Audio interview with Chris Watson talking about noise pollution and education.

There was a lot of interesting discussion during this interview about the nature of noise pollution and the considerable threat it poses to our quality of life. Worrying still, it appears that our noisy modern world is drowning out the natural soundscape and interfering with species of wildlife that rely on sound for communication.

What seems to be most alarming is that we’re largely ignoring this problem – our world certainly isn’t getting any quieter – and with more of us living in urbanised environments, noise pollution is fast becoming a significant health problem.

Via onthenatureofthings

 A short interview with Joel Chadabe, composer, founder Ear to the Earth, President of EMF (Electronic Music Foundation)

Ear to the Earth

Sound Seed Transmissions was a radio show sound artist John Grzinich hosted as part of his residency at Nida Art Colony and was broadcast on the local radio station, Neringa FM. You can listen to the six shows at phase space.

The Sound Seed Transmissions show focused on sound and artists who work with unique and different contexts, drawing their inspiration from nature, natural materials, found objects, temporary installations and self-made instruments. The show was meant to be a type of “stories from the field”, presenting a mix of short interviews with artists and a selection of field recordings and/or compositions.

Jez riley French is a composer, musician and artist from East Yorkshire, UK. For the past three decades he has published, performed and exhibited his work on a wide variety of places around the world, including France, Austria, Japan, Corea, among others.

Jez’s work is based on intuitive composition, field recording, improvisation and photography, disciplines that he uses to explore his enjoyment of detail, simplicity and his emotive response to places and situations. Alongside his personal work, he also runs the site “in place” and makes contact microphones and hydrophones that are used by many artists and recordists over the world.

Here’s an interview I had with Jez talking about his approach to field recording. I also encourage you to read other fantastic interviews with jez, since I wanted to make different questions that could complement the existing information about his work: Simon Scott interviews JrF, John grzinich interview with jrf, Jez Riley French 4 Questions on Field Recording.

Could you tell us how your approach to sound has evolved over time? I read somewhere that you’re recording sound since 12!

JrF: yes, I started recording sounds (at first by accident in the back garden) with a portable tape recorder that I was given as a present by my mother. I’ve come to realize that I was very lucky to begin a close relationship with listening at this early age because I didn’t get tied up in all the theoretical or technological constraints that can sometimes cloud the simple act when one is older. I listened to ‘sound’ as music without worrying about the definition. For me at an early age it opened up a huge amount of possibilities for both music and sound to be unconstrained in my thinking.

Over time, my intuitive response to sound has become more highly focused, especially in terms of when I record. I think too that as my interest in sound / music is so closely linked to the rest of my life then I would hope that my approach to it has developed, deepened & become more fully rounded with time – that I am getting closer to something all the time, or, that I am more free to simply enjoy listening and creating.

Do you have any favorite sounds to record or places you love specially because of their sound?

JrF: well, I do like to record church spaces & I always visit a few wherever I am. I have no religion myself but there is a stillness in these spaces that remains. Also, of course, the way they are built often means the acoustics are very rich. I was a choirboy when I was much younger & I also have a fondness for choral music (tallis, byrd, howells, perotin etc etc) so perhaps there is a link between all of those things, but mostly I like the stillness one can often find in a church space.

I also really like to find & record surface vibrations, so I suppose these are favorite sounds to record – though each one is very different if ones listens closely enough. The same is true of using hydrophones – I’m always fascinated by what sounds I can find in pools, streams, rivers, canals & the sea.

So I guess there are certain ways I explore the audible & inaudible that are ‘favorite’ (at the moment) rather than specific geographical locations.

Do you have a specific way or method to listen?

JrF: I think the only way to answer this is to say that the way I listen is defined by who I am. With so many people now using field recording as a creative process it is the individuality of the person doing it that matters. It must be this way otherwise all that happens is people record sounds with no individual personal motivation. It would take me too long to explain all the different ways in which I listen – I think that is the best way to answer – to highlight the fact that ‘listening’ is an endless exploration in itself.

Do you find any differences between music and sound at all? How is that relationship reflected in your work?

JrF: the difference between ‘sound’ & ‘music’ is down to either dictionary definitions or scientific ‘facts’ – & while those things serve a purpose they can be used in ways that restrict rather than expand each area. For me, I hear ‘sound’ musically because my emotions are engaged, even when i’m listening to or working with sounds that are related to acoustic principals & that require some understanding in the science behind them in order to capture them. I believe that the problems with these definitions & indeed with ‘sound art’ stem from the way music became disconnected from ‘the arts’ in the early 20th century. Music always was sound – but with creative process applied. Of course as music became more & more devoid of purely creative influences, became more of an entertainment industry, then the definitions changed, but I don’t feel the need to call what I do ‘sound art’ just because it fits in with what certain sections of the art world wants to call it.

Yes, ‘music’ is sound with an emotive or creative process applied & what I do is always influenced by my emotive response, so I call it music – & music is the (looted perhaps) root of sound art – it was sound art before the term sound art was invented – the only problem was that large sections of the artistic industry didn’t have the interest to look beyond the mainstream at experimental / art music – & sadly, still don’t.

Could you explain who is the intuitive composition process you implement? what do you want to tell with your compositions?

JrF: the term ‘intuitive composition’ was one I started using many years ago when I felt what I was doing in live performance wasn’t really just improvisation. There is a structure that develops naturally when a performance ‘works’ & so, I feel this term describes that process – a moment to moment development of a composition based on ones inherent intuitive response.

I don’t know how I can answer the second question here – what I want to say. With each live performance I simply hope to create something that reaches that point where the music arrives. With compositions that aren’t live performances then what motivates me is to create works that resonate with me & the key to deciding which ones to then make public is also down to intuition – deciding which ones I feel will offer listeners something substantial.

What gear are you normally using in the field?

