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A brief history of field recording by Robin Parmar Presented at ISSTA 2016, Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland, September 2016. This version revised to integrate images and make minor corrections, May 2018. 1 Introduction Field recordings are now an integral part of musical composition, sound desig...

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A brief history of field recording by Robin Parmar Presented at ISSTA 2016, Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland, September 2016. This version revised to integrate images and make minor corrections, May 2018.

1 Introducion Field recordings are now an integral part of musical composition, sound design, installation art, and other aesthetic products. But the term "field recording" exists only because this task was once exceptional. Recording audio outside a formal studio environment was time-consuming, expensive, and technically challenging. The recordings themselves were fragmentary and peripheral, sometimes considered novelties, interventions in a stratified, established musical regime. In this talk I will describe the work of a few key field recording pioneers, in order to consider how this material was approached, and packaged. Papers on field recording from the perspective of electroacoustic music often start with John Cage's "Williams Mix" (1951–53). Those based in the field of acoustic ecology reference R. Murray Schafer's soundscapes project of the late 1960s. But this is to ignore six decades of prior work, well known in other fields, but less so in our own. In partial redress, this talk will describe the work of a few key field recording pioneers. Due to constraintsof time, the scientific work of bioacousticians and anthropological recordings will not be covered, despite their seminal importance. I focus instead on those who recorded the sounds of nature, as my larger project (a doctoral thesis) examines how ideologies of nature informed these processes.

2 Young Ludwig Koch Certainly the most famous field recording pioneer was Ludwig Koch. Born in 1881 in Frankfurt, his privileged upbringing was noteworthy. At the age of 8, he was given the unique gift of an Edison cylinder, that his father had purchased at the Leipzig fair [Burton 1974]. With it, he immediately set about recording family friends and political figures, such as Bismarck. And also, famously, denizens of the family menagerie of almost 70 animals. The first extant animal recording is his wax cylinder of the Indian shama bird.

3 Ludwig's ear Young Ludwig was provided a fine education in music. As a boy violinist, he studied with Clara Schumann and met Liszt and Brahms. His fine tenor voice provided a fledgling career as a singer, though bad health and World War I interfered. In the interregnum before the Second World War, Koch organised a "cultural branch" of EMI in Germany. He supervised technicians from the Carl Lindstrom Company in recording several titles, including "Schrei der Steppe / Cry of the steppe" (1933), "Der Wald erschallt / The Wood Resounds" (1934)1 and "Gefiederte Meistersaä nger / Feathered Master-Singers" (1935) [Tipp 2012].

4 Silence! In February of 1936 Koch fled the Nazis to England, where he immediately partnered with ornithologist E.M. Nicholson on further publications. "Songs of Wild Birds" (1936) was the first record to document British bird life. In the 1940s Koch started a long-term partnership with the BBC and soon his unmistakable voice and naturalist passion made him a household name in the UK (as famous as David Attenborough today). His work directly led to the first radio programme about nature2, and the formation of the BBC Natural History Unit3.

5 Recording It is important to note that Koch was not himself a trained engineer or ornithologist, which is why he always worked in partnership with specialists. In the UK, Parlophone supplied a team to operate a recording van, full of delicate equipment. This included an oven to warm discs to cutting temperature, the phonograph itself with cutting arm, a mixer, power amplifiers, loudspeakers, plus storage for the disks and the many substantial cables. The vehicle had to be specially reinforced to carry the load of seven tons [Street 2009]. To record the characteristic "boom" of a Bittern the required equipment was carried on a boat, as the photo illustrates. To get "ten to fifteen seconds" of quality sound took "about a hundred hours" and 130 minutes of actual recording time [77-78]. In other cases, microphone cable runs of from 200 yards (180 m) to a mile (1.6 km) were necessary in order to get close to the subjects and far from noise [84, 145]. Failures in the cable were a constant plague, as were electrical problems due to humidity. These details are found in his Memoirs of a Birdman, published 1955.

