That's exactly the kind of Hempton bull-shit I was speaking of
yesterday (trying to be kind).
40 years ago this year, when I first began recording in the field, I
was also working primarily as a professional musician and was doing
an album for Warner Brothers with my late music partner, Paul Beaver
(we introduced the synthesizer to pop music and film, BTW). Titled
"In A Wild Sanctuary" - the first album on ecology and the very first
to use natural sounds as a component of orchestration, it was my
first attempt to capture sounds in what I then naively considered
"the wild." The equipment was primitive. Our expertise outdoors was
next to nil. When I tried to capture the sound of a nearby stream,
having brought the recording back to the studio for editing, it
sounded terrible. Contributing to many films (139 features total over
the years including "Rosemary's Baby," "Apocalypse Now," "Shipping
News," "Castaway," etc., etc.,) I was more than a little familiar
with Foley techniques (i. e. creating sound-alike efx out of wholly
different sources). Mid-winter during our 1968 production, I was left
with no alternative other than to capture the running water sound
from whatever source I could. Turned out to be a toilet in my San
Francisco house. And so I did. "Guilty, yer honor." When I first met
Hempton, a charming fellow, by the way, I shared with him this little
story in confidence as a singular example of what kinds of extremes
we had to go to in the early years. Somehow or other, Hempton, in his
uninformed arrogance and desperation, has offered this extraordinary
crime as evidence that my work, in particular, and compared with his
"purist" contentions, has been loaded with studio production
techniques that obviate the purist mantle with which he has anointed
himself and traded upon for years. This is really annoying, folks.
It's also misleading and very stupid. I can assure you that nothing
anyone does is "pure." You choose a mic system that you like the
sound and space of (a form of edit [decision one]). You choose the
time and place to record (another edit). You choose which direction
your mics will face (yet another edit). Then, if you're creating
media formats out of your field recordings, you're editing, again, as
to which parts of which clips you'll finally use. This is not to
castigate Hempton's work or result. Some of it is magical. It's the
attitude that sucks and he's got to find another way to set himself
apart other than dinging others for their good effort. It does not
serve him or his work well.
Bernie Krause
On Sep 12, 2008, at 11:31 AM, Kim Cascone wrote:
> http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=3D9AFG9B8gDrk
>
> I'm watching the short trailer from the documentary about Gordon
> Hempton aka Soundtracker Juan Carlos posted to the naturerecordists
> list
> and towards the end of the clip Mr. Hempton says something
> interesting:
>
> '...there were some major nature sound series that were selling
> mountain streams that were in fact recordings out of a toilet,
> that were selling mountain air, mountain breeze that were recordings
> made from elevator shafts...'
>
> I'm interested in hearing people's reactions to this
> statement... thoughts?
>
>
>
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