On the 2nd of November 2015 we had a guest lecture from sound recordist Jez Riley French.

He practices in the field of unconventional sound recording, composition & publishing etc.  – he builds/creates and uses contact microphones

, hydrophones

and other types of microphones which capture interesting and unorthodox sounds, (mainly vibrations), which could easily be applied to anything from video game SFX to diverse ambiances in film, TV and many more. By demonstrating his recordings he explained to us the various techniques that he uses to record interesting sounds such as recording rain tapping on a window with a contact microphone, or the melting of ice with a hydrophone as well as underwater vibrations. He later spoke about the importance of having proper equipment on which to listen back to the recordings as it is of great importance to be able to experience these unconventional sounds to their best extent. Furthermore he gave advice on using EQ in any DAW when working with natural sounds also warning/raising awareness about pre-amp noise/hum during recording. Most importantly he said that using too much EQ in post production destroys the nature of the sound itself/ the sound loses it’s natural sound and is ruined. The advice he gave about avoiding such harsh equalization was to make sure all field recordings are as clean as possible (avoid using phrases like we’ll fix it in post etc.).
What I learned from this lecture was that there are many more interesting ways to record out there. Using contact microphones and hydrophones one can get very interesting and widely applicable sounds, and also that it is of great importance to record location sound as clean and as natural as possible to preserve the character of the sound. (LO1) These outcomes will come in very handy when I am recording on location again (not only for Audio Project 1 but for the future as well) and also in post production when I am deciding on EQ’s and edits. All in all a great and informative lecture.