One of the most relaxing soundscapes I've ever experienced is gentle rain falling in the rainforest. After a long day of hiking in a hot and extremely humid primary rainforest, I'm back at basecamp drenched in sweat but incredibly happy to be here. The atmosphere has been tense all day and the insects have been deafening. The birds quickly stopped calling after the dawn chorus and it feels like something has been building up ever since.

When the rain finally arrives, it feels slightly anticlimactic. Instead of a full-on storm we see gentle drizzle which eventually turns into soft rain. The air is decidedly cooler though, and some insects have started to call again. I'm sitting on a wooden platform, fully immersed in the land- and soundscape.

I've taped my microphones to the sides of a tree, slightly closer to each other on one side of the trunk. They're about 20cm apart, roughly the distance between human ears. The grooves and notches in the tree trunk act very much like the features on a human face, gently focusing or reflecting certain sounds.

This microphone technique is sometimes called tree ears (I'm not sure who coined the term but I've been using it along with my friends Thomas Rex Beverly and Andy Martin). I like to think about it as listening to the environment from the perspective of a tree, like the trees have been hearing it for millions of years. I hope hearing this pristine rainforest will help you feel more connected with it, and with nature and our planet.

Recorded in the Congo basin rainforest with Sony PCM M10, Sound Devices Mixpre-D and DPA 4060 microphones.

Field recording tools of the trade

At the lower end of the price spectrum, field recording equipment will yield relatively similar results. A few dB of self noise won’t make a huge difference if the recordist hasn’t mastered the other tools of the trade, the ones that can’t be bought. Let’s examine some lesser known but rather more important tools that are sure to improve your field recording practice.

Introduction to Freestyle field recording

Freestyle field recording is a flexible approach to recording nature and wildlife sounds outside of the studio or any controlled environment, developed by George Vlad. While traditional methods are prescriptive and rigid, Freestyle field recording encourages deliberate experimentation and a very organic workflow.

Listening session at the House of Lords in Westminster

I recently received an invitation to play some of my soundscapes and to tell stories about conservation. While there’s nothing unusual about that, the setting was definitely novel for me.

A collection of Owl sounds

Owls are awesome and worth learning about. What better place to start than a curated selection of owl recordings, captured by your favourite wildlife sound recordist!

The 2025 Soundscape Fund

How can field recording make a difference for conservation and environmental causes? I get this question a lot, and one of the answers is here. Once a year I team up with Thomas Rex Beverly and Andy Martin to raise money for environmental NGOs.