6 Koch's legacy A review of this book complains: "Always it is giving trouble, but there is hardly more than a mention of the type of equipment he used". The writer was Peter Paul Kellogg, himself an important American recordist, who also notes "the sustained egotism of the book" [Kellogg 1956, 203]. This is not only evident in the author's name-dropping and cavorting with royalty, but in the absence of credit for previous or contemporaneous work in field recording. Indeed, Koch's continued fame in the UK – sustained by radio, LP records, museum retrospectives, and the digital collection at the British Library – overshadows other contributors to the history of field recording, even to this day.

7 Cherry Kearton Though Koch recorded captive birds, the first actual field recording of an animal was made by Cherry Kearton circa 1900 [Ranft 2004, 455]. Unfortunately his recordings of the Song Thrush and Common Nightingale did not survive, unlike the hundreds of photographs, several books, and motion pictures credited to himself and brother Richard. The Keartons pioneered many techniques of wildlife photography, including the use of elevated platforms and hides. Unfortunately, sound was not their priority.

8 Reich's aviary Thankfully the recordings of Karl Reich are extant. Reich was a Bremen shopkeeper who raised songbirds as a hobby, and is famous for having bred the first red canary. He also "trained one nightingale to hop inside the horn of a gramophone so that he could collect a higher-fidelity recording of its voice" [Petrusich 2016]. The debut disk was cut on 5 March 1910, subsequently issued as a single-sided 78 rpm on Gramophone as "Song of Nightingale". This has the honour of being the first commercially available field recording, available in several countries including the USA on Victor. This was followed by two dualsided Victor disks, including a full six minute-long Nightingale sequel. This last field recording made history as the first used in a musical composition. Between movements three and four of Respighi's "The Pines of Rome" (1924), the score calls for the playing of this specific disk, using its European catalogue number4.

9 Gramophone & Victor The curious aspect of the story is how Reich might have convinced Gramophone to release birdsong in the first place. Obviously there has been a long-standing interest in this musical product of "nature", with many composers in the history of European art music integrating themes from birds into their own work (Olivier Messiaen being the canonical example). The aesthetics of bird song have long been appealing to the human ear, more palatable than other animal sounds. There are several reasons this might be true. For one, the call of birds is notably pitched, unlike the noisier spectra of, say, insects. For another, the pitches are arrayed in phrases, themes, and variations, structures the classical musician is well used to parsing. In terms of intensity, the sounds are scaled to the human ear, being designed to penetrate other sounds that might otherwise mask the calls. The frequencies are neither ultrasonic (the bat), nor infrasonic (large mammals such as elephant or rhino). Finally, birds are commonly encountered and easily captured; two practical aspects that have helped their calls become commonplace subjects of study.

10 Red seal Nonetheless, it is remarkable that this Nightingale song was issued on the Victor Red Seal label, as this was otherwise reserved for "famous opera singers and classical instrumentalists" [Stanley 2013]. The bird is now part of the same catalogue as Caruso and Tetrazzini. As violinist and tenor, Ludwig Koch was part of this same art music tradition. When he named a record "Feathered Master-Singers" he was framing birdsong in terms of a particular musical tradition with which he was intimate. His writings make clear that the birds are regarded as soloists, performers on a stage set by the field recordist. This is a markedly artificial mode of presentation, quite paradoxical for a subject that was simultaneously being considered as emblematic of an unspoiled Nature.

11 Max Nicholson Koch wrote an introductory chapter for Songs of Wild Birds, but the remainder of the book is the work of noted conservationist Max Nicholson, who later was director-general of the Nature Conservancy and helped found the World Wildlife Fund. [Here he is with Koch sorting recordings for that publication.] In the first chapter, "What is bird-song?", he acknowledges the problems of interpretation, but then immediately starts rating the songs of various birds [Nicholson and Koch 1936, 3]. The chaffinch has an "outstanding" song while the goldfinch makes "rather monotonous music" [19]. Take this rather astounding evaluation of the starling: Life has perhaps been too easy for the starling, and certainly whatever the reason may be his song has never developed at all far. It is one of the great disappointments of our bird life, [that] his song is no more than a shapeless, rambling medley which from any standpoint must rank low [78]. These moral judgements go well beyond the requirements of mere description or categorisation. Nicholson is here following a tradition of imposed meritocracy that was already well-established by the likes of Daines Barrington in the eighteenth century [19]. But Nicholson adds a new wrinkle, misreading evolutionary theory to justify labelling certain species as more "advanced" or "higher" in order [27]. Apparently such specimens also have the sweetest song. This appeal to evolution is not accidental. Though Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) is purportedly about humans, birds "take a central role in the book, displacing primates", according to Rachel Mundy [Mundy 2009, 206].

