This series of videos presents a beginner's guide to field recording, particularly looking at the technical aspects.
The videos are listed below. If you wish, you can also find them on
the Vimeo channelTechnical Field Recording
The Vimeo channel where the Technical Field Recording videos live. (Vimeo)
https://vimeo.com/channels/1540173.
To kick the series off, this episode is going to be a very basic, quick-start beginners guide to field recording; just going over all the basic concepts very lightly. Future episodes will go into specific topics in more detail.
23 March 2020
In this series of videos, I’m going to try to give you a nuts-and-bolts introduction to field recording. I’m going to start here with an introduction to the concepts of field recording, and the motivation for this course.
23 March 2020
Modern audio recording is all about computer-based technologies; which might a problem for people coming from a creative background. So in this section I’m going to give you a quick overview of these kinds of technologies, specifically the kinds of computer tech that are intruding more and more into field recording.
The WAV file dumping utility referred to in the video can be
seen on the Wavdump page.
BWF MetaEdit can be downloaded from
the MediaArea siteBWF MetaEdit
The home page of BWF MetaEdit, a tool for displaying and editing BWF meta-data in WAV files. (MediaArea)
https://mediaarea.net/BWFMetaEdit.
23 March 2020
Of course the microphone is the business end of your system, so it’s worth understanding how they work. But with audio recording covering an amazing array of different activities, mics have evolved to be pretty diverse. Let’s try and break it down.
30 March 2020
Update 20 July 2020: added a section on miniature mics.
To get going in field recording, you’re going to need some gear. This doesn’t need to be insanely expensive; the difference in quality between mid-price and top-of-the-line gear is steadily shrinking as technology improvements spread downwards.
The choice of equipment out there is bewildering, but this episode will at least get you off the ground by showing you the types of kit you might consider for field recording.
6 April 2020
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if you’re setting up a field recording kit, there’s one thing you really need to be aware of, and that’s the different technologies used to connect mics to recorders.
The “consumer” and “pro” systems commonly used unfortunately aren't compatible; and the choice between them isn't straightforward. This episode tries to explain the issues.
13 April 2020
So I’ve talked a lot about equipment, technology, and all that stuff. Here I'm going to talk about how to actually get out and get Field Recording, with some general tips on preparation and technique.
This video gives a quick introduction to level setting; but this is a tricky subject, so I've written an additional page on setting levels.
20 April 2020
Stereo field recordings will generally sound more interesting, and immersive, than mono. This episode describes how stereo works, and presents a variety of techniques for capturing stereo, along with numerous examples.
29 August 2020
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Mid-side recording is a great way to capture stereo sound, with many advantages; but the fact that it needs some post-processing to actually get it to stereo can be a bit off-putting.
This episode talks about what mid-side is all about, and discusses the equipment you need, the field technique, and that pesky post-processing — which turns out to be not so hard after all.
5 September 2020
Once you’ve made a recording, and got it on to your PC, you can do some post-production to make it sound better. This isn’t essential, but even for very simple recordings, a little editing can make it work a lot better. So in this episode, I’m going to give you an intro to some basic things you can do, quite easily, to make your recordings more listenable.
4 May 2020
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Media obsolescence is a problem we’ve probably all heard about from time to time, often with scare stories about how all the media we’re creating today are going to become unusable.
The good news is that as far as the future is concerned, the problem of data obsolescence is now largely solved — maybe not completely, but the tools are there, and if we know how to use them, we really don’t need to be worried about this.
27 April 2020
The wind is a fascinating subject for a field recordist; but it can be tricky to record well in practice. Capturing the sound of the wind, without it battering your mic and ruining your recording, can be a difficult balancing act.
In this episode, I discuss some techniques that you might use to capture this difficult but rewarding subject.
11 March 2021
It's difficult to make a recording of wildlife sounds without your presence affecting the result. One potential solution to this is Drop and Recover recording, where we leave a recorder and mics set up and running, while we leave the scene.
There are risks in doing this, and it can be frustrating, as you never know what you might capture — which is quite often nothing but cars and planes. But at its best Drop and Recover can open up a whole new window on the world, by revealing the sounds of all the life that goes on while we're not there.
4 April 2021
More Reading:
Hydrophones and contact mics can offer a completely different way to listen to the world, by capturing sounds that your ears can't hear. Finding good subjects to record needs some perseverance, and this is an area where experimentation is really essential; but this can really pay off with recordings that are completely different to what you would usually capture.
In this episode, I talk about how to set up and use these mics, and also offer some demos of different techniques for connecting them, and for attaching them to your subject.
11 June 2021
