Month: May 2022

As I’ve been doing my essay, I’ve been learning more about different field recording practices and sort of deciding how I should do my own piece. As I’m currently unsure where I stand with it, I’m keen to use old analogue equipment but the eBay listings are very expensive and I’m not sure how I want to do this, so it kind of feels like I’m back at the drawing board.

When doing research for my essay which is around field recording practice I came across Peter Cusack and his work Sounds From Dangerous Places. His book simply asks the question “What can we learn by listening to the sounds of dangerous places?” it touches on places in the world that are home to extreme and hostile conditions, pollution, social injustice, military or geopolitical. I read his book alongside the two CDs of audio.

The Cd when loaded came with photos of the locations and the sounds. Peter speaks in the first section about Chornobyl and his experience visiting and understanding the disaster. He speaks on the damage it caused people, and that society should be worried about powerful technology such as nuclear reactors in case an accident happens like this one, how do gauge the positives to negatives? He speaks on the politics of the area, the comparisons with other nuclear disasters such as Fukushima, and the idea that a nuclear future isn’t safe for us. He also finishes his essay with a clear and beautiful quote, he coins the term sonic journalism. The idea of sonic journalism for Cusack is.

“Sonic Journalism is based on the idea that all sound, including non-speech, gives information about places and events and that careful listening provides valuable insights different from, but complementary to, visual images and language. This does not exclude speech but readdresses the balance towards the relevance of other sounds. In practice, field recordings become the means to achieve this. Recordings can, of course, be used in many ways. In my view, sonic journalism occurs when field recordings are allowed adequate space and time to be heard in their own right when the focus is on their original factual and emotional content, and when they are valued for what they are rather than as source material for further work as is often the case in around art or music. Sonic journalism can be specifically created or can refer to these qualities in recordings originally made for other purposes.”

Peter Cusack, Sounds from Dangerous Places

I found this whole idea of sonic journalism and using sound alongside other mediums really interesting as an artist myself. I’m curious about how I can potentially use sonic journalism in a piece of work, and how other mediums can benefit the use of sound in some way? I then went along with the book and started listening to the CD alongside the photography and explanation of the places.

The CD companies texts and photos in the book, some of my favourite sounds within it were.

2. Ferris Wheel, Pripyat, the sound of the Ferris wheel creaking and standing in the wind, recorded with a contact mic attached to the frame.

3. Power cable crackle, recording the energy going into the exclusion zone to still run the old nuclear reactor, showcasing how this area isn’t as absent as some think.

6. Cuckoo and radiometer, I found this juxtaposition between nature and the radiometer so powerful, the idea that death is being measured to see how dangerous the area is, alongside nature always prevailing in these circumstances.

8. People, where should I look for you? In a poem recorded of a local in the area, she speaks about her love for the area, nature and the sadness of leaving.

The second part of the book is titled Caspian Oil and Uk Sites, he speaks that his trip to Bibi Heybat in Azerbaijan sparked his idea for this project and lead him to look at current UK sites as well as Chornobyl. He says something that strikes me as important “I also visited UK sites where, on a smaller but still significant scale, sound indicates not only environmental dynamics but, sometimes, the responses of people involved.”

It also continues to other Uk sites such as Sellafield a huge nuclear plant. Cusack speaks on how he was searched twice while recording for these sounds and makes a comparison with the sound of nuclear power plants as the sound of authority in our society. “constantly present-unchanging, featureless, soulless, utterly authoritarian and rarely touched by the small sounds of life.

I’ve found his work so powerful in understanding specific issues, I’m interested perhaps if I could do sonic journalism for my practical element as well. I think his ideas of recording these places really touched me and my mentality with sound and political stance. Some of these recordings have really spoken to me, and the power that sound can transmit through them. I also admire his idea of letting the sounds do the work, that sonic journalism isn’t perhaps the idea to record sounds to use for another piece of art but for the sounds themselves to be listened to and understood as recordings themselves. I want to look a bit more into other works of Peter Cusack If possible. I also perhaps want to visit the same sites in the UK, maybe not all but the closest sites and experience it for myself, see if the locations have changed and see if I can create an updated version. I do however speculate that this will take a lot of time and i only have two weeks and a few days until the hand in.

This is the first post towards my practical element explaining where I currently stand with this second section. I initially and still am doing research towards my essay which I have written 2000 words. I have established after a tutorial that perhaps it’s a vague essay speaking about a lot of field recording practices. I should instead focus on the two practices that really talk to me.

There has been a lot of research on my practical element which I wish to discuss here. Initially when being told about the two-part hand in I decided that field recordings were a practice I was into a lot, the aural cultures hand in my audio paper spoke around field recordings and sound designing cities and the possibilities that lay within this. I thought it would be interesting to research field recording practice and then let the essay dictate the practical element. I am now finding myself at a crossroads where I feel they should grow together instead of one dictating the other.