JrF: well, firstly I don’t feel the equipment I use is that important. Listing it for example, wouldn’t (I hope !) say anything about what I create from the act of recording. However as you asked….in my basic kit at the moment I have a Sound Devices recorder, a Korg MR2 recorder, several conventional microphones (omni, binaural, etc), my own (JrF) contact microphones, strung contact microphones, adapted coil pick up’s & hydrophones + cables, wind shields, adaptors etc. However I do like to travel light so often I only take all of this equipment if i’m doing something specific.

I don’t use any software to process recordings – I edit them in terms of cutting their duration & very occasionally I might eq some noise from a recording. But basically what interests me is the sounds themselves, as they are. When i’m composing with different recordings then my approach is very simple & clear & doesn’t need a complex editing suite.

I wonder if making your own tools and also selling them to other artists has changed something in your approach to field recording. What has this meant for you?

JrF: making my own equipment has meant that I’ve been able to experiment in different ways sometimes & perhaps to take more chances in terms of exposing equipment to risk.

When it comes to selling them….well, I used to just make them for myself & for friends but a few years ago I set up a blog about field recording & tested all the hydrophones & contact microphones I could for that. I was quite shocked at the poor quality of some of the products on the market or at the prices they were being sold for. I heard also that lots of people had bought equipment & it had actually not encouraged them to continue exploring sound because it hadn’t given them good results. So, I decided to begin selling mine to the general public. I should point out here that this fascinating audible world we live in has given me so much pleasure & therefore helping other people experience some aspects of that is something I believe in a great deal.

Selling JrF products has brought me into contact with lots of interesting people & also contributed to me working alongside Chris Watson on the Wildeye location sound recording courses here in the UK for example.

I see you distribute the majority of your work on your own label, engraved glass. How has this model worked for you over the years? any particular thoughts about it?

JrF: I was talking recently to another artist about this & I think one reason is that my first real interest in music was when the whole new wave / experimental / do-it-yourself scene was beginning here in the UK. So, the ideas of having full creative control over ones work was important to me from an early age. Its really that I like the whole creative process too – the design of the artwork & the process of ‘making’ the releases. Having said that, I also think that when one has ones own label often it means other labels don’t think you’re interested in releasing something on another label. So, i’m always open to suggestions in terms of releasing work on another label of course, but, as with every aspect of what I do, there always needs to be a connection, a particular empathy.

What is the latest sound you recorded? what’s coming next?

JrF: I’ve been recording lots of micro-sounds – ants eating apricots, tiny aquatic insects. Also balustrades in various locations & lights / lighting supports in Japan & Korea. Some of these recordings are for two different projects: a composition for the arts festival in Topolo, Italy & also for the ‘international lighthouse relay’ project as part of the Folkstone triennial. Both of these compositions will be available on a limited edition cd, the Folkstone piece will be exhibited too & then there is a double cd ‘weaves / audible silence # 2’ coming soon.

What advice would you give to anyone interested in field recording?

JrF: listen, listen, listen ! & don’t wait to save up for expensive equipment – if you can only afford a second hand mini disc recorder, get it & get out there with it. Higher quality equipment is great of course but only if you have good ears & can listen. Also, don’t think of sounds as something to be recorded all the time, to collect – learn to enjoy listening for its own sake.

Spanish artist Edu Comelles works on sound composition since 2006. His works have been published by various netlabels such as Resting Bell, Impulsive Habitat and Audiotalaia (created by him), and he’s involved in different collective and individual projects involving sound composition and installations. His work tries to investigate the relationships established between sound and location. Now a days he lives and works in Valencia, Spain where he’s developing a PHd on sound art.

Here is an interview I had with Edu, talking about his approach to field recording and composition.

(in Spanish here)

How did you get started with field recording?

As in many things in my life, accidentally. The first sound recordings I did were captured using an HD Sony DVcam. I realised that what the built-in-microphone was recording was far more interesting than the images itself.

How field recording and your artistic approach to sound have changed the way you listen everyday? 

It changed everything! Now I listen much more than before. Sound is always an issue, a topic to talk about, every place I go, I enjoy it much more listening to it, now I hear.

I love your work as Mensa, specially the releases you’ve done at Resting Bell. Could you talk us more about your approach on using field recordings for those compositions?

In Resting Bell I have released three albums, Northern Recordings, Southern Recordings and Braid Heritage. The two firsts where my first steps on sound composition and I used to highly process the sound sources I was using. By that time it wasn’t really important for me where the sound came from. The important thing was how I was able to transform it. I was taking more care on building compositions that remind me of locations, trying to build abstract soundscapes of natural places.

After the two firsts albums on Resting Bell I worked on three albums that followed the same premises, using highly processed field recordings to build abstractions of a territory. Those were The Clifts (Audiotalaia 2009), Moorland (Testube Netlabel, 2010) and Braid Heritage (Resting Bell, 2010). Those three albums were a turning point for me. On Moorland and Braid Heritage you can hear how field recordings and non processed audio sources are taking more protagonism.

Finally and after 1 year I released Orange Country on Impulsive Habitat. There, field recordings are the main issue. So in a sense you could say that I started veiling my sound sources under layers of effects and now, slowly, I am unveiling them until they are wide clear. By now I’m fully working with non processed recordings. Even though I might come back to the more drone and ambient textures as in the beginning.

In an interview for La Escucha Atenta you talked about the importance of chronology and narrative in your work. Is there a special reason for that? Could you expand the idea?

Apart from main projects I am usually building short sound pieces that I am uploading to my bandcamp account. These compositions use to be the output of a short trip, excursion or a bunch of recordings done in a short period of time.
Let me use a concrete example:

There is a recording called “Golfo di Orosei a Alghero” this is a composition done using field recordings captured in Sardinia in Italy. This specific composition follows an order based on two main aspects, first, when I recorded the sounds and secondly where were recorded.

