The Nature Sounds Society held its 21st annual Field Recording
Workshop last weekend. I thought I'd report on it here.
It was the 16th workshop for me. It almost didn't happen; the NSS
leadership has been decimated by a number of key people moving on.
Founder Paul Matzner was unable to attend because of a family
emergency; board member Don Benson has moved to Oregon and pillar of
organization Bill Young was unable to make it; "tech guys" Rudy
Trubitt and Will Mitchell are off working on projects. The board had
decided to skip it this year but a few die-hards insisted, and a plan
was made for a reduced-expectations workshop that proved to be a
success. The element that was cut was the usual three or four expert
speakers. Eliminating the speakers cut a huge amount of
organizational effort (phone calls), and honoraria (small!) and
travel expenses from the budget, so the workshop was able to stay in
the black despite a small group of attendees. We used the time for
more hands-on work, which was fine with everybody.
We stayed at the San Francisco State University's Field Station at
Yuba Pass, on highway 49 in the Sierras. The staff were Sharon Perry,
chair, assisted by me, Dan Dugan, Greg Weddig, Blair Collins, Raven
Simons and Scott Simons. Attendees included Susay Alyward, Susan
Anderson, Cliff Caruthers, Paul Hardy, Don Hart, Lyman Miller, and
Tad Rollow.
Friday afternoon we registered and got set up in platform tents.
Greg, Tad, and I set up a Mackie mixer contributed by Performance
Audio of Salt Lake, an LCD projector contributed by BBI Engineering,
and my VCR and DVD players for playback. After dinner in the dining
hall I led a session discussing advances in technology for field
recording. Greg Weddig and Tad Rollow contributed a lot. We talked
about mics (not much happening) and recorders (a plethora of new
models).
Next we went to the lab room downstairs and unpacked a Santa's sack
of demo equipment contributed by Leo's Audio and Music Technologies
of Oakland. They let us try an AT4071A long shotgun mic, an AT4073A
short shotgun, a Beachtek DXA8 preamp, a Fostex FR2, an Edirol R-1
and an Edirol R-4, a Marantz PMD660, and a Tascam DA-P1. We also had
a Nagra ARES-BB+ contributed by Nagra USA, and a pair of Josephson
omnis with a Jecklin disc contributed by David Josephson. I brought
along a Sound Devices MP-2, several Sharp MD recorders, and my four
Shure 183s. The California Library of Natural Sounds contributed a
Sony parabolic dish. Everybody got set up with what they wanted to
use for our dawn chorus recording the next morning.
Before retiring early we watched Hush, a student film about Paul
Matzner made last year, Bernie Krause's short about natural quiet,
and the Albert's Lyrebird DVD.
Saturday morning we were roused at 3:15 AM and got going in caravan
at 3:45. We drove down to Sierra Valley, an incredibly rich
high-altitude marshland. It isn't an ideal recording location because
of road traffic, train traffic, and a nearby small airport, but this
morning we had no trains or planes and only a few episodes of road
traffic. It's a great location for training because you can record
all kinds of species from the gravel roads and be near help with gear
and technique issues. There were sandhill cranes nearby. After
sunrise and a tailgate breakfast we moved to the Marble Hot Springs
Road Bridge, where the mix is dominated by swallows and yellow-headed
blackbirds.
We went on to a rest stop on highway 70, then up to Madora Lake.
Despite a wet winter the main stream feeding this lovely little lake
has been stopped for some reason (golf courses for Graegle?), and the
lake is turning to meadow. We hoped to record the bullfrogs we've
heard there in previous years. There were only one or two bullfrogs,
but we enjoyed the trail around the lake.
After naps back at camp we had lunch and two workshops. I led a
microphone directivity workshop that's always a big hit. I set up a
pink noise source on the back deck of the dining hall, and on a table
fifty feet away we set up a selection of various mics and stereo
arrays. This year I had the Sony dish, the A-T long shotgun, a Sony
957 M-S mic, Greg Weddig's Schoeps ORTF array, the Josephson Jecklin
disc, and my spaced omnis (183s) with barrier (neck) vest system.
Everybody went along listening to each system and moved the mics
around to learn the directivity patterns.
Next Lyman Miller and Don Hart led a new workshop, a "make your own
windscreen" session in the lab room. Bill Young had prepared pre-made
handles, and after some initial hesitation several cheap but
serviceable windscreen/suspension rigs were made out of bits of PVC
sewer pipe, hardware cloth, rubber bands, and fake fur fabric.
After dinner we caravanned to Bear Trap Meadows for a night recording
session. I set up a 4-channel Rich Peet style array and recorded for
an hour hoping frogs would start up as it got dark. Alas there were
no frogs nearby, some in the distance, but I got a good quiet
ambience recording.
Sunday morning we rose at 4:00 AM and drove up to Yuba Pass to get a
forest dawn chorus there. Greg Weddig set up his 4-channel "Gregga
Tree" in the meadow, and I found a logging clearing part-way up Radio
Hill to set up my 4-channel array. I got a good morning birds
session, but only the first few minutes were 4-channel because I'd
forgotten to put a fresh battery in my rear channels recorder.
We had breakfast back at camp. The participants were very good about
packing up all the demo equipment in its original boxes. Sharon Perry
did an abbreviated version of Dave Schirokauer's (NPS) Power Point
presentation explaining a lot of the technical terms involved in
sound monitoring.
Out under the trees Sharon Perry led a training "attended monitoring"
session with the group. Raven Simons was the timekeeper, calling out
ten second intervals. Two people recorded sound levels, and the rest
entered codes for the sounds they heard on worksheets for each
interval. This manual system is going to be replaced by PDA software
that's currently in beta testing at Muir Woods. This is the kind of
work volunteers can do to help the Park Service inventory and monitor
natural soundscapes in the parks.
A good time was had by all. I was exhausted, and grateful when Lyman
Miller led a few survivors to the hot springs near Sierraville.
-Dan Dugan
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"Microphones are not ears,
Loudspeakers are not birds,
A listening room is not nature."
Klas Strandberg
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