Chris Watson: Sound Recording in the City

[Andy Wilson]

I spent Sunday evening and all day on Monday at Chris Watson's workshop "Sound Recording in the City", at the Museum of Garden History, London - actually a general presentation of his approach to location and nature recording, with discussions on use and selection of hardware, techniques of recording and mixing, and anything else that might be of use to a budding location recordist.

Sunday evening was spent making recordings on and around Westminster and Lambeth bridges, with everyone there recording the chimes of Big Ben. The idea was to gain practical recording experience under Chris's guidance. The material recorded will be selected and remixed by Chris to be presented in a separate performance later this week.

Each topic under discussion was illustrated by Chris with examples from his library - so we heard the sound of everything from a Giant Magagascan Hissing Cockroach, recorded in NYC, an astounding recording made in a train yard of trucks moving (which could easily have been presented as a revolutionary new composition by Dumitrescu in the style of Varese without anyone batting an eyelid), the sounds of wind and water and a hundred and one other things.

Many years ago Chris stayed with me on Portland while he was there recording foxes in the local quarries. What I remember most is a recording he made on his Uher, using a shotgun mic, of seagulls flying by the side of the cliffs there. When he played the recordings back at a fraction of the speed, the bird's calls were turned into wonderful bass drones, and the reverb produced by the cliff became an echo. I remember thinking then that it sounded better than all of the electronica I had heard before then. Chris's albums are all like that, in that they aren't simply documentations of nature, but celebrations of the raw sonic beauty of natural processes.


Sadly, one of the main impressions I had of the day was entirely
negative - I came away thinking that my own recordings were peurile by comparison. I'm sure that's not what Chris intended....

Chris's newest release, which he played for us, is "Pacificus Oceanus", a 7" single containing recordings made in the sea off the Galapagos Islands, in which he traps the sound of the sea at different depths, revealing completely different perspectives wherever he records;

Pacificus Oceanus Chris Watson

Touch Sevens 02 7" vinyl only
Locked grooves

A. 3m B. 10m

The voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands recorded April 2006 using a pair of Dolphin Ear Pro Hydrophones onto a NAGRA ARES-Pll digital audio recorder

[ori drumer]

dear friends, Andy and adrian
I'm interested in field recordings for some years, i used to record with dat, in last few years with mini disk( bad compressed ), even with old radio tapes(some of them got interested sound recordings)etc..., i used variety of mic's (cheap and expensive) its all depends on the context and idea of the project. These days i got some extra money(400-500$) and want to buy a fine quality portable tape the best thing for this amount.
i think i got from you gays a lead
thank you

[Andy Wilson]

On the night we went recording, Chris himself was using a Nagra digital recorder with two Sony ECM-77 lavaliers which he had built his own tiny windscreens for and had mounted on a coat hanger. There are quite a few phonography sites online that have good tips on hardware. You might also find the Nature Recordists list at yahoo useful if you have technical questions.

[Andy Wilson]

Ori - as is always the way with these things, Chris didn't recommend any particular piece of equipment, though he had plenty to say about the choices you might want to make.

[adrian gilbert]

aren't you being just a little hard on yourself? ;-)

[ori drumer]

hello andy
i wander, what kind of hardware Chris Watson advised in the workshop?
in some place francisco lopez tell that some time it enough
to to use 'i river' with good mic
ori drumer

[Ian Land]

Ah, but did you ask him to play Nag Nag Nag? :-)