12 Songs of Wild Birds Nicholson also engages in another activity unfortunately not entirely restricted to his time, namely rampant nationalism: England is above all the country where song should be studied, because owing to a peculiar set of circumstances there is a greater volume of bird-song uttered in England than in most parts of the world [Nicholson and Koch 1936, 25]. He goes on to claim that not one species of bird in South America, for example, "can compare in power, variety, and execution with any of the leading English songsters". This bias fits a Romantic naturalist aesthetic that would make of England a garden, a carefully circumscribed idyllic realm. This garden requires tending by Man, because it is only in response to human needs and preferences that Nature can fulfil herself. The interventions of field recordists in what are described as "natural habitats" is part of this process. The chapter ends with just such an invocation: "these and other circumstances combine to make England a paradise for bird-song" [26]. The word "paradise", taken from Persian, means exactly a fenced garden.

13 Interviewing a seal This ideology made its way into field recording at its genesis, and still roots much nature recording, at least the variety which sets out to record an untouched pristine wilderness, banishing anthropogenic sound. (A more nuanced reading instead might recognise that this "natural" domain is always already a product of human desires.) The introductory chapter by Ludwig Koch makes plain his own objectives. First, to take pleasure in sounds that reach the ear, as well as sights that reach the eye [xix]. In other words, pure aesthetics. Second, to educate people about the sounds of birds, for everywhere there is ignorance: Even farmers and woodmen, who in spring often hear a song-thrush or a blackbird almost every minute, are often unable to name the singer [xxi]. Or perhaps such individuals are too busy working in the field to engage in the luxury of species identification? It is difficult to read passages such as this as anything but the product of a particular, restricted, class viewpoint. Note that this photo is captioned "Interviewing a young grey seal pup". This again demonstrates how Koch frames nature in human terms.

14 Watching for the Montague Harrier The necessity of classification and identification is never justified; it is taken as axiomatic. Taxonomic systems have the appeal of scientific rigour even if, as already illustrated, the bias of the author is never far away. Nicholson and Koch are content to replace a visual taxonomy with a sonic regime that is as restrictive as it is culturally-determined. This ideology dictates the methods employed. Koch favoured “close micing”, placing the transducer proximal to his sources. He strived to produce recordings free of acoustic content that might distract from the soloist, including the song of other birds. He went so far as to engage assistants to chase away less desirable bird species from the woods [Street 2009]. For Koch, the environment of the master-singer is irrelevant. The interaction of birds with other species, or even socially, is unimportant. Bird study is strictly about identification and appreciation.

15 Peterson's Guide This is precisely the same dissociative strategy employed by the Peterson Field Guide To Birds, first published in 1934 and invaluable to bird-watchers since [Mundy 2009, 214-5]. The innovation of this volume was the reduction of bird identification to "field marks", specific characteristics "that enable species identification at a glance" [214]. Previous illustrated works showed specimens in their environment, engaged in mating displays, foraging, or other tasks. But in Peterson’s Guide, portions of bird anatomy are excised from the complete creature, fragmented, and arrayed against a featureless background. Koch's records likewise present carefully isolated individual specimens, presented in sequence on a disk, for ease of comparison. I remark in passing on the similarity between "field marks" and the "sound marks" of soundscape studies, whereby a complex acoustical realm can be characterised, at least in the first instance, by one or two distinguishing features.

16 Brand – listening in Little time remains to describe the work of "Doc" Allen, Peter Paul Kellogg, and Albert Brand who researched ornithology at Cornell, except to say that they used similar recording methods but with a different emphasis. Kellogg is the self-same reviewer of Koch's memoirs, and showed great restraint, in my opinion, considering the lack of acknowledgement given to their prior work. Suffice it to note that Brand's sound book "Songs of Wild Birds" was published by Thomas Nelson and Sons in 1934, two years before Koch's work with an identical title. Though it does contain a few phrases of descriptive text that contain aesthetic judgements, these are not indicative of his general approach, and are instead a compromise for the general readership targeted by this volume. Brand's published reports instead use a bioacoustic approach, emphasising measurable results and analysis [Brand 1932].

