How do you process your field recordings?

[Julio Di Benedetto]

Just got myself a Sony PCM D50 recorder and was wondering how others handle their field recordings......

Do you load the files directly into your daw via usb or another digital input and leave the recordings unprocessed?

Do you run the audio through external fx and then into your daw? This is something I have in mind to do.

Do you load your field recordings into samplers, soft or hard, for manipulation....... programs such as Camel audio's Alchemy, SS Kyma come to mind and Synths such as Roland's V-Synth
or the Nord Wave that can use sampled sounds as oscillators.

There's a myriad of possibilities, and as I have no experience with this I would be very interested to hear how others approach this.

Thanks.....Julio

[mystified]

It has always helped me to dabble with eq-- often the hiss of field recordings can be minimized with the right eq or smoothing effects. So however you choose to do this-- external or on-board, it may help.

I have found that sometimes reverb can be magically nice for these, and sometimes it simply ruins them.

I also recommend you keep a raw copy of the recording, just for reference and in case effects go awry.

--Thomas

[Julio Di Benedetto]

Thanks Thomas......I can see how a backup of the original file is a must, after all it is a sonic picture thats captured and not easy to duplicate, if at all.

[mgriffin]

I would definitely record in the field without FX. You can always add them later, though I too find any kind of spacial FX, anything that messes with the stereo field at all, often ruins the sense of being there.

[APK]

I put all field recordings into sample folders on my daw, by date and place/event if important.

I use Reaper which has a very good sample preview mode. I then drag and drop to add any sample to a track.

I tend to put all recorded samples into the same track (unless they have to overlap). What I do to them obviously depends on the music, but I always treat them non-destructively in Reaper rather than edit them beforehand. Reaper lets you use individual clip effects, which is very practical for this sort of material.

[Seren]

Keep copies of the original sounds, then play around with them as much or as little as you like....

Sometimes a lot of crafting can create a whole new sound....

[Julio Di Benedetto]

Thanks for the comments everyone

though I too find any kind of spacial FX, anything that messes with the stereo field at all, often ruins the sense of being there.

I like that Mike......"the sense of being there", what a great thing to be able to incorporate that into ones music, and I can see how it could be messed up with too much processing.

Sometimes a lot of crafting can create a whole new sound....

This is something I look forward to also.

I wonder if field recording is akin to taking photographs, where you have a certain location in mind or you wander without direction and capture as you go, this is how I have taken pictures in the past. lets see if the same applies.

[Seren]

I wonder if field recording is akin to taking photographs, where you have a certain location in mind or you wander without direction and capture as you go, this is how I have taken pictures in the past. lets see if the same applies.

Both work for me.....

[doombient]

Thanks to loads and loads of human pollution around, I find myself editing my field recordings to get them as human-free as possible (no cars passing by in the distance, no airplanes overhead, no dogs barking in the neighbourhood, you name it). Then I process them in some sampling unit to see what I can squeeze out of them. Crickets, for a start, sound spooky when played back two or three octaves below their original pitch.

Stephen

[Julio Di Benedetto]

Thanks to loads and loads of human pollution around, I find myself editing my field recordings to get them as human-free as possible (no cars passing by in the distance, no airplanes overhead, no dogs barking in the neighbourhood, you name it). Then I process them in some sampling unit to see what I can squeeze out of them. Crickets, for a start, sound spooky when played back two or three octaves below their original pitch.

Stephen

Thanks for the comment Stephan.

this is one of the aspects of field recording that interest me, that is in my head as I have done nothing yet....... manipulating the everyday, the sounds that is, with processing.  I really have no idea what will come of this adventure.  Im not a sample kind of guy....... I love analog with a decent amount of wavetables for balance. But this field recording as got me thinking in a whole new direction. The idea of recording a space, say a parking garage or an empty shopping mall, never seen one of those..... a quiet stadium, the rhythm of machinery.  Nothing new here , but new for me.  The hard part seems to have all this make sense in the context of music. There in lies the journey

[hdibrell]

I've been wantingto record something that I experienced a while back. Every year in San Antonio, we have Fiesta. It's a very commercial event that lasts a week or more. Some of the events are pretty neat and some (most) are kind of crass commercial events. They have one event which is basically a huge high school band extravaganza which on it's own sounds pretty boring. A couple of years ago while driving through the park near where this show was planned I came upon a drum corps rehearsing under an interstate overpass. The sound was beautiful! Pounding drum cadences echoing all around the space. I told myself that I had to come back next year and record it. Unfortunately I keep forgetting when that time is until I'm there with no recorder. Maybe this spring I'll actually do it. Quien sabe?

[doombient]

Thanks for the comment Stephan.

The idea of recording a space, say a parking garage or an empty shopping mall, never seen one of those..... a quiet stadium, the rhythm of machinery. 

I did this a lot in the past, and it has created soundscapes which are initially alien and familiar at the same time. There´s a lot of heavy industry in the area I´m from in Germany, and plenty of stuff to record at night.

I recently played a concert inside a huge abandoned industrial gasometer just to record some textural stuff. This will produce sounds no-one else has .

I love toying around with room ambiences. The bigger the room, the better.

Stephen

[Seren]

I've been playing with a new bit of equipment (second hand but new to me).
Sony Minidisc JBS730 - which has an awesome pitch control. Yesterday I timed it while playing with field recordings - 1 second of original recording lasted 1 minute in real time......Obviously this totally changes the sound (and is pointless for bassy recordings).

I can't imagine anyone buying this machine for listening to music and needing to drop the speed that much, it's hard to imagine why it was designed as a general/commercial product.