Some of you know that I’ve been making some recordings for the National Park Service at Lassen Volcanic National Park. Over the next few weeks I will start posting some snippets of what I have found.
Dream Lake (above) is an area that has been under restoration since the man-made dam was removed in 2011. As the water drained several streams that fed the historic lake converged to form a new habitat.
Boiling Springs Lake (above) represents the prime call of what Lassen Volcanic Park is known for: bubbling, gurgling, hydrothermal features. This is a good example of what Bernie Krause calls “geophony”.
The 30th annual Nature Sounds Society Workshop was held the last weekend in June this year. We had a small but eclectic and energizing group of participants and presenters.
Steve Sergeant gave us his take on recording in surround, his method advocates for the use of height channels. The new feature film audio formats such as Atmos use loudspeakers in the ceiling to achieve this immerse effect.
In June of 2013 the Nature Sounds Society hosted the annual field workshop in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California. Preeminent recordist Lang Elliot was there to inspire us to great recordings and update us on his latest projects. Along with Lang, his collaborator Marie Read wowed us with her great images and stories of wildlife photography.
Dan Dugan, Steve Sargent and I put together the ever popular microphone directivity session (above) while other attendees were learning how to make their own windscreen with Sharon Perry. If you ever get a chance it is a weekend well spent.
I’m sorry I didn’t get a photo of the beautiful site at Yuba Pass, I was so tired, as soon as the mics started rolling I fell asleep:
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:
Apologies for a missed opportunity this post: in our haste to get to Lassen Volcanic National Park for a much needed weekend getaway we left the camera at home so you will just have to visit on your own or look around here. Well the weekend getaway nature of this trip put recording on the back burner but it was a good opportunity to scout the area before lugging recording gear in…but I decided to lug gear anyway. We headed out from the Warner campground, a dusty national park campground that seems lightly visited, it’s just a mile or so from the trailhead to the lake itself.
I situated the mics and myself between two bubbling mudpots, much to Nicole’s concern and encouragement. There were plenty of other footprints where I was setup so I wasn’t too worried, though I did notice that the ground was physically warmer in some places, weird. Shortly after hitting “record” a curious couple spent a long time exploring the relatively small area frequently calling out to find the other. A Spotted Towhee was foraging in the area some calls and wingbeats can be heard..
UPDATE: I decided to mix and post my recording at Terminal Geyser, which is not really a geyser but a steam vent, at first it was a little boring to listen to but once I mixed in the 154° (67°C) bubbling stream I decided it was worthy:
Sunday Morning we had an early 4:30am start up at Yuba Pass, dawn chorus, there are a few pretty loud Song Sparrow calls (at 3:19-LOUD) early in the recording also woodpeckers, and many others that I have yet to identify. The microphone array you are hearing is ORTF, though I also recorded a rear Blumlein pair. Please post if you are interested in hearing it.
Late morning as the group dispersed we visited Madora Lake which seems to be a stream fed lake though it may be a man-made spring. This stereo track was derived from a 4 channel, double MS recording. There are American Coots, Red-winged Blackbirds, Bullfrog and a persistently chipping that seemed to be a MacGillivray’s Wabrler. After this successful recording location and a small picnic lunch the 2009 Nature Sounds Society workshop came to a close. The recording below was originally part of a double MS recording on the gregga tree.
I have been out recording the last several weeks, just not finding the time to post here. Because of it’s proximity I have been exploring Gray Lodge more fully. This time of the year it means getting up pretty early, even though I only live 50 minutes away it means leaving at 4:00am or so to capture the dawn chorus. Which is precisely what I have done this week.
Every time I visit I hope to find out something new, the second recording you hear is a reminder that the wildlife area is surrounded by working agricultural fields, which need to be seeded which in the case of rice is done by bi-plane, at 5:30 on a Sunday morning. I would assume this is a similar process to crop dusting.
The first recording is the earlier recording, there is some distant traffic, trains and you can hear the bi-plane begin. There are occasional Wild Turkeys and American Coot among the Red-winged Black Birds Marsh Wrens and others, if you can identify anything please let me know and I will update, thanks. This is an ORTF recording using Schoeps MK21 capsules.
First Recording:
The recording below is an Jecklin recording using DPA 4006 capsules.
Second Recording (caution loud planes throughout, unedited except for some rolloff):
This is a night recording I did a few weeks ago , but am only getting to post until now. There is a close squirrel (Eastern Gray?) and some other favorite friends, I picked up a touch of poison ivy fumbling around in the declining light, it has now pretty much healed but still, use caution recording at night.
