Full birds' Dawn Chorus, from Sharp Tor, near Castle Drogo, Teign Gorge

This recording is backed and surrounded by a whole mass of related and often inspirational story. To put myself back there on that night for writing these notes, I'm in touch again with the power and 'electricity' of that night's experience, with shivers up the spine and near-tearfulness that this was all really happening, and not just a dream sent to torment me with the waking-up. — But this is the spot for the basic info, and a fuller, more contextual, account (connecting with a big and convoluted personal story), is to be found at my page The inspiring frisson of an all-night recording session out in the wilds.

I made this recording as part of an all-night recording session on 18-19 June 2014. The exact location was at a carefully chosen spot on the top of the precipitous crag known as Sharp Tor, beside the Hunter's Path, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, quite near the well-known Castle Drogo.

This is a somewhat less quiet panorama than that one, because we're lower down, less distant from the River Teign and the birds in the lower part of the valley. The river is louder here too because of some rapids below, and also some sound is presumably being picked up from Drogo Weir, a little further upstream.

Another difference is how the two choruses start. Here, prior to the main chorus, we hear a gentle (i.e., fairly distant) ensemble of nightjars. These are persistent, and form a foundation for the build-up of the main chorus, gradually getting buried in it and quietly bowing out, leaving it to the others to continue building this uplifting symphony. The kick-off of the start of the main chorus comes from robins, not song-thrush as in the Hunting Gate recording.

Because of this being a primarily distant and thus quiet panorama, it's NOT a good idea to turn the volume up beyond a sensible normal setting. If you do so, you would certainly hear still more detail, but that would not be as I was hearing it, and also you'd find the occasional really close bird song very uncomfortably loud.

The techie stuff:
I took with me two Sony PCM-M10 recorders, so I could record two concurrent dawn choruses, some distance apart (in the event, nearly a kilometre apart). Actually I started this recording about 1.30 a.m. BST, but this edited version starts probably about 3.45. The recorders were each fitted with a Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (the original, more effective, light grey version).

I placed the one for this recording perched on top of the Sharp Tor crag just by the seat, so it was just as well it was night and nobody was going to come here to sit and admire the non-view! The recorder was on a diminutive Hama Mini Tripod (something I'd not use nowadays, especially as the PCM-D100 recorder is really to heavy for it). It took me quite some time to find the likely best spot among the irregularities on the crag-top.

The point was that I realized that much of the birdsong would be more or less distant, and that the sound of the River Teign here, as one would normally hear it, would mask quite a bit of that birdsong. So, the name of the game was to get an optimal balance between minimizing the river sound by bringing the recorder back from the absolute top prominences, and maximizing exposure to the distant birdsong by bringing it forward, to overlook the bottom of the valley.

This involved my having to keep getting down into funny positions to try to assess the river sound as heard at the level of the recorder on that tiny tripod. As there was virtually no birdsong then, I could work only on the basis of the river sound — which meant in practice having to imagine the distant birdsong while I listened to the river sound at recorder level, and choose the minimum distance back from the edge that reduced the river sound just enough, set against my imaginary distant dawn chorus. Surely at least somebody out there will agree with me that I did a bloody good job in taking that little bit of trouble!

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshield, but much more recently I used the A1 Stereo Control VST plugin to widen and dramatically sharpen-up the appalling stereo imaging of the PCM-M10. That distinctly over-brightened each recording it was let loose on, and I rectified that by applying an EQ tilt as follows: a straight line from 100Hz (no change) to 8K (-7dB). That then required a little compensatory level amplification (usually +3dB, but varied according to each recording).

But then I realized I couldn't use this recording with that processing, because the river sound heard through speakers had nasty phasey effects and phase cancellation areas in the soundstage — an effect you don't get when listening with headphones. About to wail and gnash, I tried processing another copy of the recording with half the amount of the widening. Although I could still just hear that phasiness effect, it was much less prominent and I reckoned not enough to spoil one's listening. That required about half the amount of EQ tilt (to -3dB) and the compensatory level lift (typically 1.5dB), and got me altogether more natural and better-balanced sound.

… And a reminder, that there's a fuller, more contextual account of that recording session at The inspiring frisson of an all-night recording session out in the wilds!

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