My initial ideas came from reading In The Field The Art of Field Recording and reading about all the varied practices amongst these practitioners. One that stood out the most was Annea Lockwood and the interview curated by Cathy Lane. She speaks on her project A Sound Map Of the Hudson River where she travelled along this river recording the river and all its beauty. I then listened to her work on youtube and I was fascinated by the differences in the river and the context explained by her. I was also interested in her use of equipment, something I hadn’t really thought about. I have been using Sound Devices Mix Pre 10 recorder and high tech microphones such as the Sennheiser 416 from the university for my own recordings.

I typically use more vintage or analogue equipment for my own practice in music outside of university and when Annea spoke about her using an Uher tape machine and wishing for a Nagra tape machine, which I’d used in the composition lab and heard many others using it for the first field recordings in films. I was curious about the use of whether analogue equipment or obsolete equipment is still relevant in this day and age. Annea spoke on using a Nakamichi Cassette deck and a Sony TCD5M. So I wanted to carry on my research into obsolete/vintage field recorders and what they offered.

I’ve written a rough first draft introduction that will definitely change, i wanted to write this as when i stated a few posts earlier. I really want the essay to feed into my practical element and i find the more i reflect on it the more i can create ideas for my sound piece.

Historically our way of understanding our environment and the issues in our society have been largely through sight, facts and statistics. Some scholars have even gone on to say our society is ocular-centric. The Sound Arts field is constantly pushing the ideas that sound and listening is critical to understanding our environment from a different perspective. “Our ears don’t have eyelids” An idea spoken by “insert name here” that unlike sight we are constantly processing sound without at times being aware. Our ears are always waiting for cues to respond to. Field recording as a practice has also largely increased throughout the years, where as in the past recording outside of a studio context was bulky, heavy, and very inconvenient with equipment such as the Nagra tape reel to reel machine it wasn’t viable for the common person to afford such equipment as it was terribly expensive. This made the privilege of recording very high and people didn’t have a lot of access to them. Moving on towards the modern day, 2022. We now have phones that can record better than the past equipment could, longer battery life on our recorders, even new equipment such as Sound devices mix pre 6 and Zoom F8N that now record up to 32 bit 192khz means that there is huge accessibility for recordings. This has meant many sound artists now use this for capturing audio to understand our environment, for political messages, to understand the ecology of our environments and other aspects. This essay will begin by speaking on the idea of why field recordings are even important? How is listening different to other senses and why is worth using our ears to understand our environment separately and combined with other senses. Then it will lead into Sound walks / Sound mapping, speaking on how artists use field recordings as a way of situating themselves in their environments, how sound walks and mapping can help us understand and learn from environments when we are just able to listen to, what are the strengths and weaknesses? Further more an analysis of Red a political group who uses field recordings to expose political issues within our society facing discrimination, racism and sexism and how sound can expose that. Chapter four will focus on science and how we can use field recordings as a tool to learn, with equipment such as the hydrophone. Chapter five ecological sound arts and field recording uses in this field. And finally chapter six sonic journalism. Then this essay will conclude on why field recording practices are important for us to have a different perspective on our environment 

Hollie Buhagiar

This is Hollie’s bio.

Hollie Buhagiar is a multi award-winning Gibraltarian composer based in London, who specialises in crafting bespoke scores for film, TV and Games. She has worked on a plethora of projects for shorts, feature length films and series alongside Grammy and Academy Award winning engineers in the finest studios across London. Graduating from Leeds College of Music with first-class honours in Music production, Hollie continued on to complete a Masters at the National Film and Television School. 

Throughout her career she has been hailed for her unique and varied sonic palette as well as her ability to create fascinating scores that approach traditional composition from a new and exciting perspective. Hollie’s experience spans worldwide and includes work for the likes of Amazon,Sky, Channel 4, BFI, NOWNESS, Creative England, Tate, The Guardian, Film London, VICE and BBC. Her projects have received critical acclaim winning various prestigious awards, these include a Porsche Award, a Gold British Arrow and the McLaren Award for Best British Animation, as well as being a two time Unity Awards nominee. She was also honoured with Gibraltar’s first ever Extraordinary Achievement Award for her work in the arts. 

Poles Apart

After reading her bio I’m a bit confused as to whether she’s a sound designer or a music/score composer. When watching her portfolio I first approached Poles Apart as the animation interested me. The sound design is great, I listened to the bear’s sound effects and foley and it was really well created. As well as this the music in the background of the video. A simple guitar arpeggiated alongside haunting vocals really stood out. I do think this was her inclusion in this as she comes from a music background.

