Recording nature sounds

Yesterday I had the great experience of attending a workshop in the afternoon, and then a performance in the evening both delivered by Chris Watson from the UK.

Chris is a very experienced and successful nature sound recordist. He has worked in many media - radio, television, film, games - as well as 'diffusing' his recordings live and releasing collages of them on cd. He worked with David Attenborough on 'The Life of Birds' (for which he won a Bafta for best factual sound) and 'The Life of Mammals' and continues to be highly sought after in his field.

There were about 40 people at the workshop (mostly university students I think) and then about 80 people at the live performance which was held at the Adam Art Gallery located on the Victoria University campus.

During the workshop Chris described his working method and equipment. He then went on to explain the various sound components a typical environmental/nature recording is comprised of and how he goes about capturing the different elements. He had many examples of his recordings to share with us – some were truly astonishing, some were quite humorous and some were just plain weird. He shared some beautiful atmos recordings of various jungles and forests, some raw unedited audio of David Attenborough narrating in the field, a recording he made of a thunderstorm where he was almost struck by lightning, and innumerous recordings of creatures of all kinds including a recording made in Kenya of vultures devouring a zebra carcass - with the microphones securely cable-tied to the ribs inside the zebra... He also described his interest in multi-channel recording and using alternative transducers such as hydrophones and geophones - again with examples.

The live performance was also very interesting and quite inspirational. It lasted about 30 minutes where he took the audience on a sonic journey beginning in the sea off the west coast of Iceland, towards land, along the Snaesfellsnes peninsular, and up a particular mountain to "the edge of the very crater described by Jules Verne in Journey to the Centre of the Earth". Up until this point the journey had been entirely created from factual sound recordings - no fabricated sounds - but we then descended into the crater and took an imaginary journey to the very centre of the earth. The whole thing was presented in surround, in near darkness and it was very loud - a totally immersive experience. Wonderful!

I should also add that the performance was supported by a 20-strong group who also presented an audio-visual collaborative piece entitled 'Red Rocks Sound Map'. It ran for perhaps an hour and consisted of a each performer presenting "an idea that translated the sounds and sights of Red Rocks from the wild into the gallery." Everyone was performing at the same time in various parts of the gallery. It was a bit of a cacophony in some ways, but I enjoyed the way I could wander around and find a spot that had a nice 'mix' of elements and acoustics. I particularly enjoyed some of the video work that was presented.