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field recording

Field Recording

United States · 1890s
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Description

Field recording is the practice and genre of capturing sounds in situ—outside the studio—using portable recording equipment. It centers on documenting environments, human activities, wildlife, weather, machinery, rituals, and music as they actually occur, often with minimal intervention.

As a listening genre, field recording foregrounds place and presence. Releases may present unprocessed, extended takes (e.g., a shoreline at dawn), or carefully edited sequences that map a soundwalk, a village festival, or a factory floor. The results range from documentary-style fidelity to abstract, immersive soundscapes that emphasize texture, spatiality, and the ecology of sound.

History
Early experiments (1890s–1930s)

Field recording emerged with the arrival of portable phonographs and wax-cylinder machines. In the 1890s and early 1900s, researchers began documenting Indigenous songs, folk traditions, and vernacular speech outside the studio. This ethnographic impulse paralleled the growth of anthropology and folklore studies, turning the phonograph into a scientific and cultural tool.

Folklore, ethnography, and radio (1930s–1950s)

By the 1930s, institutional collectors and broadcasters were conducting systematic field trips. In the U.S., large folk-music surveys and oral-history projects preserved work songs, ballads, and regional styles. In Europe, naturalists and broadcasters pioneered wildlife and environmental captures for radio features, newsreels, and educational archives.

Tape, portability, and acoustic ecology (1950s–1970s)

Lightweight reel-to-reel and later Nagra recorders expanded fidelity and mobility, enabling high-quality environmental and music documentation worldwide. Parallel developments in electroacoustic composition and the rise of acoustic ecology (soundscape studies) reframed field recordings as material for art and as a lens on the health and identity of places.

Artistic integration and global expansion (1980s–2000s)

Artists and composers increasingly treated field recordings as primary musical content, not just raw documentation. Labels and festivals highlighted phonography, soundwalks, and site-specific works. Minidisc and solid-state recorders, along with affordable microphones, democratized access and encouraged global community exchange.

Contemporary practice (2010s–present)

Today, field recording spans documentary, sound art, ambient, installation, ecology, and data-driven research (bioacoustics, urban studies). High-resolution portable rigs, hydrophones, contact microphones, and ambisonic arrays broaden the sonic palette. Ethical frameworks around consent, environmental impact, and cultural sensitivity guide many practitioners, while archival initiatives ensure long-term preservation.

