I recorded the sound walk the following day and the outcomes were different. When recording at first I realised how much the binaural headphones changed my listening. I would say in a bad way, they made it difficult to hear anything at all, to be honest. If the headphone gain was pushed even any sort of audible volume it started feeding back into the microphone part of it. So I had to balance the levels and make sure they were around -12 dBFS.
I found myself less engaged with the environment when recording and more getting worried when something loud would walk past me, and if it was peaking on the recorder. I also walked much faster this time, doing the route in 30 minutes instead of one hour. Perhaps the fact I did the same walk impacted my enjoyment of it as I knew what to expect.
I later then put the recording into Logic and listened through the thirty-minute recording and found it enjoyable, but it didn’t strike me as anything greatly interesting. Perhaps I’m not listening enough?
Following on from this I want to attempt another field recording practice and see. I’ve been doing research into Annea Lockwoods project sound mapping the Hudson River and I had an idea to do the same for the Thames. Perhaps shorter as the length is huge, but a small section. From Richmond park around to where the river opens up. A 3hr or so cycle. I’ve been interested in minimalism when recording as well recently. I feel the last term I was obsessed with recording with 32 bit and very quiet preamps, and now I’m more interested in portability and using what I have. A small zoom H5 and the new Hydrophones we have at LCC.