Sonic Fields & Nature Sounds Society Japan (NSSJP) – Collaboration Project

 

Introduction & Mission Statement

The Collaboration Project between Sonic Fields and Nature Sounds Society Japan (NSSJP) was formed by fellow recordists having a common interest in promoting the art of field recording in an educational but fun sort of way. The mission is to produce two interesting but distinctly different textured albums of field recordings, designed to provide a sonic indication of what Field Recording is all about and what can be achieved with a variety of both cheap and expensive equipment.

 

Method

The method adopted is in the form of a friendly challenge, with both parties initially releasing a basic sampler album to which the other party responds with their own developed and where possible enhanced version – a form of ‘beat that!’

 

Background Information

Nature Sounds Society Japan (NSSJP)

SOME OF THE NSSJP MEMBERS

There has been two field recording booms, both inspired in a major way by the innovations of the well-known Japanese Sony Corporation. The first boom, called “Nama-roku” (raw recording/ field recording/ on-site recording) started in Japan during the mid 1970s, spurred on at that time by the introduction of the first portable professional tape recorder developed and manufactured by Sony. The second more recent boom started just after the start of the new millennium, again by Sony, but this time with the introduction of the NetMD Walkman minidisc recorder; however this second boom has been more sustained and universal, as smaller more portable high resolution audio recorders are continually being developed and marketed by various manufacturers, together with a wealth of pc based audio processing software.

As a result of this more recent boom, a need was identified by like-minded field recordists to share audio files, information on recording techniques, equipment reviews and scheduled location recording workshops; as a result the Nature Sound Society Japan (NSSJP) was formed on 01 May 2011.

The NSSJP mission is to enjoy field recording by capturing sounds from the great outdoors; sharing and listening to them and making them available for others to enjoy.

Current membership of NSSJP includes students, hobbyists, musicians, sound artists, DJs and professional sound engineers from around Japan, with all members having equal responsibility. Membership is open to everyone with no recording restrictions applied; the only requirements being that members should make field recording contributions available to the Society, and generally promote the art of field recording.

The Society has three administrators each elected for a one-year term. Currently (Year 2011) they are  Takatomo Miyasaka, Rocky Araki, Yasuhiro Miki

http://naturesoundsjp.org
info@naturesoundsjp.org

 

Sonic Fields

LAWRENCE BARKER

The ‘Sonic Fields’ blog resulted from a need being identified to promote the art of field recording in a more educational manner than that provided by the many dedicated field recording websites, blogs and forums. Although these sites make recordings available to download, they do so without any form of accompanying descriptive content of instructional value to the novice or newcomer interested in taking up the hobby. In the case of online forums, there can be too much information, much of which is opinionated, biased and of dubious quality, unsuitable for educational purposes.

This blog aims to redress the balance by providing descriptive and photographic content illustrating the techniques and equipment used, together with the field recordings captured, to encourage and instruct both the novice recordists and those interested in taking up the hobby.

Authored by myself, Lawrence Barker, this blog commenced with its first publication on 19 April 2010 and currently (November 2011) contains over 59 published posts with a steady month-on-month increase in worldwide visitor numbers and subscribers.

My approach to field recording differs somewhat from other recordists with respect to ambient and natural sound. Whereas many, especially nature recordists avoid all forms of man-made sound and where not possible to avoid, will process any such sound out of the captured audio; I however consider us humans, together with our activities, as part of the same ecosystem as the flora and fauna which inhabits the Earth and as such I will include all these sounds within my recordings. This may be just one of the reasons for the difference in sonic texture between the two albums produced in this project.

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You are welcome to join us on this educational but fun project, as we share with you our thoughts, interpretation, and progress made towards project completion and the final released albums. Hopefully these will encourage more interest in the art of field recording and be useful to aspiring field recordist by providing an insight into the many different types and textures of sound available for recording and demonstrating how wide-ranging a subject it is. 

We start with our initial samplers, composed and arranged with what we considered to be interesting subject matter as follows:

A Journey of Spiritual Enlightenment – Recorded and arranged by SonicFields is composed of field recordings carried out mainly in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. UK over the past 30 years. This sampler represents an audio journey from the despondency of dark, gloomy confinement, through to the freedom and joy of open space.

[This sampler track has now been deleted and replaced by newer releases.] 

I often listen to my earlier recordings made several years previous and despite the limitations of the gear I had and the lumps and bumps of inexperience, they still act as a powerful trigger, transporting me back to the original place. Audio field recordings are more powerful than any image captured on camera and even surpass those caught on video – they are quite magical!

Sound Portrait Sampler Vol​.​1 – Recorded and arranged by NSSJP is their response to my album above. This clearly demonstrates the different textures of sound through their own arrangement of travelling by ear, having been recorded at different locations, different times and with different equipment.

=== The above album is Revised v2 / 2011-10-24 Add 2nd part ===

 

What sound or noise do you love?

Here is a lovely ‘behind the scenes’ production slide show which illustrates some of the recording locations and equipment used by NSSJP

…………….

Initial Bandcamp statistics indicate that listener captivation can be somewhat limited where field recordings are concerned:

Complete Plays 26-28%

Partial Plays 34-36%

Skipped Plays 36-39%

Complete Plays are those listened to for at least 90% of the album,Partial Plays are those listened to from 10% – 90% of the album, whilst Skipped Plays are those listened to for only the first 10% of the album.

There could be several reasons for the high percentage of ‘skipped plays’, apart from the album being a load of rubbish! One of the main reasons perhaps relates to the genre of ‘Field Recordings’. This can mean different things to different people, with a large following preferring music composed from processed field recordings and instrumental mixes. The ‘Field Recording’ tag attracts this following of listeners who quickly realise the audio content is not what was expected and immediately stop the audio-player.

There are other reasons of course and the following sampler release is designed to test the market with shorter more varied audio tracks designed to hold listener attention. The statistical results for this will then be analysed.

[This sampler has since been deleted and replaced by one with a modified format]

Village Storm:

This release is designed to test audience appreciation of a 60 minute single-track single-subject album as opposed to multi-track or single-track multi-subject albums – see poll below.

‘Village Storm’ is a field recording of an actual thunderstorm which passed just to the north of the village of Roydon, Norfolk, UK at 17:36hrs on 15 June 2009. The storm lasted for just over an hour causing widespread damage from lightning and flooding.

This natural recording starts with the first spots of rain as the storm approaches and continues through until it slowly recedes into the distance. The recording includes the sound of rain, thunder, excited nearby children and the faint sound of a whimpering dog, a blackbird in full song; some light traffic may be heard and the distant sound of an emergency reponse vehicle siren as it attends to storm damage.

Original field recording by Lawrence M. Barker [Sonic Fields]

The following updated album ‘Sound Travel’ has now been released by NSSJP, having additional content and revised format as a 5 variable track length album with total time of 42:53min.

Of special mention is Track 3 ‘Higurashi, Summer in Japan’ [Higurashi is a common term for a species of Japanese cicadas] recorded by Takatomo Miyasaka.

 

…..and my final release is a 62:27min album called ‘Images of Sound’ 

 

 

 As with all the above Bandcamp embedded players, the full album details may be viewed by clicking on the player artwork/photo.

 

 

Due to the nature and fluidity of this ongoing project; any of the above albums or individual tracks may be modified or deleted without prior notice.

Please subscribe to this post to receive the latest updates.

 

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