gregweddig.net

This year was a bountiful one at the San Francisco State University High Sierra Field Camp.  In addition to the wonderful location there were many recordists with diverse interests ready to record or try recording for the first time.  A  documentary film about the Soundtracker, Gordon Hempton, was presented by it’s filmmaker Nick Sherman,  keep your eye out for it on the festival circuit.   The film was an excellent portrait of one of the foremost nature recordists in the world.

Also John Muir Laws was in attendance providing a much welcome background and context about the natural world (which I sorely need).   John is the author of the definitive field guide(s) to the Sierras.  John introduced us to drawing techniques and suggested we look behind the names and explore the systems that work together to create the ecosystems that we live in.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend, many old friends and new were made and remade.  Some other links from the weekend are below.  For now enjoy a clip from Carman Valley:

Other recordings:

Rudy Trubitt:

Link #1

Nathan Moody:

Link #2

and:

Link #3

These Carman Valley recordings by GT Weddig are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Back in January of 2010 my daughter Eleanor was born.  Amidst the excitement of labor and delivery I had a previous commitment to provide recording services for a concert of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus performing at the Harlen Adams Theatre on the campus of Chico State.  The day after Eleanor was born I loaded into the theatre with fourteen microphones and a few direct lines.  We recorded 16 channels of audio on a double system: one computer and one “Radar” for backup.  Dr. Kathleen McGuire conducted the 100 member chorus to a capacity crowd.  Everything was originally recorded at 24/96.  Mark Speer mixed and Ashley Moore (AMOR Music Productions) mastered the project.

Here are some samples of the recording, the CD is out of print but the full recording seems to be available on Amazon and Spotify.

Make Your Own Kind of Music/New World Coming (Excerpt)

My Rising Up (Excerpt)

California Here I Come (Excerpt)

All samples are property of Golden Gate Performing Arts Inc. and used with permission.

 

The sound you are about to hear is one that fascinated me the first time I took a walk in Bidwell Park.  In January I recorded it, reported to be the third largest urban park in the US, Bidwell Park is located within the city limits of Chico, CA near “Lake” Oroville and the Oroville Dam whose power travels along said lines.   The crackling that is heard is an effect called corona discharge [Wikipedia] and is caused by the interaction of power and humidity or other particles in the air surrounding the lines  (as I understand it).

As you can hear the city of Chico is on the right side of the image, it is somewhat heavily rolled off to provide a more pleasant listening experience.

MS, Schoeps MK21, SD 744t

On January 29th after 21 hours of labor (and about the same amount of compressed audio recording) we heard this very first sound:

Nicole and I are proud parents.  I won’t share the rest of the recording with you.  Surprisingly, none of the nursing staff gave me trouble about having a large microphone in the room, I guess it’s less equipment than those who bring video in.  I think I would find video less intimate and actually easier to watch than listening to the sounds of a woman laboring and delivering.

It brings tears to my eyes hearing these first cries again.

Thanks for allowing this diversion from the usual content.

–greg