So the composition starts with recordings on the plane to Sardinia and ends on Alghero where I spent the last day of my trip. Geographically the composition goes from western sardinian coast (Alghero Airport) to eastern coast (Dorgali, Orosei) and back again finishing the trip with urban soundscapes of Alghero. This is just an example but I think it describes somehow what I wanted to say.

Also, on my Sound Walk projects the chronology and narrative is a basic issue while composing. Taking care on these concepts the sound walks are more related to the environment where it are taking place. So the compositions are based on geography and environment limiting my compositional aims to the needs and characteristics of every place.

You also mentioned about your interest on trivial moments, rather than specific environments or places. Is that reflected on your recent work? what do you find interesting about those “trivial” events?

On a recent post on my blog I was talking about the concept of Sharawadji. This is an Chinese word that describes a certain moment in which different elements of a soundscape joint together to form a hazardous composition with certain beauty.

Lately I have been looking after this kind of situations. You can find it on the most uncommon places with really annoying sound. For instance, by standing between to ways on a big avenue you can hear cars coming in both directions, the doppler effect combined with the low frequencies from the wheel rubber and weight of cars and tracks can conform a really beautiful sound experience. There is a release on Konkretourist Netlabel by Son Clair called From The Bridge which is basically that; a drone built using the sound of cars passing by. For me that’s a trivial sound scenario that becomes something much more deep and conceptual when you talk about it, when you present it as a composition made to be listened.

As an example of this I would like to underline the work by Spanish phonographer José Maria Pastor. His personal approach is to capture whatever is next to you and present it as something to be listened to be respected as part of our heritage. Sometimes you listen to his compositions and you might find them “trivial” but when you realize that you are paying attention to well known sounds and you playback them the change, they become something else, common sounds are elevated.

In your project “La Ciudad Aural” you mentioned about doing slight alterations on binaural recordings, in order to compose soundscapes. How was that achieved? Could you give us some examples of those alterations in the compositions?

On La Ciudad Aural the compositional approach apart from being based on geography and chronology is based on a mix done only by panning sounds. This compositional system is quite interesting and exiting because you mix the different tracks regarding their location on a 360º axis. Basically you compose to point out our auditory perception.

Paying special attention on where the sounds come from I think its a basic issue to consider while exercising a deep listening experience. To prepare a set of compositions with alterations on panning was a way to force listeners to exercise and train the ear to hear more that what we are use to hear.

On La Ciudad Aural people really heard the city, the listeners were aware of the environment because of small shifts on the structure of a soundscape. The listeners had an experience where two soundscapes took place: the real and ongoing soundscape of the city and the recording I was triggering in each city location. Because of this layering their awareness on sound increased.

How is the relationship between field recording and your other projects like your painting, urban art, etc?

Now a days there is no relationship between those two worlds (or it might be but I’m waiting for someone to defend that). I haven’t painted a canvas since ages! Officially my degree in Fine Arts implies an specialization in silk-print and engraving, two disciplines I was working on a few years back. Now my efforts are centered on sound mainly.

What’s the biggest challenge you face when recording on the field or working on a composition?

Wind!!!!! no, just kiddin’

I have to admit that sometimes the biggest challenge while recording is to be patient. I am a workalcoholic so I cannot be doing nothing or stand still. For me to go around on a field trip requires lots of patience. I am learning to stay quite for a while and let the recording flow and enjoy those moments as what they are. Sometimes by not being patient I have missed great sounds to be recorded.

And while composing probably the biggest challenge is to do something that engages people. I consider that phonography is a discipline in constant struggle with the audience. The very nature of the discipline requires specific conditions and predisposition of the listener. Being able to break the “engaging” barrier is a big challenge that is always bothering me. In one way I want to do compositions that I love to hear but I’m also looking after compositions that anyone would like to hear, that can be a big challenge.

How has been the experience with your recent project with Juanjo Palacios? What is it about?

To work with a good friend like Juanjo is being an amazing experience. We both share a lot of common interests and we understand each other’s ways to work. On this specific project we are involved, we were required to spent a week on a remote area in the northern spanish mountains in Asturias recording sounds for a soundmap of the area. The outcome of this framework will be presented this very september. I think is quite interesting to see how two ways of working can melt together and how each other’s thoughts can contaminate your way to perceive things.

Also putting your work next to the work of another artist is great to confront your own approach. It makes you question what you are doing and how other languages intervene and change your compositional approaches or conceptual.

Also from the “sound geek” point of view it has been really nice to share acknowledgement, gear, tips, technology, software etc…

What is the latest sound that you recorded? Also, is there any current project you’d like to mention?

Answering the first question: The last sound I recorded was provably a soundscape that I recorded at Llorenç Barber’s backyard. Now in Valencia he’s organising concerts on his garden. So me and a few friends went there to hear an Israelian Hang Musician (LironMan). Barber also performed an improvisation with this Hang player.

The thing is that after the concert, we were gathering around chatting and so on. Suddenly I realised that some kids were playing with the instruments left at one corner of the garden so I set up my Zoom and left it there for a while. At another corner of the garden Barber has a pond where, at night, frogs gather to sing, really loud, by the way. So I ended up having a beautiful recording of the night ambience of the garden splattered by distant bells and kids yelling and everything accompanied by the singing of the frogs, quite a beautiful recording I think, the least you could expect from an Experimental Composer’s backyard. (You can check it out on Bandcamp).
Answering the second question:

I would like to mention what is supposed to be my main focus now a days and it’s my PhD in Sound Art. This is going to be a deep study on a basic idea that floats in my mind since a few years. This is the idea of Placing Sound on locations or the act of placing a hearing experience.

The study will take examples from sound art projects from the last few years and those will be confronted by projects of mine as exercises to prove somehow that even that sound and a hearing experience are non-physical materials, those can be placed on space or location.

