I can’t believe I haven’t written a post about field recording: it was an idea that got me started with audio in the first place. Circa 1990? Back then I had an idea that I’m still trying to work out: combining ordinary sounds in some sort of “musical” collage that included my poetry. (Basically I’m trying to create Einstürzende Neubauten in my own image. At that time I’d never heard of them but that sort of thing was in the air. This was before I’d heard of Savage Aural Hotbed, a local band, and many years before I’d heard of Blue Man Group.)
I wanted to record frogs. I’ve done that but have never used the recordings, perhaps because I never got close enough, perhaps because you can hear highway traffic from a half mile away.
And I wanted to record rustling leaves, to make a waltz for my Rilke poems. I’ve brought dry leaves into the house. I’ve recently trudged through drifts of leaves while out on a walk. Again, I haven’t really done anything with these recordings.
I did record baby babble from our older kid in 1991 and toddler talk in 1992, long before I had any idea of what to do with the recordings (the audio quality on these is atrocious, as you’ll hear in the recording at the bottom of the page). These recordings have been broken into smaller segments and used, as have a few other recordings of our younger child, circa grade school (2005?), on multiple compositions.
I’ve recorded crunching spring snow and ice. And somewhat more recently I captured a few seconds—or was it minutes—of graupel, or snow pellets, landing on dry leaves (the basic sound for “Winter Flowers”).
Back in ’96 or ’97 I wandered the yard with a phrase sampler banging and scraping the things I found. These recordings I actually used in a composition (“Sex Is Something (You’ll Never Forget)”).
Recently I’ve been recording more leaf sounds and traffic noises while out in the neighborhood. (The sound of my walker was the basic drone on my last composition, “Entertainment”.)
Of course I’ve wandered around the house testing the sonic quality of things. (My kids were into it. They’d call across the house or from the bathtub, exhorting me to record stuff—“Dad, record this” while tapping on something. The younger one kept up with the idea by making me instruments and, later, buying things. Maybe both kids did this. And my partner has given me a few things.)
Field recording on little or no budget is frustrating. Good or even mediocre equipment is expensive and a pain to lug around. Besides a decent recording device and at least one good mic, a wind muff is essential. And to focus on sounds a parabolic reflector. A tripod. And a big backpack for hauling it all.…Also, back in the 1990s finding out about this stuff was not at your fingertips. If you didn’t know someone you could remain clueless for years.
An old portable cassette similar to what I had circa 1972. 
Fostex XR-5 cassette 4-track recorder. 
Roland MS-1 phrase sampler. 
Zoom H-1 hand held recorder. 
iPad Pro first generation with Shure MV-88 mic attached and active. (To my knowledge this mic will not connect securely to newer Apple devices after they discontinued the Lightning connector.)
The earliest tools I had were a portable cassette deck, like so many of us had, and a cheap microphone from Radio Shack. I probably should have had a preamp (was there even such a thing as a portable pre?), so there’s more noise than signal.…This is what I used for the baby and toddler babble.
When I started recording on a 4-track in 1996, again I did not have a preamp. Just a cheap kick drum mic and a long cable, long enough to run from my room to the bathroom to record “rain” in the shower. Other things were just brought to my room to be played like instruments.…It was also this recorder, and an extension cord, that I recorded myself stomping around in the crunchy snow in the back yard. I also recall setting up to record kids at a birthday party, probably 1997. (These tapes have never been put to use.)…Let’s not forget sizzling bacon in the kitchen—recorded that more than once. (Some of these habits continued when I replaced the cassette 4-track with a digital 8-track and much later when tracking to a computer, such as sticking a microphone in the window to record an actual night rain as well as again recording the shower for simulated rain, as on “Night Rain”.)
Much more productive but seriously frustrating was the phrase sampler I bought not long after getting the 4-track, spring 1996. A Roland MS-1. 28 seconds of recording at its highest quality setting, divided by up to 16 pads for playback. The thing was meant for DJs to copy snippets of sound from records, for playback in their set (a 2-bar beat, a horn blast, James Brown). Like the 4-track, it had no mic preamp.…Despite these limitations I made about 20 sound sets that I used for various compositions—and still sometimes use.…Once again I went out to record snow, by then very crunchy from springtime thaws and freezes. Sampled all kinds of objects around the yard, throughout the house, down in the basement—clotheslines, furniture, fans, pots and pans.
