evertveldhuis wrote:
> --- In Walter Knapp <> wrote:
>
>>We need our own rituals, not borrowed ones.
>>
>
>
> Walt
>
> I get the impression that you do not see the similarities of nature
> sounds and acoustic instruments. After all, what is the difference
> between the sound of acoustic instuments and the music made by nature
> (animals, plants, trees, wind, sea?)
acoustic instruments, particularly if you consider the instruments of
all musical traditions do make sounds like various parts of nature.
After all many of them originated way back in some form of imitating
natural sounds, before natural sounds could be recorded. But they are
much more limited. And in each culture a set of rules governs just what
combinations of sounds may be made, limiting them even more. Nature has
no such cultural limits, or even the design limits of acoustic instruments.
But, we are not talking about the sound itself. We are talking about the
culture of how it's recorded. For acoustic instruments, the recording is
governed by the same cultural rules (and extra rules of a recording
culture on top of that) as those that govern what sort of sound the
instruments are allowed to make.
By applying these rules to natural sound, where they don't belong, we
limit what we do. We distort what nature does. We often make less
accurate recordings. By telling a beginner that they must obey music
recording norms in nature recording we severely limit them. A beginner
may pick up a lot of good stuff from music recording, but needs to know
from the beginning that this is a restricted, specialist area and that
they don't have to restrict themselves to the same limits.
There are, of course, fundamentals of the physics of sound, and of the
design of equipment that apply to all. And information on those subjects
will help a great deal. It's when you apply it to a specific subject,
like music that you are moving into the techniques of that discipline.
> For instance classical music and prog have the same huge dynamic
> range
> of certain nature sounds, organs can go pretty low (16 Hz) piano can
> go very high. (Pedal) Slide guitar also.
>
> Let you inspire by the acoustic instruments.
>
> After all, they are not unnatural!
Homo sapiens is one of the animals on the planet. A natural inhabitant
of the planet. The sounds made by Homo sapiens are natural.
We do make the artificial distinction of saying that sounds made by Homo
sapiens are not included in natural sounds. That's our choice.
As a person who collects and listens to music from cultures all over the
world, I'm well aware of acoustic instruments.
> And for the links I provided; they were about DAW.
What nature recordists almost universally use is a general purpose
desktop computer with programming for processing sound. That's not a DAW
to me, a DAW is a custom designed computer system specifically for sound
processing alone, it's generally not even capable of more general use.
It also has this characteristic of being for the deep pockets folks. I
know it's become a fad to talk like you are using a DAW, but few are or
need to.
> Some info about mic technique give very usefull info, but a nature
> recordist sometimes has to translate the given info into the
> situation he / she encounters in the field. But the basiscs are not
> only true, they give you plenty of variations that give you good info
> that you can apply and experiment with.
If you are talking about mic technique info for music recording, that's
far too removed from nature recording for a lot of connection. I have a
nice thick book here on mic technique, all about how to mic a piano, or
a drumset, or a choir, etc. And all within a controlled, enclosed
acoustic environment to produce the culture's accepted norm in sound
from that source. Yes you can pick up a few hints, but it very thin on
useful info for mic use in nature recording. I looked and looked,
nothing about recording over uneven sources, water surfaces, the
equivalent of dozens of musical groups playing simultaneously with no
connection to each other. That's what I deal with. On rare occasions I
can apply a little bit about mic technique for vocals. The mic
techniques for large musical groups have a few similarities.
The problem with music recording is that it's done close in, nature
recording is not. When I bought the pair of MKH-20's I carried on a
discussion with someone who wanted them for music. One of his reasons
was having to record very distant subjects. Out to all of 15' or so. He
was rather amazed to find that my recording started there and went out
hundreds of yards if not more. I would be using the MKH-20's way beyond
what his experience prepared him for. And he was pretty experienced in
music recording on a professional level.
Probably the mic techniques you can find discussed that are most
applicable are those used on movie sets, particularly those of outdoor
movie sets. Not surprising since that's where we get the shotgun mics from.
Classical music recording also can be helpful, particularly when you get
into stereo. The stereo setups used there are good starting points.
Popular music is so deep into the decibel race now it's really become
very distorted recording. Both in the recording methods themselves, and
in the mastering methods. The filtering is more likely to be used to
introduce distorting qualities than to "clean" the sound up. That
processing is what most articles about processing music on computers are
talking about. Popular music. And in nature recording at least lip
service is paid to preserving the sound as close to original as possible.
I do realize there is a growing subgroup of nature recording that go out
and record sounds just to mix and mangle them with no worries about
preserving them in original form. If that's where someone is going in
nature recording, then lessons on processing popular music are a good
enough starting point. There is some interesting stuff being produced
this way. I've a few ideas in this area too, though I'm primarily a
purist wanting mostly to record as I find.
> It is a bit like driving a car; during the lessons you drive a car on
> certain roads. If the lesson was learnt well, you can apply the same
> driving skills with a different car on other roads under other
> circumstances than during the lesson!
I more look at it like current US method of learning to drive a car. The
lessons are on a automatic transmission car, on quiet paved roads, a few
hours at most. Do you really have the skills or knowledge from that to
drive the car on snow, deep sand, mud, off road, in the indy 500? Or
just with a stick shift, or a rainy day? I see the results of folks
thinking that they know driving from a few quick lessons every day.
Applying what they learned to new situations.
The point is simple, nature recording is not some branch of music
recording, or studio recording and being a expert in those areas will
not necessarily be predictive of success in nature recording. If
anything I view transplants from music or studio as being handicapped
somewhat by that. It's a separate thing, beginners need to understand
this. As a art form it's newer too, barely beginning on writing it's own
mic technique books and so on.
Walt
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