i use field recordings as backgrounds to pretty much everything i make, but especially ambient + electroacoustic songs. sometimes the field recs are given the same focus as the melodies themselves. for example, skydance: the bird sounds naturally, gradually come to the foreground as dozens of hummingbirds in the eucalyptus grove surge into joyful, noisy squabbling at the same serendipitous moment.
i record local nature sounds: birdsong, wind and leaves, rainfall, trickling streams, shuffling footsteps across a dusty trail, ocean waves. these are memories of a specific time and specific place, and they help bring home the other instrument sounds in the song. i put them all together to convey to the listener what it was like to be in that one place at that time of day or night, and all the beauty of the natural world around it.
i generally do some light EQing in software, using the basic ableton live EQ8. most of my sounds are recorded in busy urban or suburban environments, so i have to be careful about noise leakage from the world outside the nature preserve. i usually spend awhile listening before pressing ārecordā on my H5; asking myself questions like āis there a prevalent unwanted noise source direction (traffic, planes),ā āwhat frequency is that noise; does it overlap the desirable nature sound too much,ā and so on. so iāll know where i need to aim the mic capsule, and how close iāll need to get, if i need to isolate certain sounds.
i generally try not to process the recordings at all; only doing very light subtractive EQāanything too heavy tends to erase the fullness of the sound, as well as the specifics that made it memorable and special. when placed in a song, theyāre left as-is, aside from perhaps editing for length. my goal is to share the wide-eyed wonder of the natural world, so i let the recorder run as long as possible, listening to how things change over time. i generally use just one or two of those recs in a song; ideally, one long uninterrupted recording that runs for the full length of the piece. though i might need to combine a few sessions from a fieldrec outing, if i was only able to get smaller bits and pieces that day.