How to make a track in this genre
Equipment and setup
•   Use a reliable portable recorder with transparent preamps and 24-bit depth. Pair with appropriate microphones: omnis for natural ambience, cardioids/shotguns for focus, binaural for immersive head-related cues, contact mics for structure-borne vibration, and hydrophones for underwater sound. •   Employ wind protection (dead cats, blimps), shock mounts, and quiet cables. Pack spare batteries, media, and a notebook or logging app.
Planning and listening
•   Scout locations and times (dawn choruses, market hours, tidal changes). Monitor weather and noise footprints (traffic, aircraft). Practice stillness and mic technique; the recordist’s body and clothing can color the sound. •   Define an intent: documentary (faithful capture of an event), phonographic portrait (character of a place), or compositional (materials for later arrangement).
Recording techniques
•   Gain stage conservatively to avoid clipping during sudden peaks (thunder, birds close to mic). Capture long takes to preserve ecological context and allow for emergent events. •   Try perspective changes: distant ambience, mid-ground activity, and close-up details; move between static and soundwalk approaches. Consider multichannel/ambisonics for spatial mixes.
Editing and assembly
•   For documentary transparency, keep edits minimal: gentle fades, sequencing, and light corrective EQ (e.g., low-cut for handling rumble). Avoid heavy denoising unless it serves intelligibility. •   For artistic montage, treat takes as musical phrases: juxtapose textures, create dynamic arcs, and use silence to frame transitions. Maintain believable spatial continuity unless abstraction is the goal.
Mixing and mastering
•   Preserve dynamic range; avoid over-compression. Calibrate loudness modestly to retain the sense of distance and scale. Use EQ surgically to reveal masked details without sterilizing the recording. •   If presenting binaural or spatial formats, document playback requirements (headphones vs. speakers) and consider stereo fold-downs.
Ethics, metadata, and delivery
•   Obtain permissions where people or private spaces are involved; be culturally sensitive and minimize environmental disturbance. Log precise metadata: date/time, GPS, mic models, patterns, gain settings, weather, and notes on the scene. •   Release formats may include long-form unedited pieces, curated albums, or multichannel installations; include liner notes that contextualize place and method.
Main artists
Influenced by
Audio Documentary
Audio documentary is a narrative non‑fiction form created specifically for listening. It blends reportage, interviews, archival tape, field recordings, narration, and montage to present real events, people, and ideas. Unlike audio drama, which stages fiction with actors, audio documentary prioritizes factual storytelling and journalistic ethics while borrowing dramatic structure, pacing, and sound design to deepen engagement. Its craft relies on careful research, on‑location sound, and editorial shaping to build scenes and a clear point of view.
Nature Sounds
Nature sounds is a genre centered on unprocessed or minimally processed recordings of the natural acoustic environment—such as rain, wind, ocean surf, rivers, birdsong, insects, and forests—presented as the primary listening material. Rather than foregrounding melody or harmony, the genre emphasizes environmental texture, spatial depth, and the psychoacoustic qualities of place. While nature has been recorded since the early days of audio technology, nature sounds emerged as a distinct listening genre with the rise of ambient and New Age listening cultures, wellness and relaxation records, and the availability of high-fidelity field recording gear. Releases often aim for restorative, meditative, or documentary experiences, ranging from untouched soundscapes to gentle edits that preserve realism.
Folk
Folk is a song-centered acoustic tradition rooted in community storytelling, everyday life, and social history. It emphasizes clear melodies, simple harmonies, and lyrics that foreground narrative, protest, and personal testimony. As a modern recorded genre, folk coalesced in the early-to-mid 20th century in the United States out of older ballad, work song, and rural dance traditions. It typically features acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica), strophic song forms, and participatory singing (choruses, call-and-response).
Electroacoustic
Electroacoustic music is a broad art-music tradition that integrates recorded acoustic sound and electronically generated or processed sound into coherent musical works. It privileges timbre, gesture, texture, and spatialization over conventional melody-and-harmony song forms, often employing tape manipulation, synthesis, live electronics, and computer-based signal processing. Works are frequently composed for fixed media (stereo or multichannel loudspeakers) and may also involve live performers who are transformed in real time. Concert presentation typically emphasizes spatial diffusion and immersive listening, and the repertoire spans concert works, radio pieces, installations, and soundscape compositions.
Experimental
Experimental music is an umbrella term for practices that prioritize exploration, process, and discovery over adherence to established genre norms. It embraces new sound sources, nonstandard tuning systems, indeterminacy and chance operations, graphic and open-form scores, extended techniques, and technology-led sound design (tape, electronics, computers, and live processing). Rather than a single style, it is a methodology and ethos: testing hypotheses about sound, structure, and performance, often blurring boundaries between composition, improvisation, sound art, and performance art. Listeners can expect unfamiliar timbres, unusual forms, and an emphasis on how music is made as much as the resulting sound.
Non-Music
Non-music is an umbrella category for recorded audio whose primary purpose is not musical performance. It encompasses spoken word, speeches, interviews, poetry readings, comedy, audio documentaries, instructional recordings, field recordings, sound effects, and other forms of organized sound meant to inform, narrate, document, or entertain without relying on melody or conventional song structure. Rather than emphasizing harmony, rhythm, and instrumentation, non-music foregrounds voice, text, ambient sound, narrative flow, informational content, and sonic texture. Its aesthetics range from raw, unedited actuality to highly produced studio works, and its scope spans archival preservation, education, performance art, and mass entertainment.
Onkyo
Onkyo (also called onkyō-kei) is a Japanese approach to experimental, electroacoustic improvisation that centers on extremely quiet dynamics, sparse gestures, and the amplification of minute sonic events. Rather than focusing on melody, harmony, or pulse, it treats sound itself—hiss, hum, feedback, room tone, and the grain of instruments—as the primary material. Performers often use no-input mixing boards, sine-wave samplers, laptops, contact microphones, and extended instrumental techniques to reveal fragile textures and near-silences. Long stretches of space and restraint invite deep listening, making the acoustic qualities of the venue and the audience’s presence integral to the music.
Samoyedic Folk Music
Samoyedic folk music is the traditional music of the Samoyedic peoples of northern Siberia—principally the Nenets, Nganasan, Enets, and Selkup—who live across the tundra and taiga of what is now Russia. It is primarily vocal, monophonic, and text-driven, with melodies that are narrow in range and often shaped by the prosody of the local languages. Free, speech-like rhythms are common in solo genres, while communal pieces can feature steady pulses and call-and-response. Typical textures include a single, unaccompanied voice; voice plus frame drum (in ritual contexts); and voice accompanied by simple aerophones or jaw harp drones. Melodic organization tends toward pentatonic and modal patterns with flexible intonation, microtonal inflections, and heterophonic ornamentation. Texts reference reindeer herding, seasonal cycles, landscape, and spirit worlds, using both lexical lyrics and vocables. Performance contexts range from domestic and work settings (lullabies, herding and travel songs) to ceremonial and shamanic practices (healing chants, invocations), and staged folklore ensembles in the modern era.
Khoisan Folk Music
Khoisan folk music refers to the traditional musical practices of the San (Bushmen) and Khoikhoi (Nama and related communities) of southern Africa. It is characterized by cyclical song forms, interlocking vocal parts, dense handclap polyrhythms, and distinctive vocal techniques that include yodel-like register shifts and hocketing. Instruments are sparse and portable: musical bows (mouth-resonated bows such as the gora) and simple idiophones accompany songs, while stamping and clapping often provide the core rhythmic drive. Lyrics mix meaningful text with vocables and onomatopoeia, reflecting the close link between music, language (including click consonants), and environment. Music is integral to social life, healing trance-dances (n/um), storytelling, children’s games, and rites of passage. The sound is intimate yet powerful, emphasizing communal participation, entrainment, and trance states over harmonic development or large instrumental forces.
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