Also the project focuses on how soundscapes are displayed and how we can enhance the experience of listening soundscapes from a museistic point of view. If everything goes fine that should be finished by next year.

You probably already heard about Richard Devine, electronic musician and sound designer known not only for working on music, but also on doing sound for short films, videogames, websites, sound libraries, synthesizers, samplers, and more. A big part of those sounds that he creates are generated from organic sources, which means that field recording plays an important part on his work.

Richard has took some of his time to answer some questions about his approach to field recording. Enjoy!

[The interview was also published in Spanish here]

Sonic Terrain: When did you get started with field recording and when did you begin to use it in your work?

Richard Devine: I started doing field recordings back in 1995, when I got my first hardware sampler. I was recording sounds on to my portable DAT, and mini-disc recorders. It started out more for my own personal music compositions. I would layer the field recordings of all types of sounds, nature, insects, machines, and factory sounds. I loved to cut the recordings into smaller pieces then manipulate the loop points, pitch, and filtering with the Akai digital sampler. The use of the digital samplers really sparked my interests in doing field recordings, as I could really experiment with any recorded sound. I would later carry this approach with virtual software samplers in my works.

ST: How would you define your favorite soundscape?

RD: Some of my favorite soundscapes have been from nature ambiences. One of my favorite recordings was one I did back in 1997 in El Yunque rainforest, which is a sub tropical mountainous forest, located in the eastern part of Puerto Rico. I was recording late one night and captured the sounds of thousands of coquî frogs. The sound of the forest came alive with thousands of crickets, and other insects. It was so loud, inspiring and intriguing.

ST: How’s your approach on listening to the environment around you?

RD: I always try and approach listening with an open ear, as you never know what will happen. Some of the most interesting sounds I have recorded happened by accident, or when I wasn’t expecting it. Some of the most unusual sounds I have recorded where things that happened spontaneously. So I try to always listen with an open ear, especially paying close attention when I am in a new environment. I just try and carry a portable recorder with me at all times and hope that I can get a good clean recording if something does come up.

ST: How much experimentation you do when capturing sounds in the field? Could you tell us more stories like that one when you recorded maggots with hydrophones?

RD: This was another situation that happened spontaneously. My wife has a small worm-composting box that we throw our food scraps into. The box is typically filled with nutrient rich soil, and about 200 worms that breakdown any food that we put into the top layer. Last summer we had a fly infestation occur. My wife had just gone out to check the box one afternoon, and called me immediately upon discovering the infestation. There where literally thousands of large maggot larva moving on the top of the surface of the soil. Some how these large flies had laid eggs in the soil and had taken over the worm house.

The most interesting part of this was the sound that all of them made as they where squirming all over each other. I immediately grabbed a set of lav microphones to put onto the top layer of larva. I had my sound devices recorder close by so I was able to monitor the levels into the headphones. I then wondered how the sound of all the larva would sound buried underneath the surface of the moist soil. I then went and grabbed my Aquarian Audio H2a-XLR hydrophones, and buried them beneath the surface. The sounds were quite interesting as you could hear the thousands of maggot larva moving across the surface of both hydrophones. It was quite a unique rare situation, which happened spontaneously.

Another recording that happened like this was the humming birds on my back porch. We have a humming bird feeder that is located in one of the corners of house. I was sitting one day having tea with my wife and heard the sound of the humming bird fly by my ear. I was really surprised at how mechanical and motor like it was.

My wife had the idea of taping the small Lavalier microphones to the feeder feeding flowers so we could get ultra close range recordings of them flying in. The result is what you hear below.

ST: In an interview we had some time ago on Designing Sound, you told me about the influence of architecture in your sound work. Is that also related directly with real recording of spaces and ambiences?

RD: I have always been influenced by visual art and had gotten my major in graphic design while I was in college. I found lots of inspiration from the forms and structures of modern architecture. I was studying the music of Iannis Xenakis at the time and was really impressed by the “Metastasis B (1953) piece, which was based directly on architectural concepts. I was really interested in his devised computer system called UPIC, which could translate graphical images into musical results. Xenakis referred to his drawings, as “’arborescences” which resembled both organic forms and architectural structures. The drawings consisted of various curves and lines that could be interpreted by the UPIC software for real time instructions for the sound synthesis processing. In the end the drawing, was rendered into a composition. I was really fascinated by his approach to sound synthesis. I drew much inspiration from his early works, and would draw out gestures and motifs for many of my first sound compositions.

ST: You work on a wide variety of fields, including sound design, music and libraries. Could you tell us how you use your field recordings on those outputs?

RD: Field recordings play an integral role in all of my works. I always try to incorporate this whenever I can. I always feel it can bring a natural human element to any project. I usually will do raw recording for client projects, and often-record additional sounds for my own sound effects releases. I like to record sounds and divide them into categories, objects, debris, impacts, textures, movements, and ambiences. I then like to process some of these sounds to be grouped into a particular project or release. Sometimes the sounds will get used in some of my remixes and musical compositions. Other sounds might end up being used on a TV, multi-media or commercial project.

Many sounds that I have compiled over dozens of projects that get left over sometimes get used in some sort of sound effects release. I try to use everything I create, letting nothing go to waste. More recently I have been giving them away for free on my SoundCloud page.

ST: Talking specifically on the music side, I wonder how has been your approach to field recordings in previous releases. I can hear a lot of fantastic atmospheres and crazy spaces on your early releases. I specially love the sound of  Asect: Dsect and Aleamapper, to name a few..

RD: With my early musical releases I would usually record lots of different sounds, and ambiences. The main purpose for using field recordings on my albums was to create textures and spaces that had some sort of acoustic element that could be mixed with more synthetic sounds. I loved morphing the two worlds together and tried to create these visceral dark sonic environments.

ST: What gear do you use for field recording?

