Learning to listen for nature field recording

This is an edited repost from the original publication at earth.fm. I don’t see much of this specific content around so I thought about sharing it for those thinking about taking a new direction with their field recording journey or just open their ears to something else.

My own relationship to listening has been developing over the years since I started to record. At the very beginning, I was fascinated by a full soundscape of birdsong or cowbells in a flat landscape; I was mostly perceiving soundscapes’ melodic aspects.

For another couple of years, I kept recording but didn’t really know what to listen for; that question wasn’t even present in my mind. My approach, then, was mainly technical: choosing a ‘good’ position for the microphone setup so I could capture ‘the landscape’. Something about the entirety of a soundscape – like a panoramic picture – plus the excitement of being outdoors, made me feel that I was discovering something (but I wasn’t: everything was already there).

Movement

In 2015–16, I was the audio engineer for a documentary shoot in a private nature reserve in Sweden. Back then, I don’t think I even knew what a dawn chorus was, so I set out to listen and record anything interesting I could find, avoiding any anthropophony. 

To my innocent ears, nothing special was happening – until, one afternoon, I finally listened to the wind travelling from one tall pine to another on the opposite side of the site. I heard the wind in the first tree, shaking its branches and leaves, before, shortly after, it whirled up the second pine. I can only describe it as sounding like little papers being shaken and making different tonalities and sonic colours. So, what was this all about? Movement, sound moving! It created a very strong sensation of space. 

At this time, I was working actively as a sound designer and the expansiveness of the environment I found myself in was a very attractive accompaniment for footage of a natural outdoor setting. I would also be working on the post-production of this documentary, so my mind was set on the editing and sound design. Some of the principles I was going by as a sound designer influenced deeply my wishes of how I wanted my field recordings to sound like. The main principles of these are balance, movement and space.

From a distance, I could also hear a number of mallards around one of the lakes on the reserve.

The geographic spaciousness that was revealed through these sounds was amazing to my ears. The mallards were loud enough that the vast surface of the lake, with its surrounding forest, was shown by a long reverb, with a harsh timbre just like the mallard call.

Öster Malma, Sweden

Distinction

Fast forward to a project in the Atlantic Forest (Brazil, 2016) that I considered to be my first ‘big’ field recording trip, where I was immediately disheartened when I set out the gear… I had a vivid memory (maybe fabricated – who knows) of a shimmering reverberating sound of tropical birds, like a fairytale. I’m sure you know what I mean.

But in reality, many parts of the Atlantic Forest sounded flat. Flat.

The wall of vegetation was acting as a huge sound absorber. I got my kit (and made the wrong decision), one day before I travelled from Sweden and no chance of of getting an alternative there.

First I blamed myself, of course. I felt so ashamed of my rushed and poor choice of mic setup. I needed an A/B with enough width, I thought; Nowadays I’d say I’d also need another kind of microphone that would offer more depth.

At some point though, I set by a lake with an open space, grass and trees surrounding. And the sound was already quite different: it was much more spacious and coming close to my own fantasy.

So, I started to look for uneven spaces, bodies of water or big rocks (scarce in the Atlantic Forest). And, one day: on top of a hill, there was a big rock, overlooking the chilling sight of the nearby city eating up the forest, which made the birds’ chirps a little more special. Finally, they were much closer to the sounds I had been imagining in my mind’s ear.

Pedra Grande, São Paulo, 2016

My expectations created by media (thanks…) led to a huge disappointment. But at least in the end I came to establish one aspect of natural soundscapes that strongly attracted me – the distinct reverberation of the acoustic space.

If the recordings don’t live up to your expectations, does it render them worthless?

For some time I thought so, but now I disagree. Even if most of it sounded like a blanket of foliage, a recording will always include elements which make it worthwhile and pleasant to listen to.

The following recording is one of my favorite examples. Definition and spaciousness are not the best terms to describe it, but the beautiful call of the solitary tinamou (a species of ground bird) makes it all worth it, doesn’t it? Also consider the fine texture of leaves and twigs, the slow rise and fall of the cicadas, and occasional other bird calls. 

The wall of sound I encountered in the Atlantic Forest was a non-issue in Wolf Soundscapes. The sanctuary in Mafra, Portugal, where I recorded this album was made up of hills with tree corridors, forest, and rocky open spaces. And I can’t overemphasize the stars of the show: Iberian wolves howling together. They would sound fantastic in any space, but the way their calls traveled through this particular geography enhanced the listening experience. 

However, this seemingly beautiful scenario surely offered its difficulties as I tried to make recordings and get the best out of this marvel. The wind simply changing direction could bring new issues, or relief; even from some kilometres’ distance, surrounding villages and roads could pollute my idea of a perfect recording. 

One thing I ‘discovered’, though, was how strange it sounds to listen to two different tonalities coming from what each microphone was capturing. I’ll explain:

I was using the ORTF stereo recording technique (my favourite). In this technique, the two microphones are positioned non-coincidentally, though not too wide apart – making the differences between the left and right channels’ background sounds obvious. Imagine that far off on your right side is a loud stream, and on your left, a waterfall. Even though both are more or less a mash-up of frequencies, similar to white noise, they are still distinguishable from one another. But, even though my goal was to record the animals within the 44 acres (18 hectares) of the sanctuary, my brain was extremely confused by this. Was this because of my background as a sound designer, perfectionism, or the way I perceive and process sounds?

This led me to tweak, turn, and adjust the height of the microphone stand, and try all possible angles for the array – adjusting it for the different heights of the valley, as well as searching the landscape for walls, trees, stones, or openings that could either block the undesirable sounds… or make the gear more susceptible to them. Was this a magic bullet? Absolutely not – this problem was mainly beyond my control! But it helped a bit. When necessary, more mitigation could be done in post-production. And yes, that meant long (long!) periods listening to kkksssshhhhhh sounds and playing with equalization until the recording sounded less confusing, but without spoiling the tonality of the main sound source. 

So even though I had it logistically very easy – staying in a house in the sanctuary, where I could check my recordings every day in comfort – I learned so much from this project; it remains the most difficult one that I’ve worked on, in terms of the specifics of attaining what I consider to be high quality recordings. I’m also aware that, if this project had happened years earlier, I wouldn’t have noticed this issue; I guess the more you practice, the more you question. 

If I just place high quality gear in a natural space, won’t I automatically get a good recording?

If you have good conditions, then, yes, probably. Maybe, if your gear is set up well in an ideal location, all you need to do is press ‘REC’. However, even if you’re that lucky, I believe that there is a difference between that and an approach that is specific to you. 

There are nearly a dozen sound artist field recordists whose work I can listen to with my eyes closed and recognize, as with any other form of art, on the basis of a distinctive aesthetic approach. By tuning in to what you most appreciate in a soundscape and letting that guide you in your practice, in time you may be able to develop your own signature.