#hexhamshire

June - what i have been up to...

June Soundscapes in Northumberland

Early in June I was able to spend some time in Northumberland, a place I always enjoy visiting for a number of reasons, space being one, which is also closely connected to how dark the skies are and how quiet it is in this region. All of these factors make the moors and forests in Northumberland fascinating places to take in natures sonic soundscape. For this visit i thought i may have v1 of the binaural recording head ready to test out, but time was too tight and the build wasn't ready to go, so kit wise i brought along a small rycote blimp and stereo bar, both with omni microphones (Lom USi Pro and DPA 4060).

South Northumberland National Park was first recording stop where the true notion of silence being deafening was in full force. Coming from a semi-rural town in Worcestershire, i get to experience the sounds of nature and relative quiet for much of the time. But pre-dawn in our location, it felt truly like the silence was caving in around you, interspersed with a rogue bleat or the faint descending calls of Curlew on the breeze (magic!). This kind of soundscape was very unlike what I experience in the Midlands. Here there is really nowhere to hide from your thoughts, which initially are screaming at you, so the only way to be is to soak up the silence and focus in on this new minimal soundscape.

With headphones on in this kind of location, listening to my microphones feels like the auditory equivalent of zooming in a microscope over a petri-dish full of bacteria; at first you think nothing is there, and then, with time and focus the tiny details start to become clear. This kind of listening takes dedication to the listening spot. Not just to enable the ears to tune in, but to allow the local inhabitance to fully normalise around you. Once committed, you have no option but to sit it out, and when it is 3am amidst a lingering June twilight, you start to appreciate a layer of life that many folk may never touch. This is what I love about nature sound recording.

[Stonehaugh]

Next stop was to explore the Hexhamshire and North Pennine Moors. The weather was very mild with huge wide skies of Northumberland full of a mix of ever-changing cloud formations to accompany. On a previous visit to this part of the world I heard the distinctive calls of the Lapwing ("Pee-wit") at night, so had wanted to re-visit with my microphones and find some more. As it happens, there were pee-wits in all of the fields bordering the lanes near to where we were staying which was a real treat. I took the time to walk up on the moors on a few occasions, sitting amongst the heather and hefted sheep while I recorded some of the sounds. The winds were quite high and general levels of human sound also more present than earlier in the week in the vast forests near Kielder. This was a bit of an issue as far as microphone wind noise higher up on the moors, but lower down it was a true June soundscape. I didn't manage to get out quite early enough to get the sonic move into dawn, but later morning was special none the less.

[Broadwell House Moor]