This commission by the Esperance Community Arts Centre is for a series of workshops to introduce people to the skills and techniques of outdoor sound recording. Perdy visited Esperance from 10-20 July to run the first set of workshops. There was also an artist talk 3pm Saturday 11 July. The next visit is 17-22 September to assemble and install the final soundscapes.
Highlighting the important relationships between local plant and bird species through listening and sound, recordings will be undertaken in the Esperance area and be displayed for audiences at a local hall. Participants are working towards producing short ‘sound stories’ for the Esperance Wildflower Festival in September 2020.
Links for participants
Websites
Online collections of nature sounds
https://www.xeno-canto.org — FREE!
https://freesound.org/ Freesound — also free after you sign up
Tutorials
general field skills e.g. https://moonblink.info/FieldRecording
Video: Field Recording Introduction With Ian Wellman – Zoom H5 Setup And Other Microphones Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjoK3rwsbos
Video: Martyn Stewart’s Recording nature sounds (northern hemisphere) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aok9C-iTZHs
audacity
Audacity: Complete Tutorial Guide to Audacity for Beginners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCisC3sHneM
Audacity Editing for Beginners: 16 Tips in 9 Minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkpzHJGE4Dk
Organising sound files
Once you start to accumulate many sound files, how do you organise them? There are different sound software you can use and every sound recordist will have a slightly different approach. But after getting back from the field, most have:
- an archive of unaltered files
- a backup system; and
- a step where they check a recording, making notes and marking good/bad/interesting bits in a recording
Here is one example: https://thesounddesignprocess.com/2020/04/04/a-method-for-organizing-field-recordings-part-1/
Examples of soundscapes
Bernie Krause’s This Is What Extinction Sounds Like Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnpsMG0PWRY
Article Everything Is Wrong: Bernie Krauseʼs Concept of ‘Biophony’ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/everything-is-wrong-bernie-krauses-concept-of-biophony/Interview with Chris Watson about his thoughts behind soundscape recording: https://soundcloud.com/jm_docs/chrisw
Why bioacoustics (listening to nature) is important for science https://e360.yale.edu/features/listening-to-nature-the-emerging-field-of-bioacoustics
Kim V. Goldsmith’s amazing Pulse of the wetland project (currently underway) https://ecopulse.art.blog/projects/pulse-of-the-wetland/
Australian artist Garth Paine talks about using sound to monitor ecosystem health https://theconversation.com/listening-to-nature-how-sound-can-help-us-understand-environmental-change-105794
Perdy’s soundscape of Derbarl Yerrigan (Fremantle Harbour/Swan River)
Please listen to A forecast of storm (Derbarl Yerrigan) with headphones.
The Australian Acoustic Observatory https://acousticobservatory.org/ has a field site at Monjebup Reserve https://acousticobservatory.org/sites/
Groups
Australian wildlife sound recording group https://awsrg.org.au
Australian forum for acoustic ecology https://www.acousticecology.com.au https://www.acousticecology.com.au/resources.html
Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macaulay Library https://www.macaulaylibrary.org/resources/
WSRS (UK) https://www.wildlife-sound.org
Sound recording forums and lists and Facebook pages
https://groups.io/g/Naturerecordists
https://www.facebook.com/groups/naturesoundrecording/
Books
“Capturing Wildlife Sounds: A Useful Guide.” written by Roger Boughton* (Lancashire, UK) and Steven Shepard (Vermont, USA). Read about it here: http://awsrg.org.au/capturing-wildlife-sounds-a-useful-guide/ and purchase it here https://www.amazon.com/Capturing-Wildlife-Sounds-Useful-Guide/dp/0989249271/
*I went to a workshop with Roger Boughton who was very knowledgeable and great to learn from