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Re: dawn chorus show

Subject: Re: dawn chorus show
From: "Geoff Sample" orphean2001
Date: Sun Feb 25, 2007 9:22 am ((PST))
Volker, I should point out that the audio clips on my website are the  
actual field recordings of birds, not the audio from the installation  
at the Baltic, which is produced by humans. There has been no  
fiddling with time on the field recordings, nor any editing. The  
tracks have been panned within the stereo field to reflect the  
position of the mic in our recording space; levels were fairly even  
across the tracks, except where an individual bird was very close to  
a mic, then it was lowered.

I'm interested that Klas found the one he listened to stressful.  
There are two factors that might contribute to this.

First consider how these recordings were made. An array of 14 mics  
spaced out over an area of roughly 100m diameter, and placed in  
positions where we expected birds to sing. In any one sequence only a  
few birds were close over mics, others would be some distance off.

Normally one hears the spacial array of a whole group of singers from  
a single perspective and the more distant singers will sound more  
distant and have less high frequency content in the sound that  
reaches the listener. In this recording it's like having 14 ears on  
the end of long tentacles, so the multiplicity of individual sound  
sources are less degraded. This could well contribute an overbearing  
effect on listening to the recording.

But the second factor is simply down to the nature of the dawn  
chorus. Personally I find the peak of a dawn chorus in a woodland  
edge/scrub/suburban garden type habitat pretty cacophonous (in our  
temperate region). Sure it's an impressive phenomenon, but not the  
best time to appreciate the beauty of the birdsong - that comes  
later, once the intensity of the first wave is over. Say after 5am.

This was one of the aspects we wanted to document accurately - how  
all the individual parts contribute to the whole in a real world  
chorus. One of the things we found was that there was more movement  
than we expected during this first wave (when it's still difficult to  
see) and birds seemed to sing from different spots than they would  
later.

Our scientific adviser on the project was Peter MacGregor who had  
also tried recording with a multi-mic array as part of a University  
of Copenhagen study. They had 6 mics and were researching the use of  
space by singing blackbirds. He said they found it impossible to work  
during the dawn chorus since there was just too much going on and  
soon switched to working with great tits (much simpler song) later in  
the morning.

We're hoping to put together a discussion about all this on radio to  
coincide with the Bristol airing of the show.

What we were agreed on is that the dawn chorus is a more complex  
phenomenon than is generally given credit, particularly in such  
densely populated habitats as woodland edge. There is intense  
competition for acoustic space and it could well be that this is the  
most stressful period of singing for the birds themselves. So maybe  
Klas is close to the state of bird!

Finally, we ended up using the Brada session for the show, mainly  
because we had 3 male blackbirds singing synchronously for a few  
periods within our miced arena. Which was unusually close together.  
So maybe that also is contributing to the overall competitive and  
sonic tension. One thing for sure, it's a dense tangle of sound. From  
my experience in selling CDs of my recordings (stereo), if someone  
wants some relaxing birdsong to listen to, I tend to steer them away  
from a literal *dawn* chorus.

It might make for a more listenable mix if I treated it more like a  
symphony and picked one or two soloists and backed off the other  
channels. In many ways I don't think this is an audio document that  
bears easy listening, it's more something to investigate.

Hope this maybe clarifies a bit what the recordings represent, Geoff.


Geoff Sample

Wildsong Studios
Northumberland, UK


http://www.wildsong.co.uk







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