It was a 2:00am start on Saturday 3rd of May, and the start of the International Dawn Chorus weekend.

I had been referred by a fellow sound recordist to the volunteers of Abney Park Cemetery in Hackney.  They had requested a wildlife sound recordist to record the dawn chorus from the cemetery as part of a live stream for the soundCamp event taking place in South East London. The live stream was to follow the dawn chorus across the world as it was broadcast by recordists across the globe. Resonance FM was to pick up the transmission as were a number of other radio stations.

Setting everything up was rather a last minute affair. I needed a considerable length of XLR to reach as far in to the cemetery as possible, and a suitable means to stream. I found Mixlr the simplest program to use for the stream, particularly as it allowed me to connect my MixPre-D without any hassle and stream with that.

A bit of reconnaissance the evening before revealed the visitors centre, and source of the Internet set back from the park itself, which could prove a problem. I was able to borrow 180 meters of cable from my present employment but I wasn't sure it would be enough. On the day it turned out I was right and my microphones only just reached the more dense woodland.

After a bit of a drive through late-night London we arrived at the park at 3:50am and started rigging. I used two DPA 4060's attached to a coat hanger for good stereo width to MixPre-D to Laptop (and Mixlr) with a feed from the MixPre to SD744T for a backup recording. Even at 4am, the birds had started their calls. My previous visit to the park revealed quite a diverse range of species inhabiting Abney; Greater spotted woodpeckers, Blackbirds, Wrens, Blackcaps, Tawny owls to name a few, but the predominant species calling in the morning were wrens and blackbirds.

I streamed for an hour and half between 4:45 and 6am by which point dawn had well and truly broken. Unfortunately due to a slight mix-up we weren't picked up by the live stream and broadcast, but I re-streamed my recording on Dawn Chorus Day itself and Abney Park and early morning Hackney traffic were broadcast to the world!

I shall be live-streaming the dawn chorus from Abney Park as part of the soundCamp event Saturday morning and for International Dawn Chorus Day

If anyone's awake at 5am, Saturday 3rd May tune in!

I'll blog about it properly with a recording Saturday afternoon.

http://self-noise.net/soundcamp/

http://self-noise.net/soundcamp/soundcamp_reveil.html

http://thefieldreporter.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/359/

A Male Corn Bunting's territorial call, calling from a telegraph line.

I'm fairly happy with this recording.  I would be happier without the road noise but I was also contending with a breeze. There was only one position in the field I could record without severe wind noise affecting my microphone and that was facing a country lane!

Corn buntings can be found on open farmland. The males sing to mark their territories often from high vantage points, in the case of this recording, a telegraph wire. Male corn buntings are around 19 centimetres long and are somewhat larger than the females. Corn buntings are dark brown in colour with dark streaks on their bodies and wings, and their beaks are adapted to eating seeds and insects. They can be found in England and parts of Scotland all year round. Their territories don't extend to Wales or Northern Scotland.

The RSPB have declared them a Red List Species due to a sudden and rapid decline in numbers in recent years.

Recorded with a single DPA 4060 with Grampian parabolic dish to SD744T on Wednesday 9th April 2014.

Here is the completed film from the Raindown shoot in Uganda!  I also conducted the sound mix with additional Foley recording.

Build Africa Main Edit from Raindown on Vimeo.

And a couple of other sounds recorded from the shoot:

The sounds of a Cicada in the night time.
Recorded with AT825 stereo mic to SD744T recorder

On the last day of filming we were invited to one of the villages Build Africa supports. The villagers greeted us with a Ugandan welcoming song and a play depicting life in the village before and after Build Africa's efforts. An incredible afternoon!

Here's the welcoming song (beware of the loud bits!)

A link to the Charity's website:

http://www.build-africa.org/

Having a couple of shoots for external clients (i.e not through the studio I work at) in the past couple of months has been quite refreshing and after dealing with radio mics every week for the past year it's been great getting back into the (boom) swing of things!

Last month, I was sound operating on a pleasant short film with a small cast and crew in Hackney Wick and Homerton, two places in London I'd not been before.

The dialog capture was pretty simple, booming with a 416 and recording to 744T. As it typical of London shoots, I was faced with forever changing flight paths and constant air traffic. We were filming pretty close to London City Airport so the issues were understandable if frustrating.

One fairly major sound issue that I wasn't expecting was caused by a lock along the canal we were shooting next to.  The lock has two sets of gates and every time a barge passed through, the operator would leave the alternate gate closed.  The sound of overflowing water would change, altering the ambience of the area.  Recording wild tracks of the overflow from different perspectives will be very beneficial in post production to maintain a consistent atmosphere!