Since receiving the Feeney Fellowship late last year, I have made contact with some very exciting and experienced sound artists who work with field recordings. I’d describe my compositional practice as being primarily concerned with instrumental music, but I do dabble with music production and samples. I wish to learn more about this realm to support for-Wards project, which invites communities to capture field recordings in their neighbourhoods.
I used field recordings with communities for the first time in a THSH music education project called Pipe Up in 2008 based around the organ in Coventry cathedral. We used freeware and captured found sounds from the organ as a soundtrack for animations young people created.
Working with field recordings is a growing interest, and it is a real honour to have this opportunity to learn from such inspirational figures. At the beginning of January 2016, I met up with sound artist Duncan Chapman. We spent a rather relaxed morning exploring and recording sounds round Northfield district, starting out in Longbridge, and then used the afternoon to talk and listen to the various ways found sounds have been used by composers.
It was great to learn and see how Duncan engaged with the environment. We both admitted how as field recordists there is an inner conflict about how you capture certain sounds, for example, the sound of tiles being removed from a semi-detached house in Longbridge coupled with bird song sounded ace, but we both admitted to wanting the sound of the man doing the tiling work’s radio to stop playing. We spoke about the awareness of our very human tendency, to want to control our sonic environment and filter out sounds we didn’t find interesting
This week I meet with Janek Schaefer. More news to follow! Here’s his latest radio interview.