The Lecture

Jez Riley French is an experimental sound artist who specialises in field recording. He travels around the world to record various sounds of which he uses to create art for a variety of exhibitions and installations.

Throughout the lecture, French gave many examples of types of microphones and how they can be used. With a contact mic, he has recorded the sound of ants eating an apricot, a hazelnut on fire and wires vibrating. As absurd as these examples may seem, some could easily be used within other a variety of films. The sound of vibrating wires, for example, resulted with some laser beam sound effects that could easily be used in a sci-fi piece.

Different microphones can also be combined to record more ‘full’ sounds. For example, when recording the sound of waves lapping on a beach, a hydrophone placed under the sand could record the lower crashes of a wave. Combine that with the sound picked up by a condenser mic and you’ll have recording with a fair amount of low and high frequencies.

French mixes his works with the spaces where they’ll be presented taken into consideration. He often visits the spaces prior to presentations in order to take note of their acoustic properties and the ways they might affect his works (e.g. add reverb, boost lower frequencies, etc…).

French stated that technology is the least important aspect of sound and music production. Although your choice of microphones and other equipment can help open many possibilities, the most important element is your creativity and the methods you choose to record and edit sound.

How might this lecture apply to my audio project?

Should I choose to use some sound effects or background sounds within my music, this lecture has certainly given me some knowledge on how I can record such sounds first-hand. It’s also important for me to take the ways in which people might listen to music into account. With many people listening to music through various quality speakers and headphones, I’ll have to make sure that my mixes sounds pleasing across various outputs.