On 5th March 2013 I took out with me a load of wind chimes, to my regular field recording location for wind chimes - the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. This time, however, although a moderate to fresh south-east wind was expected, for the first hour I was greeted by virtually complete calm - and, well, birds singing! So I didn't rush on to the sort of places where I might hang wind chimes (looking silly, trying to record them with no wind!), and, on the Hunter's Path just past my closest point to Fingle Bridge (and high up above it), I set up on the very steep slope there to take a recording of the birds, with the rushing sound of the River Teign tumbling over rocks far down below. This recording, then, is the outcome.

The birds were mostly not very close, and hence the recording being quiet. It is just peaceful and refreshing.

The Hunter's Path, high up on the steep sided Teign 'Gorge'. Fingle Bridge is way down at the bottom, more or less straight ahead in this photo. The recorder was on the slope below the track, but just behind me in this view.


The recorder very small and inconspicuous in this grand setting, its Rode Dead Kitten windshield showing up as it is a very light grey.

Recording made with a Sony PCM-M10 on a Velbon Mini Tripod, using the built-in microphones covered with a Rode Dead Kitten windshield. I have used a graphic EQ profile in Audacity to compensate for the slight muffling of the sound caused by the windshield and for a lower bass 'hump' that I've been getting in all my recordings. Please note that the volume level of this recording has been carefully adjusted for listening purposes, and ALL my recordings so far are meant to be listened to with a volume setting that would give a realistic level for playback of CLASSICAL music (a large but not exceptional symphony orchestra). If you have the right volume setting, you should not need to change that setting from one recording of mine to another.

** Please remember to give this recording a rating! **

Comments

• 
  Philip Goddard 2 months, 1 week ago

  Actually this recording turned out to be the one above all the others that bugged me sufficiently to cause me to check my other recordings and conclude that they ALL needed a quite significant carefully shaped bass reduction. Initially, when I played this recording back through my hi-fi speakers there was a rather 'spacious'-feeling very low frequency sort-of earthquaky rumbliness in the river sound - something I'd noticed in many of my other recordings, and tended rather to like - but here the issue was very clear: it was not a matter of whether I liked it, but, did I actually hear that? -- And the answer had to be a clear 'no', so it was something I had to get rid of.

  So, I then investigated and found that I'd been accepting that same situation in pretty well all my recordings without challenging myself to remove what I'd never heard in the first place! Now that I've applied the relevant EQ curve to the bass of all but some early recordings that I'd already mucked around with too much, I've found that consistently the recordings have become much clearer, with more detail discernible, and the really low bass still not deficient but much more 'tight' and properly focused, so that I feel much more strongly that I am listening to what I originally heard, with nothing in the way. This adjustment also significantly reduces the intrusiveness of microphone wind noise, so it has been quite a blessing.
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  klankbeeld 2 months, 1 week ago

  A real fine recording philip