RD: I always carry with me the Zoom H4n portable recorder. I usually just have it inside my book bag along side my laptop. I just have it on hand if something sporadically happens. I also have a sound devices 702 digital recorder that I will take out with me on more involved recording sessions. My favorite go to microphones are the Neumann RSM-191 A/S kit, and Sanken CSS-5 shotgun mics. I also love the DPA SMK4060 miniature Omni directional microphones. I find these small microphones to be extremely versatile in multiple situations. I have captured really great ambiences, and hard to get sounds with these.

ST: And what about the editing/processing? Do you have any favorite method or tools for editing/mastering, storing and processing your recordings?

RD: I like to use Wavelab, SoundForge, Peak and Logic Audio for most of my editing and processing of sounds. I like a wide variety of different plug-ins for mastering which include stuff from Waves, Universal Audio and iZotope. For specific processing I love the new GRM tools 3.0 and Sound Toys plug-ins. I have always been a big fan of these two bundles and have used them on countless projects and pieces. More recently I have been using Tom Erbe’s Pvoc Kit Sound Hack plug-ins for doing phase vocoding, pitch shifting, harmonizing, and time stretching. I love how you can really mangle sounds into some thing completely new.

Another plug-in that I have been getting lots of good sounds from is Camel Audio’s Alchemy. I find this wonderful for altering samples and generating new sounds via the additive and spectral resynthesizing engine. It has a very flexible LFO and modulation section that can all be morphed into 100 zones. As for storing sounds I have been backing things up on my network here of hard drives. Everything is labeled and sorted through this wonderful program called AudioFinder. I also use AudioEase Snapper, and Speakphone software. I have used these two on almost every project I have encountered.

ST: What is the latest sound you recorded in the field?

RD: I recently was at Teufelsberg listening station in Berlin Germany while on tour there. A good friend of ours told us of this building in former West Berlin. It rises about 80 meters above the Brandenburg plain, to the north of Grunewald forest. There is lots of mystery surround this unique structure. There are rumors that say it was the best vantage point for listening to Soviet, East German, and other Warsaw Pact nations military traffic. This discovery eventually led to a large structure being built atop the hill, which would be run by the NSA (National Security Agency). They have since removed all the equipment that was in the buildings. The radar domes still remain in place, and are of very unique form, which offer some of the most amazing acoustical reverbs I have ever heard. Here is a preview:

Cheryl Leonard plays one of her hand-made custom instruments from objects she gathered during her month-long residency in Antarctica.

Cheryl Leonard is a composer and instrument maker whose work features live performances with natural and constructed objects and field recordings. Most recently she spent a month as an artist in residence at Palmer Station in Antarctica, already yielding material for an album of field recordings and a still-evolving series of composed recordings and live performances. Sounds from this residency, and blog entries chronicling her experiences, can be found at Music From the Ice.

Sonic Terrain spent a rainy autumn evening in her San Francisco studio talking about her work, the frozen lands of the furthest South, and the sonic surprises that surround us in the natural world.

Sonic Terrain: You clearly  spend a lot of time outdoors, with stated interests in mountaineering, climbing, and skiing. What captures your composer’s ear when you are in a certain environment?

Cheryl Leonard: It depends on the context in which I’m outdoors. If I’m climbing a mountain I will notice the sounds, but I’m not going to stop to compose, because it’ll be likely to be an avalanche or something! [laughs] When I’m outdoors in a more relaxed context, like an extra day at basecamp, or we’re already down from the mountain and we’re just hanging out, [is] where I actually have the time to look for objects that would be good to use [for instruments and sound].

But it’s hard to not notice sounds, especially when you’re climbing. The ice axe is making a certain sound, and the crampons, or you get the good ice sound, or the bad ice sound, ice falls down and hits the other ice…it all sounds very musical. In the context of ice climbing, you’re listening for what is solid so you won’t fall off! But in a musical context, when ice is falling, it has different pitches, depending on the size and density of the ice, or what it’s hitting.

ST: To what degree do you rely on serendipity in finding natural materials that are sonically rich? Do you pre-auralize or predict what sounds that found objects or materials will make, or do you collect first and explore when you’re back from the field?

Leonard makes custom instruments for use in live performance, mixed with field recordings. These instruments are made of driftwood, penguin vertebrae and bones, and limpet shells.

CL: I think that it’s a combination of the two. First you have to find what might be interesting. As you walk on talus, you might think it’s really kind of neat. Then you can go and pick out specific pieces of rock you like, or sets of shells that will sound good in a set, so then you have a set of pitches from your objects. Sometimes it totally is serendipity: You’re just walking along and you kick something, and it’s great!

I’ve got to admit that sometimes I pick stuff up because it looks cool, visually. I’ll take it back to the studio, and maybe it’ll make a cool sound. You can find something [sonically] interesting in almost any object if you just figure out the right way to play it, or the right way to amplify it.

ST: Do the themes in your work evolve from the spaces you explore, or do you head out into the field to collect sounds and artifacts with a theme initially in mind?

CL: I can work both ways. Sometimes I just find sounds that are interesting and the piece develops organically from the sound, like a windy sound just evolves into a certain kind of piece based on the nature of that sound, and then at the end, you realize, “Oh, ok, that was kind of a piece about flying,” but I didn’t start with that. It just ended up that way. I’ve also done a set of pieces based on Chinese wilderness poetry from the Tang Dynasty, and so I had a very specific theme for each piece, based on a specific poem. So then I’d say, “OK, this poem is about rocks and wind, so I’m going to find and play rocks and make windy sounds with them.”

ST: It sounds like you embrace constraints as you work.

CL: You have to. One of the fun things about being a composer right now [is that] you have so many options. You could use any kind of material, you could use all this of processing, you could use any kind of theme, you can draw on music from all kinds of different cultures…it’s almost too many options to deal with. I have to give myself constraints just so I don’t drive myself crazy.

