Field Recording / Phonography

Field recording as a musical practice treats microphones, locations, and durations as compositional tools. Some pieces present recordings nearly unedited (a forest at dawn for thirty minutes); others process and recompose source material into pieces that no longer sound 'natural'. Stereo and ambisonic techniques matter: high-quality field recordings carry strong directional information that headphone listening reveals. The form sits adjacent to acoustic ecology (R. Murray Schafer's World Soundscape Project), sound art, and acousmatic composition.

The lineage runs from early naturalist recordings (Ludwig Koch in early-20th-century Germany and Britain) through Pierre Schaeffer's 1948 musique concrete experiments to the dedicated soundscape work of Schafer's group in 1970s Canada. Modern key figures include Chris Watson (UK, former member of Cabaret Voltaire turned BBC nature recordist), Francisco Lopez (Spain), Jana Winderen (Norway, underwater recordings), and Eric La Casa (France). UK label Touch and the smaller and/oar and Gruenrekorder have been central to the modern catalogue.

Listen to where the microphone is. A close-miked insect at 30cm sounds nothing like a forest captured by a stereo pair five metres up; the position is the most decisive compositional choice in many pieces. With Lopez's work, look at the album notes: sometimes very dense-sounding 'environments' are revealed to be heavily processed or to have been recorded inside specific industrial spaces.

Chris Watson, 'Weather Report' (2003) for a composed three-environment piece. Francisco Lopez, 'La Selva' (1998) for tropical-rainforest density. For an introduction to underwater work, Jana Winderen, 'The Noisiest Guys on the Planet' (2009).

Chris Watson's day job for two decades has been recording wildlife for BBC nature documentaries (the Attenborough series among others), so a substantial amount of nature audio the global public has heard was captured by an ex-industrial-band member who came to the work via Cabaret Voltaire.