Posted by: "Wild Sanctuary"
>
> Old, it certainly is. This is a pretty good example of a very
> elitist, academic and limited perspective - one shared by very few
> serious recordists and true artists. Problem is that Rothenberg (name
> spelled wrong in the article) does not now and never did understand
> the "art" of natural soundscapes and what they represent. (Either
> that or he refuses to acknowledge what is essential).
I certainly take exception that the more complex our manipulation of a
recording the more artistic or desirable it is. I take the exact
opposite view, the closer we can get in a recording to what we hear the
better, even though that is never what we hear and even less what the
actual sounds were. Even what we hear is already processed to something
else by our brains. None of us hear the same thing. So, post processing
is more making the recording sound like we think it should sound than
how it actually sounded. Or maybe even getting our particular playback
system to sound like we think it should. His order of value is upside down.
Humans have a certain arrogance about themselves. This comes from too
much separating ourselves from our biologic nature. Nature is not our
invention and plaything, we are nature's invention. And the results of
the misunderstanding are often far from nice.
> All such recordings are an illusion, at best. Sometimes one can
> capture the essence of a place with a constant stream of data.
> Sometimes not. The biggest claim by some is that there is "pure"
> stuff out there. The only thing "pure" about this claim is the horsy
> manure of the premise. There is no "unaltered" sound. Every choice a
> recordist makes in the field, whether mic system, data capture tech,
> where to aim the mics, what time of day/season one records, which
> parts of the data to include in a program (whether CD, media for
> video, or public space performance) constitutes a form of edit. A CD
> allows 74 minutes of stereo audio data at 16 bit/44.1kHz. Choose the
> segment you'll include and, voila!, a major edit. Of the 31 natural
> soundscapes I've created for CD media, four are made up of
> composites. So Rothenberg, again, has not done his homework.
It goes a lot deeper than what we do to the sound we hear. By the time
the sound gets to our ears the natural environment has already greatly
modified it. What's the pure call of a frog? Is it what you get
recording right at the frog, or at a distance that represents the
distance the female is called from, or is it the combination of that
frog and all the rest of his species calling nearby? And then there is
the complex interweaving of calls of all the species in the community.
Is the call of the frog pure only when these are included? And do we
consider the echos and absorption of the environment part of the call or
not? The female certainly can hear some of those. And her hearing is not
ours. There are frogs that engage in sonic war for breeding, many toads
call intending to mess up the directionality of the calls of rivals, the
toad that can call the longest wins when his call breaks free of his
rivals. Record one toad calling and you do not have the essence of this.
These are all decisions facing a nature recordist out there with his
equipment in hand. Separate from knowing and understanding what the
equipment will do.
> We have to think of what data best represents a sense of place and
> time and represent it to the best of our art and craft. The
> Rothenbergs of the world do not set the standards. They have no
> authority in that department. You're the only ones who do.
And thank goodness for that!
Walt
"Microphones are not ears,
Loudspeakers are not birds,
A listening room is not nature."
Klas Strandberg
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