Field Recordings

In a previous article I wrote quite disdainfully of field recordings. I said that I wasn't sure if recording a found musical experience was as good as the real thing. Without going into too much detail I stand by that thought. Like photography, a field recording is something entirely different to actually visiting a place. However, this does not mean that the photographs are of lesser value. I still hold that found musical experiences are best experienced individually by your own ears (and I shall continue to write my 'sounds heard' pieces to record these), but field recordings can be fascinating documents in themselves. Probably because they mediate the experience and frame it in a certain way.

Recently I got a new mobile phone which has a 'voice recorder' function. It's very lo-fi. Some of the downloadable files here are from my mobile, recording on the fly when I'm out and about. The quality of the recording adds a crunchy, ill defined feel, like degraded film or an old 78. Other recordings (the bigger files) are more deliberate recordings, made from my studio window.