Today is the 75th Formula 1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Over the last twenty five years I’ve been to see the race six times. The last time I went was 2022 and it was the first time I had taken field recording gear with me.

I had high expectations that I would be able to get a great collection of recordings while I was there that would capture the atmosphere and history of the site but it didn’t really work out that way! The tannoy system is pervasive, so there is almost nowhere where you can’t hear some form of commentary going on. I think when I go again I’ll take a wider range of mics to capture contact and vibrational sounds too which could be quite interesting.

I did manage to get a couple of recordings that worked quite well. My Formula 3 Phasing post and this recording of the metallic bridge that takes traffic into the centre of the circuit.

Silverstone has undergone a lot of changes over the years, some quite dramatic and this bridge that seems to be made out of metal sections which has a very temporary construction feel to it used to go over the track at “Bridge” corner. This was part of the track layout from 1991-2010. Now the track goes elsewhere and you can walk under the bridge.

It creates a very unique sound as traffic slowly crosses it.

Today is also historic in that we have three British drivers qualifying in the top three! Hopefully that will convert into a British win so good luck George, Lewis and Lando!

Until the next time! 🏎️🏁

We have gas and electric “smart” meters that send our energy usage directly to the suppliers. It also means that we have a little gadget which allows you to see a visualisation of your current energy use.

During the recent energy crisis we started looking more closely at this and noticed just how much energy the dishwasher was using every day—rather a lot!

I’m not sure of the exact difference in energy use between an electric dishwasher on for 1 to 2 hours vs a gas combo boiler on for around 5 minutes but it’s significant.

So we decided to switch back to doing the washing up by hand for a while and then just kept doing it!

A busy family produces a lot of washing up. I try to see it as a daily opportunity to be mindful if I can and to continue to use less energy! 🙏

Of course I started to listen closer to the range of sounds that were being produced, and recorded them!

There is often an understandable tendency with field recording to go for the more “glamorous” city cacophonies or natural soundscapes. But I love to listen to and record everyday household sounds as well.

The washing up is a varied sonic performance that must be different for everybody. An overall structure and length related to the day’s activities — the amount and types of objects you are washing up, the sound of your boiler or water heater, the materials and sizes of your sink and taps, how busy or relaxed you are!

This is a fairly standard business like version of our washing up. The last 30 seconds of “draining” is my favourite part!

I wonder what a library of “washing up” recordings would be like? How different would those recordings be from each other?

Does this sound like your washing up?

Zoom F3 Field Recorder with stereo omni Clippy microphones.

I’ve always liked to use “found” objects and sounds in my work. Whether it’s from beach combing (who doesn’t enjoy a good beach comb!), objects salvaged from the recycling and skips, or field recordings and BBC Sound Effects records!

There’s a long tradition in art and music of such re-imaginings → which I’m sure you all know!

I have quite a large collection of items destined for recycling that I have intercepted to use as musical instruments and sound sources—glass jars, foil trays, cardboard boxes, crinkly plastic wrappers.

Over the last few years I’ve made a lot of recordings with these objects but never really found the right direction. I made sample banks for the Model:Samples and Digitakt and I tried to use longer textural recordings in my music, but nothing quite worked out.

I’ve always persevered though because I like the idea of using packaging and recycling in my work. So little thought is given to these wondrous materials.

There was a time when the amount of iron in a baked bean can would have been a big deal and only been available to a very wealthy person. Colour printing, stainless steel, plastic—these are all forms of magic! Human ingenuity developed over millennia combined with Earth’s precious resources!

But unfortunately we do not see the worth in these materials and that is now part of a big global problem.

Recently on Whirrings I’ve been talking about performing with field recording and the last collection of recordings I did with the recycling objects were performance based, I played them with my hands, bows, brushes and sticks.

It’s only when I listened to them again and switched on multiple recordings together I realised they became more interesting as multitrack arrangements!

So here is the first result of that multitracking.

* Track 1: foil tray played like a drum with my hand.

* Track 2 and 3: foil tray played with a violin bow.