It’s a really exciting time to work with sound, because you have seemingly infinite options, and then it’s up to us to define the constraints that we want to work within for a specific project or piece. That said, I think you do need to keep yourself open to finding something that you weren’t planning to do originally, and maybe that’s going to take you into a different direction. You have to be fluid and go with that sometimes.

An elderly woman I knew about ten years ago gave me this great piece of advice: When you’re having that moment when you’re looking at the blank canvas and you’re not sure what to do, it doesn’t really matter what you do…just do something. Don’t be the deer in the headlights. Just pick anything and try it, and that’s a way through that problem.

ST: Let’s talk about your residency at Palmer Station in the Antarctic. What enticed you to the far south in the first place? How did it capture your imagination without having been there before?

CL: Doesn’t everybody want to go to Antarctica? [laughs] I’ve always liked remote places. I started hiking and I was like, “Where can we go where there aren’t other people?” And then I started climbing, and I could get to even more places that normal people don’t go to. That’s always been interesting to me throughout my entire life, so it’s like the Holy Grail to go to Antarctica, unless you go into space, maybe.

There are very few places on the earth anymore that haven’t been pretty well explored; even Antarctica has, although it’s one of the least explored. I’ve always liked icy, snowy, cold places, so The Land of Ice is just inherently exciting to me.

ST: “Chattermarks,” your album of field recordings from the Antarctic, captures a sonic richness that that many listeners don’t expect from such a remote place. What were the biggest surprises for you in the Antarctic, aesthetically, and how did they influence your later compositions?

Penguins and ice are among many of the voices that Leonard recorded in Antarctica. Photographs by Cheryl Leonard.

CL: I was there in the middle of summer, and that is the most lively time in Antarctica. [The animals are] like, “Whoo! We’ve got to breed and reproduce before the snow comes…in a month!” I found that part of Antarctica in that time period to be be very full of life. It wasn’t desolate. There were not a lot of colors, but there was some green, and the lichens would be vivid oranges and yellows. It wasn’t just this land of ice where everything was gray and black and white. There were these brilliant splashes in color. There were a lot of birds, seals, and whales.

I tried to not have really concrete expectations, although I did a lot of research. There were things that surprised me, but they weren’t that dramatic. I was mostly surprised about how bad things smelled than what they sounded like. [laughs] I was surprised that I did not hear an interesting sound from glaciers calving [when recorded] underwater. It’s a sound that you hear in the air, maybe it just clunks a bunch when it hits the water. The brash ice was always different [sounding]; I was amazed by the spectrum of sounds they would create. Some icebergs have a lot of air in the ice, so it sounded like amplified Rice Krispies even to the open ear. You’d be a hundred feet away and hear snapping and crackling. In some icebergs you wouldn’t hear that at all; you’d get up close and you’d just hear the water sloshing into cavities and things.

ST: Did you require special permission to bring back Antarctic artifacts for use in the construction of instruments?

CL: Yes, absolutely. You need two permits, actually: you need one permit for removing things from Antarctica, and you also need a permit to bring things into the United States. The continent of Antarctica is protected through the Antarctic Treaty. I had a long conversation with the head of permits at the National Science Foundation about this; it’s interesting what you do, and don’t, need a permit for. I don’t think tourists should be allowed to take home rocks and stuff, but technically you don’t need a permit to bring back rocks from Antarctica. You do need a permit for animal parts of any kind. You don’t need a permit for fossils, shockingly. You do need a permit for meteorites. You can’t take any land based plants.

[My permits] listed all the objects that I was going to bring back: Rocks, limpet shells, and penguin bones. You have to apply for the permits four or six months before you go there. I did some research to figure out what I would maybe want to bring back before I went there…there are not that many materials there to bring back, really, if you think about it. [laughs]

ST: In such a cold and remote environment, what equipment did you use to record with in the field? Did you have any weather-related issues or problems?

CL: I used the Sound Devices 702 field recorder, and I had a MS setup which was the Sennheiser MKH 40 and 30, which I had in a Sennheiser windshield and dead cat…which pretty much depleted my life’s savings. [laughs] I also used hydrophones from Aquarian Audio. [Leonard also uses these hydrophones as contact microphones to amplify her hand-made instruments. -Ed.] I also had some other microphones and backup field recorders, but I mostly didn’t use them. I had a parabolic dish and it was pretty cool, but [it] just wasn’t that interesting to me. If it had been in stereo, I would have liked it more. So I didn’t wind up using it that much.

I also had a little Edirol R-09HR as a pocket recorder. When I went down inside a crevasse, I’d use that, because the first time I went down I took the Sennheisers and they kind of got wet, and I was a little freaked out about that, so I was like, “Screw it, I’m taking the Edirol and keeping it inside my GoreTex jacket.”

I didn’t have any problems from the wet and cold. We did have precipitation, but it wasn’t that steady, or it was raining and the winds were blowing at forty knots, you really weren’t going to be making a recording anyway. Once I got used to the idea that I could carry five thousand dollars of equipment in a boat every day, jumping in and out to land on islands – I was like, “Don’t fall into the ocean, the salt water will destroy everything!” – aside from that, wind was really the problem.

I had to learn some techniques the hard way to deal with the wind. Learning to use the topography, you could duck down behind rocks to block the wind but not block what you were recording. Learning to understand what was happening with the weather was a really big thing. You could be like, “OK, so the barometric pressure is changing, so if I leave in the boat now, maybe the wind will drop in an hour.” Even if you duck out of the wind, though, there’s still a lot of background noise, because we’d be on boats and on small islands. It’s really hard to get away from that. In a month there were only a few days where the waves and wind were calm.

ST: Your Antarctic journey seems to have brought you closer to exotic animals than many of your previous excursions, from elephant seals to many kinds of penguins. What lessons did you take away from these wildlife encounters?

