Am I recording? Am I recording? or in this episode – ramblings on sand about sound.

Here are my musings about sound, spoilt sound files, wind blow and how as an Audio Artist I never delete sound files. You never know when they will come in useful 😉

As an Audio Artist I have a lot, and I mean a lot, of recordings which sit on my hard drive and gather dust for months, sometimes years. It’s the equivalent of all those piles of old receipts and papers you hang onto just in case…

I was wandering through the vault and found a couple of recordings made on Marsden beach before the world went all pandemic. The dates of the files are 11th March 2020 and as I recall were done in all innocence of what was to befall us a week later, in more ways than one.

I decided to create a Sound Rambling episode about wind blow and sonically damaged sound files as it seemed to fit. Please excuse the technical problems as even after all this time I am still learning. Much of my field recordings are recorded using my phone with no windsock, so loud rumblings and noise is common, although for me this can be a bonus. Also, I realised like many, that when you muse off the top of your head there are lots of imperfections , such as ummmm’s and ahhh’s , inflections and mind blocks. I’ve tried to edit the worst out but a thought came to mind – Am I editing out the human?

Either way, I have listened to this many times and it leaves me with a sort of sadness. I haven’t been back since then for lockdown reasons but also for a strange fear it will not be the same as before.

Hopefully, we will venture down onto the beach again soon and I will be able to record wind blow and seabirds, rambling on sand about sound and muse into my trusty phone recorder. I’ll post the results here one day when I discover the sound file buried in a pile of others on my hard drive.

 

If you would like to find out more about my Sound Ramblings project, a personal and idiosyncratic exploration of my sound world, then I have set up a Sound Ramblings page which gives a background to this project and you can hear my first Sound Rambles too.

v1.2 is already in production : )