These sounds are possibly familiar and definitely remarkable considering this is just an aluminium foil tray, from a lasagne ready meal I believe!

Just a beginning, more to come.

🌱 Greenpeace | Friends of the Earth ♻️

Our bath has a “click clack” plug that is directly below the shower head which drips down onto it.

It is surprisingly sonorous.

I recorded the bath plug “bell” at three different water speeds:

* A fast erratic drip (the most sonorous)

* A continuous dribble (less sonorous and a slightly lower pitch!)

* A slow regular drip (the kick drum!)

I added a very small amount of extra reverb and mixed all three tracks together into this arrangement.

People don’t seem to like Birmingham New Street train station much. Even though above ground it has had a fairly successful “daylighting” redesign, its large subterranean platform system exposes the 1960s modernist redevelopment failures which a lot of Birmingham city centre is still slowly shaking off.

Artificial light and low budget apocalyptic sci-fi thriller vibes! The central train hub and the busiest UK station outside of London, it is often just a surreal momentary experience while catching a connection to somewhere else.

But I love it! This station has many good memories for me.

I spent my first nineteen years in Birmingham, I grew up there, and it still feels familiar even though I have not lived there for 35 years. I will always carry it with me, mainly through my very determined Brummagem accent—“Are you from the Midlands”?!

This is the first time I have returned with my ears turned towards field recording. I have never listened to the station before and it has great sounds.

The smooth walls and many connected platforms provide excellent reverberations. So many trains coming and going and the strange tones they make while they sit waiting. Why do they make those sounds, ticking over, are they testing their engines? An ever changing orchestra of chordal train drones.

I made this recording while waiting for my train back to Sheffield on platform 12a using my iPhone and Sennheiser Ambeo binaural in-ear mics. I’m still unsure about the Ambeos, they are useful for “stealth” recording but they seem a bit harsh and prone to distortion.

I will go back soon with other recording gear because I now feel there is an album of beautiful train chords waiting to be recorded at New Street station.

Next post I’ll tell you why I was visiting Birmingham!

The three electromagnetic microphones/pickups I have are all quite different—a SOMA ETHER, a LOM Elektrouši and this “telephone pick-up coil”. It only cost a few pounds but probably finds the widest range of sounds and has the most mellow tone.

These sounds were all produced by interacting with the electrical fields emitted from my MacBook Pro. It makes a lot of noise and each part of the computer has different sounds. The recordings are an exploration of those sounds made by slowly moving the pickup around. I’ve added a touch of Valhalla Supermassive for atmosphere.

The internet assures me that this is not harmful and that pretty much everything gives off electromagnetic radiation of some kind. I’m not so sure though, the density of electronics and wireless communications is now so high I feel like it can’t be a good thing to have all these fields and noise around us all the time, it’s definitely not good for the nerves!

Here is another recording from Filey. It’s August 2020 and there is a very creaky self-closing fire door in the apartment where we are staying.

I had noticed the door was unusually musical and decided to see how far I could extend the performance with a very slow opening and closing—manual time stretching :)

I recorded it too quietly and had to boost the recording quite a bit so it’s somewhat noisy and there were all sorts of people and traffic sounds outside that I wasn’t aware of at the time. It’s amazing how often that happens, how strong our ability to unconsciously focus hearing is, and why I now try to be as mindful as I can when I record! But within these two minutes of creaky fire door there is a surprisingly interesting and complex sonic world.

I’ve generally stayed away from more performative field recordings like this in preference to recording sounds that are already occurring without my intervention. But occasionally when there is no one around, I manage a moment of “in the field” sound exploration, like my recent recording of a fibreglass boat.

All recording involves curation of some kind—the gear you use, mic placement and even when you choose to start and stop recording, and of course your presence will alter the environment in many ways, but directly interacting with found objects and materials to make sounds is much more dramatic and moves the needle from field recording towards music and performance. I’m okay with that, it’s just another way of working.