Leonard plays penguin bones, amplified with a hydrophone, with a feather.

CL: Stay away from birds’ nests! The penguins don’t really care; they’re not used to having predators on land, so they’re just kind of curious about you. They’ll squawk at you, but they’re not really going attack you. But the other birds…

The skuas could be very territorial. If you were even vaguely close to their nests, they would divebomb at your head. It was really scary. They’d make this call, and you’d be like, “Oh, crap.” The station manager had been hit a few times and almost knocked over. It is really terrifying. It made me really think about how birds and dinosaurs are supposedly related. [laughs] There are parts of islands that are blocked off during the breeding season, so at first you’re like, “That’s to protect the birds.” But it’s also to protect you. If you go there, they will attack you.

The elephant seals were pretty docile, which is not true of the northern elephant seals. if you’re up here in Northern California, you should not approach an elephant seal. If you’re in Antarctica, they don’t really care. But the leopard seals were kind of scary; beautiful, beautiful animals, but so big! They’d be as long as the Zodiac, and they’re the top predator in the ecosystem there. We saw leopard seals almost every day, which is really great until the seal would slide off their ice platforms and get into the water and start coming for your boat. Anytime you’re that close to an animal that strong and powerful, you have to be really humble. They didn’t make any sounds when they’re on land. Doug Quinn has some underwater recordings of them, though.

ST: Are you planning to integrate your field recordings into live performances?

CL: I’m working on a series of compositions that use the instruments made form Antarctic objects together with field recordings from Antarctica. I am planning to release those in less than a year from now. I have one piece that uses recordings of sleeping elephant seals with kelp flutes. I think of it as a lullaby; I call it for “Lullaby for E. Seals.” I have other pieces that use penguin sounds, sounds from underwater ice… I’ve been fabricating icicles that I have have onstage that can drip, that can simulate what it’s like to be in a crevasse in antarctica. There was a recording I made in a melting glacial face, which didn’t end up being a good recording, but what I heard in the recording was that the ice almost sounded like a gamelan. There are these repeating cycles and a little bit of rhythmic variation. The recording was useful for inspiration for a piece. Sometimes it’s nice to know that even your failed field recordings a can be useful in some other way.

ST: You’ve journeyed into your own local environment, and one of the very ends of the planet. What will you be exploring next?

CL: Well, if you’ve really gone really far south, where would you go next?

ST: Oh, gee, I don’t know, maybe really far north?

CL: [laughs] My next really big project is a collaboration with the visual artist that I was in Antarctica with, Oona Stern. We were doing separate projects, but we shared a boat, and we were roommates, and we got along really well. Later on we decided that we should do a collaboration sometime. So we have conspired to go to the Arctic together and do some collaborative works mixing visuals and sound in site-specific installations. Our idea is to do daily projects outside to emphasize some essence of each location. We’re going to be going on the Arctic Circle, a residency expedition for artists on a schooner around the island of Spitsbergen, which is north of of Norway, where you make daily landings on the island. [Oona] was like, “Wow, we’ll be bi-polar!” [laughs]

Wer’re happy to announce Sonic Terrain’s first exclusive interview, even more so because it’s our friend and hero Frank Bry, a sound designer from Idaho who put soul and heart into a project called The Recordist, where he releases all kinds of sound effects and recordings.

He’s recorded almost everything from concrete drops to insects flying, and today he is releasing a new library called Ultimate Snow,  300 different sounds recorded in all kind of snowy environments. Here is an interview we had with Frank, talking about he different things he had to deal with to get those fantastic recordings in the snow. Enjoy!

Sonic Terrain: We know that this library contains sounds recorded on different sessions over several years. What has been the planning of those sessions and how did you prepare your stuff for this (gear, packaging, clothes, props)?

Frank Bry: I really did not do much planning except for making sure the time of day worked for me. Morning and mid-afternoon were the best for recording to eliminate most background noise. Not sure why, maybe it’s because of the way people move about during their day. A lot less traffic on my street at these times even during the other seasons.

Sometimes I would wrap the gear in towels when recording wet snow to help keep them dry. Using any kind of plastic bag, or something like it, can get hit by snow debris and there goes your take.

My main props were my John Deere tractor, an aluminum shovel, and my body.

ST: What techniques did you use to keep the additional clothing you were wearing from interfering with your recordings?

FB: I did have this issue once or twice. I used the problem to record some foley but after that I actually took the heavy winter stuff off for ten minutes or so. Not fun, but it worked. I also realized that cloth clothing like Carhartt canvas jackets and insulated pants make much less noise. The gloves were the tricky part especially when handling the snow chunks. I tend to use insulated leather work gloves for this. I carry many pairs of gloves with me so if they get wet I can do a quick change. I did not wear any “snow skiing” style plastic clothing and that helped a great deal.

ST: Snow can be pretty subtle, while being full of character based on temperature, water content, and so forth. What strategies or locations were used to keep the background noise low enough to bring out that character?

FB: Quite a few times I was isolated by huge piles of snow and it really helped keep background noise to a minimum. I also tried to get as close to the snow performance as I could depending on the location. At times I could not get the microphone close to the roof snow slide but the recording was good, just another perspective to have on hand for my work.

ST: What were the coldest temperatures you had to deal with?

FB: Around five degrees Fahrenheit. The good thing is that North Idaho has a very dry cold. I did not have to worry about condensation freezing on the gear.

ST: There are impacts, foley, footsteps, slides, and lots of different performances and ways to get sounds from snow. Could you give us some ideas for recording and playing with snow to get different kinds of sounds?

FB: I have a deck that wraps around half my house and on one side the snow falls off the roof and ends up on this deck in large amounts. It’s above a daylight basement so there is ten foot drop of the porch. Over the course of the winter I have to shovel the snow off and it piles up down below the deck. Some of the best snow impacts I recorded were from this snow hitting a dense pile of snow pack.