The first genuinely portable recording device I owned, maybe meant more for interviewing than field recording, was a Zoom H1 handheld, with a built-in stereo mic. With this device I recorded the aforementioned graupel.…As I’m writing this I’ve been browsing the folders of recordings. All kinds of stuff from Duluth that I’d forgotten about: at my mother’s house north of town, at Gooseberry Falls and Brighton Beach as well as somewhere else along the shore, then at Taylor’s Falls north of the Twin Cities. Some night sounds, at home I presume. A stream at Battle Creek, on the east side of St. Paul, as well as my younger kid monologuing about Lost in a shallow cave. These recordings were all made in 2011. The device was disappointing to use: the build is shoddy and the battery cover loose, making the thing very susceptible to handling noise. The recording quality is adequate.
2019 I bought a Shure MV-88 stereo mic for my iPad? I tried recording frogs in the pond at my mother’s—my brother’s place now, after she died in 2014—out behind the barn. By then my body was so beaten up, I was so weak and frail—as I still am—that I couldn’t walk through the long grass and uneven ground of what had been pasture. My feet would get tangled or I’d lose my balance as I stepped on the mounds of soil. At one point I fell down and had to crawl about 20 feet to reach a tree so I could pull myself up. I never got as close to the frogs as I needed to be (this is where a parabolic dish and mic are essential).
Snow melts during the day and refreezes at night, leaving thin shelves of ice that give a resonant crack when stepped on. Circa February/March 2021. 
Usually by March our snow has suffered many waves of melting and freezing, producing a brittle, crunchy surface. If they’re dry the leaves can add a little brittleness to the sound but are usually soggy and mute it a bit. 
Brighton Beach, just beyond the Duluth city limits. I was testing out a Zoom H1 recorder that day. 
Inland from Lake Superior’s North Shore much of the land is gravel hills of glacial moraine surrounded by swamp and bog. A nice place for recording frogs. 
Halloween 2021. Maybe. 
Drive Nitro Eurostyle walker (rollator) with cup holder. My iPad was tucked into the large, flat pocket on my bag (a Tenba camera bag) with a Shure MV-88 microphone sticking up. 
October 2021. This might have been a day that I was recording leaves whirling and skittering down the street. 
Utility road under the Lexington Avenue bridge, St. Paul, MN. Ayd Mill Road on the other side of the embankment. I’m pretty sure Amtrak uses this track on the Chicago/Seattle run.
Physical limitations like mine are a serious drawback to recording nature sounds. Or doing anything else off pavement. I will point out here that the larger wheels of my Eurostyle Nitro Drive walker are better suited to slightly rougher paths than those on the Lumex walker I had. Should we ever get back to traveling I could conceivably walk a dirt trail in a park. Tripping hazards are still a serious concern since I have trouble lifting my feet.
The reason I did not persist in field recording with this handy little mic is that it wasn’t that handy with a protective case on my phone or iPad. Anything designed for connection to an Apple product has to be compliant, which means it has to set snuggly against the device. Most covers have cutouts just large enough for the Lightning connector. This means the mic’s connector isn’t long enough. An adaptor is needed. That makes for an unstable connection, the mic works loose and the device reverts to the built-in microphone. Even if you handle it with extreme care this is likely to happen.
Despite this I’d been lugging that Shure mic around for the past couple of years. In theory I could remove the pad’s cover for recording. Not that tempting. Also, largely because of covid, we didn’t go anywhere that had interesting sounds. (Not sure how I’ll get out onto the rocks but I’d really like to try Lake Superior again. And Minnehaha Falls. And more frogs. And somewhere with lots of trees on a breezy day.…From what I can tell I bought this mic after our visit to Australia at the end of 2018. It would have been tempting to record the ocean, of course, but even the traffic of Melbourne would have been interesting.)
Sometime in 2021 I replaced the cover on the iPad. Despite noticing that the notch cut for the Lightning connector seemed larger than on the old cover, it took me a couple of months to get around to pulling out the mic to see how it fits. Snug, just the way it was meant to be. Time to think more about recording while out and about. That fall I tried recording leaves swirling in the wind along the street—one of my favorite sounds. No wind muff equals lots of rumble and not much of interest. On another day I parked myself under a bridge while taking an overly adventurous walk along a railroad utility road (where Amtrak cuts through our neighborhood on the route to and from Chicago…the Seattle-Chicago line). A shuffling walk through piles of leaves on Halloween, and the rumble of my walker as I headed home. It’s been pretty easy to do.
I really want to get out of the city in 2022. At the very least I want to get out of the neighborhood.
Prattle and Din 