Since the 13th January I have been doing a short course at Goldsmiths lead by Marcus Leadley, not actually at Goldsmiths because as with almost everyone else in the world I have been restricted in movement in the hope we will one day get “back to normal”. Anyway this post isn’t about that.

Last year I successfully applied for Arts Council National Lottery funding to develop my creative practice. One of the things I wanted to do was develop a more academic approach to the sound recording I have been doing for a while (since 2014) under the moniker of Landsounds . I had found out about the Field Recording: Soundscape Composition course and on successfully securing funding I booked to start in January.

The course took us through so many elements of sound recording I won’t list it all but I wanted to touch on some of the sections which have been most influential so far. I say so far as I am still digesting much of it and I am sure it will all eventually permeate my practice.

Contact Mics

I have made 4 now and love how simple they are. The sound below is recorded using two of them.

Binaural Mics

Listening through binaural mics has opened up a whole new experience for me. When I began sound recording the first thing that amazed me was the altered perspective of the sound, binaural mics appear to bring another dimension to that sense of perspective. I have been using a matched pair of mics from FEL Communications Ltd, they are small and sound amazing and were recommended by a fellow student on the course.

Reaper

Until starting the course I had been using Audacity to complete my sound recordings. I had tried using Garage Band, Logic and more recently Qbase as these have been free with hardware but I never really clicked with them. Reaper seems more intuitive for me and I have picked up the basics very quickly.

The following composition was made using many of the things I learnt on the course