What are Field Recordings?

What are Field Recordings?……….. well it depends upon who you are! 

First of all let’s forget the various interpretations by archeologists, naturalists, surveyors, farmers etc. and just concentrate on the audio recording aspect.

Even limiting ourselves to the subject of audio recording, the term appears to be rather ambiguous, with its interpretation often dependant upon the particular individual’s area of interest. Unfortunately this sometimes leaves both the experienced and the novice sound recordists either confused themselves or at least, misunderstood by others. 

So, being at a loss with my recording gear still packed and  awaiting removal, I decided to use my misspent youth and training in systems analysis approach to management, by using the well-known procedure of drawing a rich picture of the various  processes involved in the production of field recordings. This simple method is often  used to provide a pictorial overview of an otherwise complex system, and illustrates the various processes involved, their relationship and interactions with each other. 

The rich picture can be drawn in one sitting, but usually develops over a period of time as more facts come to light along with a greater in-depth knowledge of the working system.

Here is my updated picture 14 January 2011:-

 

 Although the rich picture should be self-explanatory, there are a few points worth mentioning.

I have illustrated two different audio recordists at the top of the picture under the headings Raw and  Processed. In practice this could be the same person working towards the goal of producing either their own indie (individual) cd or with higher visions of a commercial cd label release. These tend to be composed of highly processed mixes of field recordings and instrumental or synthesized music, which are often confusingly labelled as Field Recordings. To make matters worse this process may also be dependant upon the composer’s adopted musical genre. Whatever the style or genre adopted, the final product may have but only a tenuous link to the actual raw field recording or even the term Field Recording.

So let’s start again with the original raw field recordist.

Following a days work in the field with audio recording equipment, the recordist arrives home with a flash-card or hard disk drive full of recorded audio files and downloads them to the computer. The non-commercial recordist may simply edit and mix-down for saving to the chosen audio format such as mp3, wav, flac etc.  for personal use or subsequent free file-sharing on individual audio blogs, podcasts, SoundCloud, Freesound etc.

The commercially employed raw field recordist may also start as described above,  but will follow the route taken via the Processed Field Recording route, with or without musical input. The required end product will determine the extent of processing or additional musical input required. The final Commercial Label or release may appear in various guises such as radio broadcast, podcast, cd label, or even dubbed as audio onto film and video.

I have also included a non-commercial link back from the Processed Field Recording element to that of Raw Field Recording, this allows for those many aspiring musicians who are content to freely share their processed field recording compositions with others, via similar blogs and websites previously mentioned.  

You may be curious about the inclusion of  Ringtone Production direct from the Raw Field Recordists’ component and wondered why. Ringtone production is a rapidly expanding offshoot from the music industry, being unregulated, it appears to have been taken over by the bedroom entrepreneur. These individuals tend to trawl the web for freely available field recordings suitable for conversion and sale as ringtone downloads, irrespective of  copyright restrictions.  

One thing quite noticeable to me whilst drawing the rich diagram/picture is the  rapid  commercialisation covering most aspects   of field recording since my earlier days as a field recordist, with relatively few areas left untouched. This commercialisation is indicated by ’$’ signs in the picture, indicating some form of financial transaction being involved.

Whilst appearing quite simple, the act of drawing this type of rich picture enables one to focus the mind on what is going on around you. This has enabled me to decide on my future preference for what I would term as ‘Refined Field Recording’.  My description of this being ….the original audio field recording of both natural and manmade sounds around me, edited purely to provide ease of listening by the use of minor editing to fade in/out, cut objectionable operating/handling noise, balance channels and mixdown to popular file formats, with the original unedited multi-channel raw audio files being archived for future reference and availability as ‘Raw Field Recordings’.

In my opinion ‘Raw Fielding Recordings’ are capable of conveying far more information to the listener. They provide a more realistic placement  within the location being recorded, as the listener basically hears the same as that which the recordist hears, such as movement from clothing, loose cables, footsteps, change of microphone grip, comments from passers-by, wind rumble, aircraft, traffic, clonks, clicks etc….The purist recorder would consider this as being unwanted noise, spending many hours and a lot of money on software trying to remove it from the audio recording. I think this is one reason for the romance and renewed interest in tape recordings, with editing being difficult and limited to cut and splice only, resulting in the majority of them remaining as unedited raw recordings.

it may be deduced from above that field recordings are therefore media files containing some element of natural, ambient or manmade sound recorded outdoors, which may or may not be highly processed or mixed with instrumental sound to form a musical composition, or left in its original raw recorded state……..phew……. someone help me out here,  I’m struggling a bit!

As previously mentioned, a rich picture tends to develop and improve over a period of time, along with a  greater understanding and knowledge of the subject. Constructive criticism and suggestions are therefore welcome to enable the picture to be developed and improved for use as a reference source.  The latest update note will be shown immediately above the picture.

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