Sea dramatics — strongest yet, from tip of Shag Rock Headland, nr Perranporth — 1 of 4

This is the first of four recordings from what I regard as a 'pinnacle' session, capturing my most dramatic seascapes yet.

Powerful blowhole jets just below us, with a weird 'breathing' sound coming from little cleft beside us — with large waves crashing closely around us. This is loud and dramatic, with the breaking larger waves sounding quite apocalyptic! It's like my recording Eerie vigil with Shag Rock blowhole, but on steroids (much larger swell), and with the greater clarity and realism that the Sony PCM-D100 recorder can bring.

To hear this to best effect you need high-grade headphones, and to have the volume setting about 9dB above a sensible normal level for a realistic rendition of symphonic orchestral music.

I seemed to have already got the Shag Rock headland pretty-well covered by a succession of recordings there, but what I still lacked was good recordings of really apocalyptic-sounding larger waves there. The trouble was that waves beyond a certain size would make it risky to suicidal to go down there at all — and then the wind would also be too strong for me to record or indeed to hitch-hike out in the first place. And waves just comfortably larger than I'd already recorded still almost always came with too-windy conditions.

Then on 16 December 2019 at last the surf forecast was for an 8ft swell, though reducing to 6ft during the afternoon, with reasonably light SW wind, which could possibly enable me to find sufficient shelter to record on that headland. Unusually I hitch-hiked straight to Perranporth, with no hike to precede any recording session. I had two Sony PCM-D100 recorders with me, and placed one in the same position by the 'breathing' cleft that I used for the 'Eerie vigil' recording linked to above. I had it pointing roughly west, obliquely along / facing the waves.

The energy of this soundscape was such that even during apparently quiescent periods, in the vicinity of this recorder I could hear and feel a pretty-well constant very deep fluctuating subterranean rumbling with frequent little thuds.

In this stretch of coastline there's generally no shore, the sea coming right up to the cliff base even at low spring tide. Normally, even with a quite big swell, the waves wouldn't break at all during high tide, but would do so just a little way out at low tide, especially if it were a spring tide, so that then it's the noisy run-out that hits the cliffs. On this occasion only the odd largest wave was breaking initially, which is why wave breaking episodes were only occasional during the first recording from both recorders. The strength of waves varies in cycles, so we'd usually get a group of waves breaking and creating a sonic mayhem before we have another peaceful spell (with writhing and rumbling menaces).

I placed the other recorder on the cliff-edge pointing in about the same direction, but a little bit higher up, so it had a more open sea panorama and got less of the blowhole sounds. I'd intended this recording to run for about three hours for both recorders, but by the time half-an-hour had elapsed I was getting increasing nagging concerns about that lower recorder, lest it might have been caught by one or more blowhole ejections.

— And it was just as well I did, because I found some little puddles of seawater on the recorder. After a hurried wipe-dry job with handkerchief I hastily moved the recorder back by probably about 4 or 5 metres to a very slightly higher spot, which I had to do anyway because the wind had started blowing on the recorder in its original position. That then gave me the much longer second recording, giving a rather different perspective on the increasingly frequent crashing of breaking waves.

Meanwhile I also had to move the other recorder just a little to bring it into better shelter from the wind.

During auditioning / editing back at home I quickly found the precise point where the recorder got splashed, and you can easily recognise it when you listen, for there's a startlingly loud bit of splashdown immediately around the recorder. I've cut out the even more startling second when some of that splashdown hit the recorder, making a very sudden and loud nasty noise!

An earlier photo pointing out the approximate position of the recorder (its exact position is hidden from here)

This recording in progress. Note the thin cloud of spray to right — remaining from a blowhole ejection —, and the partly visible 'breathing' cleft beside the recorder.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested Windcut furry windshields (custom design), and it was placed on a Hama lightweight tripod at about half-height.

Initial post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, while adding a shaped very low bass boost to correct for a weakness in that range in D100 recordings.

Please remember to give this recording a rating!