Danny was also recording this night, we did hear some relatively close gunshots, but they didn’t continue long.
This night recording was done with the Maryland Nature Recordists in May 2008. I was at the Tubman Road Trail near marker #3. There were open water sloughs on both sides of me. The primary caller seems to be the Northern Cricket Frog, with Cope’s Gray Treefrog, Bald Eagle, Northern Bobwhite, Chuck Will’s widow, possibly the Snowy Tree Cricket, and the occasional Wood Frog filling out the soundscape. ORTF, Sennheiser 8040, SD 744t
Foggy, rainy morning caused a rain out, I recorded about 20 minutes or so before the rain started growing more heavy. The undergrowth is filling out, as is the canopy. Again the whip-poor-will was calling when I arrived, in fact two or three of them were calling near the road before my hike in. I must try a night recording here soon. This recording was so nice I did cut out a short mid-section when I checked how wet the mics were, enjoy.
ORTF, Schoeps MK21, 744t
I am trying to get up earlier to capture first light every week, but due to a number of factors I can only get so close.
This week we have a technical comparison between two sets of microphones. The first set is my standard Schoeps ORTF configuration, a set of MK21 capsules directly into the Sound Devices 744t mic preamplifier. The second set, a demo set of the Sennheiser MKH 8040 configured in ORTF. Keep in mind that the pattern of the two sets is slightly different: the Schoeps is a wide cardioid, the Sennheiser is a classic cardioid. I have done my best to match levels on these two samples.
The same part of the sound file was used for each sample. in about the middle of the recording you will hear me swatting a spider, I was recovering from a few spider bites from the previous week at the time.
This seems to be the quietest recording (in terms of wildlife) I’ve done here yet. The forecast was calling for a morning thunderstorms but it didn’t start to rain until we were leaving. The wind however was pretty constant. The trees haven’t started to fill in yet, they are only now starting to bud. Jecklin, DPA 4006, 744t
A foggy, warm morning, after a thunderstorm, the first I’ve seen this spring, temp was about 60 degrees fahrenheit. It was dark when I arrived, but the Northern Cardinal just started to call. I was hoping to get there early enough to catch the owls, but all I got was a few eastern grey squirrels waking up (at about 15:50). I left most of the slate on this track. The transient pops you hear is water rolling off the trees close to the microphones. USE CAUTION, SOME OF THESE POPS MAY BE LOUD!
As this recording begins you will hear my wife and I heading out for a hike, it was about 34 degrees Fahrenheit so we wanted to keep moving. We returned about 45 minutes later as the morning chorus was drawing to an end. During the slate, which I chose not to include on the recording a great horned owl called once to another in the distance. You’ll hear the usual calls that I have outlined before.
This was done as part of a Maryland Nature Recordists outing, Danny Meltzer attended. Northern Cardinal, Sapsuckers, Mourning Dove, Blue Jay, American Crow.
In 2008 I created a recording series called the Prettyboy Project. Over a series of several months I recorded near the Prettyboy Reservoir in Baltimore County, US. I posted recordings “as is”, with little or no editing to explore the progress of the spring soundscape in one location. Planes, cars, and other “noise” will all be in there along with the seasonally evolving natural soundscape of the location. The Prettyboy Project has been completed as I no longer live near the recording site but please visit and enjoy the progression of the spring.
This recording was made in September of 2007 with Danny Meltzer. It is a mixed soundscape, combining the early morning chirps of Gordon Pond with two perspectives of the Atlantic ocean recorded in sync, one close and one far. Jecklin, DPA 4006, MKH30/40, SD 744t
The Tubman Road Trail is a remote trail that doesn’t pull many visitors away from the main part of the refuge (not at 7pm Saturday evening anyway). The day I was there there was a lot of wildlife, snakes frogs, etc. Northern Bobwhite, Northern Cricket Frogs, and Laughing Gulls can be heard. The front was recorded with my standard ORTF Schoeps array, the rear is a set of omni mics about 1 meter apart on either side of the ORTF. This is a four channel recording.
May 5th, 2007 6:40am The Maryland Nature Recordists captured this dawn chorus on Saturday morning. The spring woodland features, warblers, vireos, blue jays, red-bellied woodpecker and a brown-headed cowbird. Originally part of a surround recording, these are spaced DPA 4006 omni mics apx. 1m apart.
