December wind through line of beech trees above Teign Gorge

Wind through line of beech trees above Teign Gorge

A stiff breeze through a line of tall beech trees on  the hilltop above the Teign Gorge, which separates Drewston Common from Piddledown Common, with a majestic and imposing sound; this is the earlier part of a 2h 38' recording.

This recording and its concurrently-made companion were the fruits of a Plan B operation on 9 December 2019, for I’d hurried out as early as possible in the rather dubious hope of there still being a gale blowing after a quite stormy night. In the event, at the spot just a little down the Teign Gorge valley slope in the woods a little further east, where I’d recorded a gale in January 2013 I found that it was too sheltered there this time, and there was very little wind noise at all in the trees — and nowhere did I find gale-force gusts.

However, in walking along the Hunter’s Path from the west to get there I’d noticed a lovely majestic wind sound, albeit nothing like a gale, in the line of tall beech trees that runs north to south over the hilltop open pastureland of Drewston Common.

Of course there was a catch, in that it was pretty exposed to the wind there, so initially I dismissed any idea of recording there because microphone wind noise would surely obliterate much of the important elements of any recording there. But then, with nothing much else seeming to offer itself, I went over to that line of trees in the middle of the field, just wondering if, with a recorder on the tripod set to its lowest level, I could find a spot really close to the tree bases where several were rather joined together, forming a very low windbreak of sorts in places.

The wind gusts were from the north-west, 'fresh', perhaps 'strong' at times (force 5 or 6 Bft), and to my relief a little testing, at times involving my getting my head down almost on the ground, revealed a distinct possibility of some degree of success recording there, so I set up that recorder, on the lee side and facing east, so notionally having the trees behind it. To considerably improve the recorder's coverage I tilted it upwards at a steep angle, so it was actually getting a very full panorama from the line of trees, even though notionally pointing away from them.

Something close to halfway through the recording there's a transient slightly startling patter on the dead leaves close beside the recorder — apparently a small mammal of some sort. Indeed, the animal's first scurry-by had actually brushed against the recorder, causing such a startling sudden noise that I decided to cut it out.

When I first auditioned the full recording I was rather alarmed to hear that, although the abutting two hilltop fields there had seemed to me to be deserted for the duration of the session, a solitary individual had come right up to this recorder at one point and was trying to make out what it was or what it was there for, and seemed very reluctant to go away, as though (s)he were considering walking off with it. So very likely I’d been on a knife-edge of not having this recording, and of course having one less recorder!

Because I had two recorders running, I was paying attention to guarding the other one, which was just below the Hunter’s Path at the south end of this line of beech trees, where people coming along the path could see it. Experience in previous years had taught me that an amazing proportion of walkers are highly irrational and irresponsible in their behaviour when they spot a recorder running unattended, even when I’ve left an explanatory notice there.

Looking roughly west at the line of (mostly beech) trees during this recording. The recorder was placed slightly out of this view, to the left.

This recording taking place. The arrow points to the recorder.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was Sony PCM-D100, with two nested custom Windcut furry windshields. It was used on a lightweight Hama tripod set to its minimum height.

Initial post-recording processing was to use Audacity to apply an EQ curve to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, and the dynamic EQ VST plugin TDR Nova GE, via a custom profile, to tame microphone wind noise.

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