17 Brand – sound mirror Unlike Koch and Nicholson, Brand emphasised the psychological aspect of listening, in terms that are entirely contemporary. We hear what we are listening for, and what we expect to hear. We can not, try as we will, hear objectively; it is impossible to separate the hearing apparatus from the thinking mechanism – the ear, from the brain [Brand 1937, 12].

18 Hutchinson The photo on the left is "Doc" Allen from Cornell. On the right is John N. Hutchinson with his incredible self-built radiogram. Hutchinson documented the sounds of Western Australia, as part of a deeply felt integrated humanist project [Hutchinson 1988]. Foremost among his recordings are historically important Aboriginal songs. When it came to animal species, identification was no doubt important to him, but he did not aestheticise his subjects in the same way, or to the same extent, as Koch and Nicholson. This is reflected in both his techniques and presentation of finished recordings. Hutchinson preferred closely-placed omnidirectional microphones, arguing against directional mics and parabolic reflectors [171-2, 188]. Though his initial recordings, which he released himself as a series of albums and cassettes, feature individual birdsong, later works included "stereo atmospheres". Rather than focusing on solo "performers", these provide a contextualised acoustic impression of an environment, a soundscape in other words.

19 And more... Walter Tilgner in Germany achieved similar result, switching exclusively to binaural recordings made using an artificial head, in 1983. By this time the work of the Canadian soundscape school was disseminating widely, influencing recordists include Carl Weismann (Denmark), Jean-Claude Rocheé (France), and Bernie Krause (USA). In the last two decades, low-priced and high-quality digital recorders have lowered barriers for those wishing to enter this field. The contemporary scene includes hundreds of artist, adopting myriad approaches. My larger project is to shed light on these contemporary practices, in terms of the pioneering works mentioned here (and others). I trust that this brief history has been entertaining and enlightening. There are many fruitful directions for future research.

20 Chronology5 1881

First animal recording (of an Indian shama) made by Ludwig Koch (age 8) in Frankfurt on Edison cylinder.

1892

Garner records captive primates in USA for bioacoustic study.

1898

Song of a Brown Thrasher played at 16th Congress of the American Ornithologists' Union.

~1900 First recordings made in the wild (Song Thrush and Common Nightingale) by Cherry Kearton in England. 1910

First commercial record of an animal released on Gramophon as "Song of a Nightingale". Made by Karl Reich in Bremen.

1924

Respighi's "The Pines of Rome" is the first musical composition to incorporate a field recording.

1929

First recording of wild birds in the Americas, made by Doc Allen and Peter Paul Kellogg in Ithaca, New York.

1931

Superb Lyrebird published on a 78 rpm disc in Australia.

1932

Albert Brand et al. being recording with parabolic reflectors.

1933

Ludwig Koch's "Schrei der Steppe" released in Germany.

1934

Multimedia songbook, "Songs of Wild Birds", released by Brand in New York.

1934

Danish ornithologist Carl Weismann releases a five disk set of birdsong.

1934

Emperor Penguin recorded in the Antarctic.

1936

Ludwig Koch and E.M. Nicholson release their own songbook "Songs of Wild Birds".

1946

First natural history programme, "The Naturalist" by Desmond Hawkins debuts on BBC Radio.

1958

Jean-Claude Rocheé releases the record "Birds of Camargue", which sells 10,000 copies in the first year.

1959

John N. Hutchinson makes his first bird recordings in Western Australia.

1970

Beaver & Krause release the album "In a Wild Sanctuary", incorporating field recordings with music.

1983

Walter Tilgner begins his recordings made in binaural using an artificial head.

21 References Brand, Albert R. 1932. Recording sounds of wild birds. The Auk 49.4, 436–439. Brand, Albert R. 1937. Why bird song can not be described adequately. The Wilson Bulletin 49.1, 11–14. Burton, John. 1974. Ludwig Koch: master of nature’s music. Wildlife Sound Recording Society. Available at: http://www.wildlife-sound.org/journal/archive/koch.html [Accessed September 7, 2015]. Hutchinson, John N. 1988. Save that song: Conquering the Out...