I do seem to struggle with how to combine music and field recordings though which I have tried to do a number of times. Maybe because I feel a good field recording deserves its own space rather than being lost within a more layered piece. Finding effective ways to combine these practices is still very much a work in progress for me.

I have also collected a couple of large boxes of objects over the last few years that I want to work with to produce sounds. Driftwood, shells, sea glass, fishing ropes and nets from the coast and tins and jars, plastic and paper packaging from the recycling bin.

Initially my “sound object” collecting was a desire to try my hand at sample pack creation—diversifying the income streams! But after thirty solid years of coding and designing in front of a computer I don’t seem to have found the digital editing energy to do that!

I’m now more interested in using these objects in a performative way, as instruments, more akin to the excellent work of artists like Cheryl E. Leonard or Kate Carr. I’ve tried this a number of times before without much success but still keep returning to the idea.

My recent music has also been focused on using guitars as sound sources in a similar way. I’m honestly a terrible guitar player in the traditional sense but I love the simplicity of experimenting and finding sounds with just a guitar, not only melodies and chord progressions, but also the dissonances, string buzzes and noisy pots. The slow capturing and layering up of textures with a looper and effects is such an intuitive and immediate way to make music. I am still a beginner when it comes to live performance and my work generally involves a lot of post production in Ableton but I’m slowly moving closer to being able to make live music that I am happy with.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo of the creaky fire door but this sea-rusted old tractor captured in the same visit to Filey somehow seems to be a fitting visual analogy and would probably also make a good sound source when no-one was looking!

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* Visit my Bandcamp and buy some music or field recordings or a set of cards.

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Thanks for tuning in!

When I visited the Pembrokeshire coast in 2022 I made a lot of recordings. Some of those recordings became my album Flight Paths: Field Recordings From Gupton Farm, Pembrokeshire, Summer 2022.

Around the area, which is managed by The National Trust, there are a lot of electric fences, presumably to contain the small herds of cows that are moved around the different fields. Somewhat surprisingly, they make quite an audible clicking noise so I tended to keep away from them when recording, but I also made a few recordings specifically of the fences.

Those recordings didn’t make it onto the album so here they are now. This is a combination of two fence recordings made with omni Clippy mics and a Roland R-07 recorder.

I find it fascinating how the clicks change, it’s quite hypnotic. I’m not sure why this is but I imagine it has something to do with how the clicks are generated, the grass and reeds that are touching the fence, the wind moving them around, the butterfly effect…

My album of recordings from Gupton Farm is available listen to and purchase on Bandcamp. And there is a review on A Closer Listen.

It was raining here this morning. That cold drizzle (mizzle) that makes everything wet through and doesn’t even offer the limited excitement of a heavier downpour! To be fair it has since brightened up and is now a rather nice sunny almost spring day.

I’m aware of the sound of the rain more since I spent a few weeks listening and recording an album of Recordings of the Rain last year. It was a very wet July here in 2023 with endless rain and I was frustrated that I couldn’t get out more for walks and to make field recordings. I’m not a big fan of me and my recording gear getting soaked through!

So I decided to listen and record the rain from my house and garden instead. I was also experimenting with different microphones and trying to expand my experience of using contact mics which is still very limited.

This is a recording of a metal chair in my garden made with a hydrophone.

It was interesting to focus in on a specific sound that only happens sporadically and for limited durations like the rain—equipment always ready to go and ears alert for the rain starting. I’m usually more about exploring a place and intuitive about what I record. Walk around, listen and hit record when I find something interesting.

I only lightly scratched the surface of listening to and recording the rain, there is definitely a whole lot more to explore there.

The album is on Bandcamp…

Westward Ho! Devon. August 2023.

I found the fibreglass hull of an abandoned boat washed up and moved behind the sand dunes.

As I slowly rocked it I could hear fibrous oscillations.

Ghosts of its unknown demise in a past sea.

How did it get here?

Was it in a storm?

Who was involved in abandoning it or was it accidentally lost?

I wish I had investigated for longer and recorded more. I have looped the short recording I made.

The sea is recorded here too.

It should really be disposed of suitably by the local council.