Field Recordings
Despite popular belief field recordings do not have to happen in fields. A field recording can be recorded anywhere and with any type of recorder except maybe wax cylinders which are awesome!
The first Field Recordings were done in the mid 1800s by Thomas Edison in a train station before the invention of recording technology. The recordings were made on tinfoil covered in soot by a hair from a pig. The recording apparatus was very large and awesome looking. Although the recordings were never meant to be listened to with ears, but instead with eyes only, our modern future technologies such as laser beams and robots have allowed us to aurally view the recordings. They sound like harsh noise. At least a hundred years later, Fluxus or the SI or somebody used Field Recordings to make concrete poetry.
Field Recordings can have a wide variety of uses but most commonly are referring to recordings of natural environments and are made from sources outside of normal man-made instruments. Through Musique Concrète there are examples from way back in the mid 1900's of 'field recordists' using their recordings to create compositions but Field Recording as a genre often involves the capture of ambient noises that are low level, natural, and complex; in response the requirement from the field recordist has often pushed the technical limits of recording equipment, that is, demanding low noise and extended frequency response in a portable, battery powered unit. The development of professional portable audio recording technology has improved and expanded the genre and what it has produced. The use of Field Recordings has blurred with many artists taking this a further direction into much more alteration of the field recordings (using them as samples and adding man-made elements for what would be considered Ambient recordings) but in most cases I have centered on artists that are grounded by keeping the environments as close to the original and keeping that feel organic and matching the concept of the genre with these key releases rather than drastically altering them.
