a sound collage of one of the last hot days of Summer 2022 spent  listening to bugs and watching a huge storm consume Montréal from afar.

location: Parc Frédéric-Back

Heat Death

Dawn on 1st May, recorded on a small wetland by my cabin in the Black River Valley, Sweden. Mix of wetland and forest birds.

Dawn Black River Valley Sweden

Very heavy rain, thunder (CA 08  ORTF)

This is, to me, the bravest LBJ (little brown job) of all. During the breeding season Meadow pipits perform what is know as ‘parachute’ display flights, in order to attract a mate. It literally gives itself away as if singing ‘i’m all yours, take me!’ (or the peregrine falcon will…). You can hear the beautiful descending notes in this recording, made on a windy day.

Species: Meadow pipit (Anthus pratensis)
Date and time of recording: 16 March 2021, 9am
Location: Aghatirourke, County Fermanagh, Ireland
Habitat: Moorland

Gear: 
Sennheiser MKH30 and MKH8060 in mid-side
Sound Devices 744t recorder

Nikon D750 Camera
amzn.to/43glcHo

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Lens
amzn.to/3IArSGy

Tamron 150-600mm Telephoto Lens
https://amzn.to/3IFMFZE

Wildlife hide tent
amzn.to/3TCIkwo

Rode VideoMicro On-camera Directional Microphone
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K&F Tripod
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Meadow Pipit of Aghatirourke

ZOOM H1e Essential - Cetti's Warbler clipped and then recovered with 32-bit recording.
Recording carried out using a parabolic microphone https://www.naturesound.it/
As often happens with Cetti's Warbler, its explosive song causes the recording to clip. In this case I was able to recover the file thanks to the 32-bit float recording of the Zoom H1e Essential. The microphone capsules used are the PUI AOM 5024 inserted in a stereo separation baffle disc inside a 53cm parabolic dish (see in naturesound.it) and they perfectly held the impulsive and strong song without going into distortion.
The file can be downloaded and therefore you can see that by normalizing the first clipped part to 0dB, you obtain a perfectly usable signal, exactly like in the second part of the already normalized file.

ZOOM H1e Essential - Cetti's Warbler clipped - recovered with 32-bit float recording

Nightingale singing with cuckoo who is exploring the place looking for the nightingale's nest.
Tascam X8, Naturesound.it parabolic microphone with AOM5024 stereo capsules. 

Common Nightingale (with Tascam X8)singing with Cuckoo looking for the nightingale's nest

The gentle sounds of wind blowing through the tree canopy and across the forest floor. (beech, pine)

Wind Soundscape - Pine and Mixed Woodland

Lift off! This was spectacular beyond what I could have imagined. The starling murmuration at the Avalon Marshes in Somerset. Hundreds of thousands of birds departing from their roost on the reed beds. The numbers are hard to comprehend. First the silence - a timid chorus at this time of year - then the starlings start to chatter. Suddenly there is a build up of rumbling bass, like wind hitting the microphone or something about to erupt. Then the waves across the field, like ocean waves in the distance, both visually and sonically. And the lift off. The rumble becomes a satisfying silky carpet enveloping you overhead.

This repeats 3-4 times as different waves of departing starlings take flight. MAGICAL.

I edited 30 seconds at the end from when they've all left, to give perspective, so you can appreciate the decibels such a gathering produces.

Location: Shadwick Heath, Somerset, UK
Date and time: 25 February 2024, 7am
Habitat: Reed beds, Flooded plains

Gear (Associate Links):
Sound Devices 744T
Sennheiser MKH8060 and MKH30 in Mid-Side rig.
Nikon Z6-II https://amzn.to/4aWjeyZ
Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 DG OS HSM https://amzn.to/4bmU24t
Sigma 70-200 F2.8 https://amzn.to/3Wpdrxu

Starling Murmuration Dawn Lift-Off

I recorded our local Pipistrelle bats from my back garden last night - both 'common' and 'soprano' varieties.  It wasn't until I listened to my recordings this morning that I realised I had also captured the sound of a passing Noctule bat too! A real delight to hear one flying high overhead.  Bats make sounds too high in frequency for humans to hear - so the recordings need to be processed - usually in one of two ways.  Hetrondyne mixing - to shift the pitch of the sounds down in frequency to something that humans can hear. Or, 'time expansion' - basically stretching out the 'best bits' of the sounds in the time domain by slowing them right down.  Time expansion is similar to what is sometimes now called 'granular processing'. I used some of my 'music processing' equipment to process these sounds - once I had made a small library of the bat sound samples that I liked.  I turned it into a 10 minute 'symphony' using a variety of tape loops, pitch-shifting, granular synthesis, delays and a little bit of reverb.  I'm still experimenting with the mix between 'light touch' processing of my field sound recordings and something a bit more 'musical' - You might hear a hint of  a I–V–vi–IV chord progression of the Noctule towards the end of this symphony!  Recorded using an an Echo Touch Pro 2 microphone at 384 kHz (samples per second).  Equipment used for sound processing included a Chase Bliss Habit and Mood MK II, together with a Hologram Electronics Microcosm looper 'effects pedal'. Some reverb was added via both the Mood and Microcosm. No DAW was used - I mixed it all 'live' from the clips chopped on my Koala sampler. Simples! 
Photo of a nearby tree, taken in 720nm infrared.

Bat Symphony

Wild Boar And Boarlet

extract from de music CD "winter landscape" - Improvisation music project by Alessandro Olla and Paolo Sanna 

winter landscape_06

Hi, I'm Angel, a Sound Artist and Field Recordist. I draw inspiration from the natural world for my work. I run SoundArk, offering Audio Production and Post Production services. I am based in the United Kingdom, and have been lucky to travel the world through my trade.

www.soundarkstudios.com
contact@soundarkstudios.com - angel@soundarkstudios.com - angel.perezgrandi@gmail.com
Instagram & Twitter: @SoundArkStudios 
#SoundDesign #SoundEffects #AudioPostProduction #FilmSoundDesigner
#FieldRecording #WildlifeSound #WildlifeSoundRecordist #LocationAudio #LocationSound #Filmmaking #GameAudio

Meadow Pipit of Aghatirourke

SoundArk. | Ángel Pérez Grandi

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