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Field recording trip to the Black River in Sweden - pt 2

July 31, 2018

I recently went on a week-long trip to a place called the Black River, located in Central Sweden. If you've been following me for a while, you might remember that I already visited this place last year and even used recordings I made there in the Wetland Atmosphere library.

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In Field recording trips, Out recording, Travel Tags field recording, travel, wildlife sounds, bird sounds
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Field recording trip to Islay in Scotland

May 29, 2018

I just returned from a very pleasant week on the island of Islay in Scotland, organized by the Wildlife Sound Recording Society. I have previously attended many WSRS meetings (blog posts here, here and here) and I knew I wouldn't be disappointed .

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In Field recording trips, Free sounds Tags free sounds, nature sounds, field recording, bird sounds, ambiences
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Field recording trip to the Black River in Sweden

May 26, 2017

A few days ago I returned from a very productive trip to a place called the Black River in central Sweden. The trip was organized by Stefan Taylor and Kari Knight with the help of fellow sound recordist Richard Youell. We were also joined by Stijn Demeuleneare, sound artist based in Belgium and Tony Fulford, Ornithologist from the UK. Pete Smith had been to the place in April and only had good things to say about it, so I didn't think twice before booking my place.

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In Out recording Tags field recording, bird sounds, nature sounds
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Recording birds in open fields

June 8, 2016

I've recently taken an interest in recording open air spaces such as hills, meadows or fields. This proved to be a bit more difficult than recording woodland or quarries for a number of reasons:

  • man-made (or sheep-made) noise can easily pollute these places
  • there's far less wildlife than in woodland or forest
  • there's little to no reverberation so the sounds are perceived as softer
  • wind is a much bigger issue than in woodland
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In Out recording Tags free sounds, nature sounds, bird sounds, ambiences
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Click image to buy the Woodland Atmosphere library. Scroll down for free sound.

Click image to buy the Woodland Atmosphere library. Scroll down for free sound.

Woodland Atmosphere retrospective Part 1

September 4, 2015

My first commercial sound effects library Woodland Atmosphere has been out for almost a month, and so far the feedback is quite encouraging. Shortly after release I wrote a Q&A for A Sound Effect, but I feel there's a lot more I can share about recording and mastering the library.

First of all it was never my intention to put together and release Woodland Atmosphere. I had several excellent nature libraries (the Quiet Planet series comes to mind), and this took care of my requirements for nature ambiences for a while. The situation changed as soon as I had to recreate a typical UK woodland ambience however. Everything sounded exotic and out of place, so the only way to fix this was to go out and record my own ambiences.

It's much easier to spot birds in early spring as they can't hide in the brush as easily

Fortunately I live in Edinburgh, so I have to drive for less than an hour before I can reach quiet areas of dense woodland that are teeming with wildlife. On top of that I'm familiar with the surroundings as we're out hiking quite often so I didn't have to waste time scouting locations.

The first time I went out to record the dawn chorus was in February this year, when the birds had barely started to sing. I was not going into this blind, as I had attended this Wildeye course in which Chris Watson and Jez Riley French covered the basics excellently, and other recordists and ornithologists shared invaluable insight and experiences with me. I had also read several books and countless blog posts on nature recording so I thought I'd be somewhat prepared for what lay ahead.

Dirt roads = less traffic

I was soon going to find out that no amount of discussion can replace first-hand experience. My first mistake was going out at 3 am, as I had noticed the birds in the trees beside my bedroom started to sing as early as 4 am. My plan was to go out even earlier so that I could record the full dawn chorus. Imagine my surprise when I got there on time and I could only hear the wind and a very distant owl hooting. I had to wait until about half past 5 before the first birds started to make themselves heard.

All this seemed peculiar enough, but I was enjoying the experience of being there too much to give it more thought. Only when I got home I remembered a discussion I had with other recordists from whom I learned about the influence of artificial lighting over birdsong. Birds in well lit areas such as cities will start singing much earlier than their rural cousins who see longer and darker nights. At any rate, from then on I would check the exact time of sunrise and time my recording trips so that I'd be on site half an hour earlier.

Laying cables

Once I got to the site, a nice and dense woodland area far away from traffic and settlements, I would park the car and start laying cables. This was an excellent opportunity for me to make mistake #2, i.e. not checking if the XLR connector I had in hand was male or female. This is usually not a problem with short cables, but I was laying down 50 metres of cable in dense and muddy brush. The flies, spiders and other insects made things worse, not to mention I was scaring away the birds. Fortunately it only happened a couple of times before I learned my lesson.

When the microphones were in place and connected to the recorder in the car I went out and placed my Sony PCM D100 about 500m further, with the input levels set at about 50%. This got me a different perspective on what I was recording, and occasionally a close-up of a few crows or Robins. I once made the mistake of setting the levels too hot (about 70%), and a pesky wren came too close and ruined an otherwise perfect recording. Setting them too low didn't work either, but once I'd done it a few times I learned to roughly predict how loud the dawn chorus would get based on location, weather conditions, time of the year or simply by listening.

Spot the recorder

Speaking of weather, the BBC Weather app was an excellent companion before and on recording trips. On top of providing accurate weather info (at least for the following day), it also displays daily sunrise/sunset time and wind speed and direction. If I didn't want to specifically record wind I wouldn't even bother going out if the wind was over 5 mph. Even if the Rycote fluffies that I use can easily block 10 to 15 mph wind, the sound of it blowing through leaves and the wood creaks would make the recordings unusable.

Another element that made more than 80% of my recordings unusable was also far less easy to control, predict or avoid. I'm talking of course about the ubiquitous sheep, but I'll leave this along with equipment and mastering details for Part 2. Until then enjoy this bit I dug up from the archives, recorded in March with the DPA 4060s into the Sound Devices 633. Follow the Soundcloud link if you want to download and use it royalty-free:


In Out recording Tags field recording, free sounds, sound effects library, bird sounds
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