https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qTDvtHqVxhAbohh998GvFBgsX1apoE4j

Above is a link to recordings me and Pedro made of Travis playing a variety of different instruments. Ranging from a Forte Piano, an Organ and a range of different Harpsichords. There is also an improvised piece performed by me on the Organ, Pedro on the Forte Piano and travis singing.

These recordings were for Travis’ project ‘Elephant Song’. Travis wanted to record himself playing a graphic score he had created for a harpsichord. So after finding someone online who happened to have one, he enlisted mine and Pedro’s help recording him.

Malcolm (the man travis found with the harpsichords) happened to live in Trowbridge, a small town in the countryside near Bath. This was the first time I had travelled far away to record anything so I attempted to be prepared, bringing an extra H5 just incase the 6 channel field recorder Travis brought didn’t work. Not much thought went into planning the journey there and back so we ended up getting an insanely expensive train. On the train we were working out the best settings on the sound devices 633 field recorder. It had 6 channels but we were only able to make 3 of them work, the last 3 had mini xlr so it was probably something to do with that. Travis had brought an ambeo mic and the AKG C414 stereo mics as well so we needed 6 channels to record all the audio Travis was after. With the 3 working channels on the sound devices and the 2 channels on the Zoom H5n I brought meant we only had 5 channels in total, which we had to settle for.

Once getting off the train we had to walk another 45 minutes with all the heavy equipment we had brought, another reason why we should’ve planned out the journey better. Once we arrived at malcolm’s place we went about setting up our equipment.

Malcolm lives in a converted church and has a variety of different harpsichords from different countries and eras as well as a forte piano, which is like a proto piano. The in between stage in the evolution of the harpsichord into the piano. There was an organ which we recorded as well. After Travis had warmed up and felt out each of the harpsichords we got to work recording.

We set up the stereo mics into the H5n about 1-2 feet away from the strings inside of the harpsichord. In hindsight I feel it would’ve made more sense if we recorded the harpsichord in mono because there wouldn’t be much of a stereo image anyway as the mics are so close to the sound source. We also placed the ambeo mic recording into the 633 in the centre of the room to record the ambience of the room and the effect this has on the harpsichord. As it’s a converted church the space had a lovely subtle amount of reverb to it which we utilised in later recordings with the organ. From there me and Pedro would make sure the levels were ok, press record and Travis would perform. We did this a couple times on each harpsichord, moving the mics around each time. We also recorded Travis playing the forte piano which we recorded in the same way we had done for the harpsichords.

Reflection

There were many variables we hadn’t taken into account or thought about when planning this trip. For starters, we didn’t buy train tickets until we reached the train station meaning they were extremely expensive. From the train station we walked 45 minutes with heavy equipment which also meant by the time we got to the church we were already tired. We had originally arranged to arrive around 1 but because of all of these unplanned issues we arrived around 3. We also didn’t test any of our equipment before setting off leading to us only being able to record in 3 of the 6 channels on the 6 channel field recorder as we couldn’t work out how to work the channels that had mini xlr inputs. meaning we had 5 channels in total to record into, so we couldn’t record one of the ambeo mics. However, after this hefty journey the recording process went smoothly. I was operating and recording the stereo mics and Pedro was operating the ambeo mics. The recordings we captured were relatively good quality. There wasn’t much noise pollution as the church was in a very rural area with only a couple houses surrounding it. Overall, the whole process of going out and recording audio in a place where we can’t access equipment immediately if what we have doesn’t work was a useful learning experience. Especially in what to think about, what you need and how you are going to achieve your desired recordings before setting off.