 (on ‘normal’ setting) but the wider/discreet image is so much more engaging and closer to how I hear it at the time: our ears ARE discrete after all…

This was literally many miles up a 4WD track off a remote back road, and up here somewhere was the second time I would have been royally screwed without four wheel drive. I don’t take serious risks (eg attempting river crossings or mud traverses) when on my own, but theres nothing like wandering off the beaten track a little & finding your wheels spinning, only to kick in 4WD and idly drive out of any problems to appreciate why owning a 4WD is wise, if you do go exploring occasionally.

This was one of many ruins that I stumbled across, dating back to the gold rush days of the West Coast. But this was the best one to record: I started to think about how many rainy winters were contributing to the rusty heavy metal creaks I recorded while manipulating the hatch door to this random thing…. 50 seems too few, maybe 100 is closer?

With a nor wester & a bit of drizzle the colour pallet was totally shifted from yesterday… As any photographer will tell you, grey overcast days are great for shooting photos due to consistent light… but for sound recordists such as i, it seems the bitey sand flies were out in force today!