In The Grass

I now hopefully have realised that she is the one creating mainly the scores. This track over the video is very similar in terms of vocal performance to the first Animated video. Again great vocals and I’m really impressed with her tone and pitch, alongside the production. I’d be interested to know how she got into doing this work.

Astilbe – Hollie Buhagiar

I listened to this video on his Portfolio page. I assume she composed and wrote the song. I don’t see her in the actual video, but I can gather that this is her work. it’s very well composed, and the music theory is also really done well.

Post Lecture Reflection

Hollie begins by speaking about her practice, she works in Film, TV, theatre and games, as a composer and occasionally session vocalist. She grew up in Gibraltar and there was a thriving music scene but no film or games industry. There aren’t many compositional opportunities where she grew up and In Gibraltar, she specialised in performance studies and music. Through that, she then went to Leeds College of music and studied music production. It wasn’t just for film it was for numerous genres of music. In her first year, she decided to try film, it was the most foreign thing for her and she had never thought of it as a career path. She tried it and it became a lightbulb moment. It became really obvious to her once she realised her mother was a painter and no wonder she ended up making music for visuals.

Then for her final year, she created an album of library music which she then used to apply to the national film and tv school. As soon as she started studying at NFTS she was working part-time alongside it. And by the time she graduated she went straight into full-time work, and she finds herself lucky to have a very smooth experience from student to professional life and finds it lucky to find great creatives to network and collaborate with as it’s hard to find that. Since then she’s been working full time in the industry. 

She’s had the privilege of working with numerous companies and even been part of projects that have won awards such as Gold British arrow win and animation that won a BAFTA.

She recently scored a documentary film. It’s a film about an old man who thinks he’s found treasure based on the text of Dantes inferno. He leads himself to Iceland to try and find the treasure and the film takes us deeper into trying to understand what is this treasure? The movie is set in Italy and Iceland and is set between old and modern. There are so many musical genres and styles in this she says. Musically she started when the brief was very vague and had a synopsis. The narrative is so influential of itself that she came up with a lot of different ideas and that was used in the final film in its form. She used everything in the pieces, vocals, pianos, violins, and chants. She used a flute player’s improvisation in a score as well that they stumble upon in the documentary. 

She then shows us a piece she made for the Tate installation. Musically she feels it gave a good gauge for the style of the piece. This piece is very different to the first one, in the sense that it has this style throughout and it’s a different approach. In this, the music is supporting the visuals whereas in finding fool the music is the main object at times. They wanted to keep it very organic and the visuals sort of demand it. The music was clean, very organic, predominantly live instruments and sweet. Tapping into this wonderful and peaceful quality that Billie has in her presence and in the way that she speaks. This was an installation piece but it was just a video played in the Tate, she feels that in the documentary, balancing the dialogue and music is heavily important. She finds it easy to over-bake it and be heavy-handed. She found herself really taking time to understand each shot and in-between dialogue the music was key to be there and it also needed to allow space for the audience to just sit with the piece. She created textures that sit under the dialogue and they sit and support but do not distract. Adding pace and momentum to make sure it doesn’t get repetitive. Most of the instruments arrive and stay for a while, she sees them as textural waves of instruments and sounds throughout the dialogue that creates this energy that isn’t too distracting from what she’s saying. And it’s a fine line.

For the next clip, she wanted the listener to feel like they were in a gladiator fight. There were shouts, and a clink of armour merged with the epic music surrounding it. Trying to tell this wonderful tale, and also connect to the characters that are playing these games. It was a funny combination of going playful with the visuals and reducing to the wonderful people that play the games. They made bold music for it, a honky tonk piano style piece, another one was a big band brassy piece that was really energetic. It’s always great when the soundtrack runs across something that is cohesive and runs along with other things in the film. 

She now moves on to fiction, it’s a coming of age romantic thriller piece. The score plays with diegetic and non-diegetic themes. Sometimes the actions of the actors are in the score. This film is really fun, really stylised and experimental, especially the music. In the build-up towards the end of the clip, the highest emotional peak of the film. The music is very abstract and it’s been brought up to that point. She worked alongside the sound designer quite intensely and they wanted to create a world that was unified. So they really played in how they could make this world fluid, and intense and she had a lot of things swelling and haze the character through the music and composition. She felt this was a great example of how to use your voice in a more abstract form in the soundtrack. The soundtrack at the end is heard at the very start, foreshadowing the end. And the idea of reincarnation was prominent in the film and this way the music/film had a loop.

I found Hollie’s work to be very professional, thoughtful and captivating. Her techniques and thought process demonstrated was very demonstrating for us students and I believe it helped me understand more of how it works in her industry.