ST: Has your sound designer position affected your approach on these recordings?

FB: Yes, it sure has. About ten years ago as I was working on the video game Dungeon Siege, I had a moment. I really began to understand that a sound effect is not just a sound, it’s a performance. Character, vibe, personality, emotion, etc. are the most important aspects of a sound to me. How does it make me feel? Does it make the fantasy monster or character feel real? Dungeon Siege has two areas of the game called Glacern and Alpine Caverns. They each had these big hairy snow creatures that you had to slay to get through. The animators had created these great actions that required lots of snow or ice. I had some recordings from the mid-nineties that I had recorded, and they worked good but they were not recorded with performance in mind. I was able to electronically foley them in, but I wish I had snow that had more of a vibe to match the actions. Ever since then, when I go out to record I try to visualize some of those thousands of individual animations I have worked on over the years and do my best to “perform” the sound effect.

ST: Did the environment drop any technical or sonic surprises in your lap, whether that’s temperature, humidity, or actual snow falling as recorded?

FB: North Idaho has a very dry cold, so I did not have to worry about humidity much. I did notice how much bigger snow chunks sound depending on the weather conditions. Wet snow is great except it tends to fall apart easily so it’s good to get it later in the day when it starts to freeze back solid. Dry snow is great also because it has a light but solid tone to it that sounds great when pitched down for an avalanche sound.

ST: Did you find yourself dealing with more background noise than usual in the extreme cold, like highway drones and so forth?

FB: Sometimes I heard lots of background noise and sometimes not. I have no specific reason for this, but I can tell you that right after a large snow storm the trees get completely covered and a stillness and quiet descend on the land. The trees muffle the ambient sound like a treated recording studio. It’s pretty amazing. It can be very quiet and soft, no echoes at all. Then the wind usually kicks up and blows it all off the trees, and we are back to normal. I do not live in a heavily populated area, but across the river, about one mile as the crow flies, there is a state highway that sometimes bleeds in. Best time to record is first thing in the morning when there is much less activity in the area.

ST: And…any of those “happy” accidents?

FB: Yeah, I slipped and fell quite a bit and somehow it always ended up in the take. Just my luck! Falling on your behind hurts, but it sounds fantastic. Makes for good monster footsteps in the snow.

ST: What gear did you use for these recordings? Also, what specific microphones or techniques have you found to be great for specific tasks and why?

I used: Sound Devices 702, Fostex FR-2, Sanken CSS-5, Audio Technica AT-835ST and my trusty little Sony PCM-D1.

I liked the Fostex FR-2 and Audio Technica AT-835ST combination because I could hit the pre-amps hard and the 835-ST has a great airy upper mid-range quality that I like for some of the dry snow slides in the library.

I used the Sound Devices 702 and Sanken CSS-5 set-up for the wet, meaty sounds. To me, this combination has a warm and fat sound that worked out great on the big impacts. In the library there are some huge snow impacts that I used this set up for. I recorded my foot stomping on snow that had accumilated up on top of a wood slash pile. There were air pockets under the snow and I put the Sanken right next to my foot and stomped away. At first I did not know about the air pockets so I fell through and got my leg stuck in the wood pile. I remember I was not wearing headphones and when I got back to the studio I was surprised at how they came out. Sometimes I just wing-it!

I used the PCM-D1 for a lot of the scraping, dragging, and freezing sounds. It’s really bright, and I can hold it or strap it on the snow chunk depending on the sound I’m after. The freezing sounds came out very cool. After the sun has been out a while, the snow indents on the snowbanks melt a little and as it gets cooler later in the day these tiny icicles form and over night they get really frozen. Early in the morning I would go out and gently scrape these icicles with my hand, sometimes bare, and they would make great simulated freezing sounds. I used these a lot in the video game Demigod for the freezing spells and impacts.

ST: You talked on Twitter about the different software applications used for this library. The list includes Peak and Pro Tools. Could you tell us more about the specific things you did using these applications at the mastering stage? Why to use two different audio editing applications?

FB: I use Pro Tools HD as my main editing and mastering tool. I do most of the editing in Pro Tools, but sometimes I use Peak Pro to pre-edit the sounds. Since I work alone most of the time, I can have up to three minutes of nothing in my takes because I’m away from the recorder waiting for a car to go by or by some other annoying thing like a squirrel! It’s just wasted hard drive space so I go through the raw file and take out all the empty space. I also use it to remove the ocassional click from a file. I find that in Peak it’s easier and better for that kind of stuff. I also check my bounces from Pro Tools to make sure all is good. I have found that some plug-ins can put strange stuff in your file at the top and and tail so I double check the files before scanning them into Soundminer. I also own 2 authorizations and I have one on my MacBook Pro so when the big HD rig is shut down I can still do some rough edits without powering up the HD rig and the whole studio. I like to keep it spontaneous and work at odd hours when I should be doing something else. A two-track editor can come in very handy sometimes.

ST: Finally, let’s talk about the most monotonous process of metadata tagging. Are there any tips or tricks that you’ve learned from releasing many collections that can speed up the addition of metadata?

FB: Not really. It’s not a speedy process and my least favorite thing to do. The only thing I can tell you is Soundminer is the absolute best, in my opinion, for this task. I can manually enter the info or use Excel to get all the info in and then import them embbed into the file. Soundminer also has a great feature where you can tag fields with preset info, select the files, double click on the field you want to add info to, and BOOM, all done for all the files. Saves a lot of typing, or copy and paste actions.

I use lots of key words, and I notice that most libraries don’t. You might not have a word in the decription field like “winter,” but if it’s in the keyword field, someone can search for “wintery snow blast” and get snow returns. I would like to know how other people feel about keywords in the files. It can take a lot of work to get them in, but with Soundminer and the preset field entry, it’s pretty painless.

The Recordist | Ultimate Snow