So much was happening on World Listening Day last week I couldn’t find time to mention that extracts of one my field recordings are included in framework radio episode #561. Below are words about framework and my recording.
Framework radio is a weekly internationally broadcast program on phonography and field recording. It has been produced by Patrick McGinley since 2002 and is available for listening online as well as downloadable podcast. As World Listening Day is on R. Murray Schafer’s birthday, this episode features parts of his “Winter Diary” broadcast on Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (WDR) and the Vancouver Soundscape recordings. Among other recordings are those by eminent nature sound recordists and arts, including Dan Dugan, Jeremy Hegge, and Ricardo Huisman. Some of these recordings are on Udo Noll’s annual “audio snapshot” of the world specially made of field recordings uploaded on the at the aporee soundmap for World Listening Day.
It is an honor to finally have some of my recording include in this series. For anyone curious, it was made on July 26, 2015 during the dawn chorus at the Green Mother Earth Center near Steuben, Wisconsin. This place is gorgeous. I was invited to be a guest in the ACRE artists’ residency. For three days I dined and consulted with a large, wonderful community of young resident artists and staff artists. I also gave a performance presentation about the springboard, my sound practice and led a soundwalk for resident artists and staff.
Located in the “driftless region” of southwestern Wisconsin, its topography is dramatically different from that of Chicago. This place is rather lush with diverse flora and fauna among tall bluffs and small organic farms. Perhaps you can hear that as the vocalizations of birds and livestock reveal. They reverberate off the nearby bluff. One small road passes through the site. Car and truck traffic is infrequent and with almost no air traffic to be heard, ambient noise levels are very low. Hence, there is no noticeable masking of the many quiet and distant sounds due to anthropogenic causes.
One night I used my RØDE NT4 stereo X/Y condenser microphone and Sony PCM-M10 to record. While at this resolution it may not provide detailed clues about what happens in my recording, I decided to include this spectrogram below. Over the recording’s duration of 55 minutes four motor vehicles passed by. These are visible early in the recording, just before 4:00 AM. However, the heard of cows and bulls are not visible, though clearly audible in my original The birds are fully active vocalizing 10 minutes later. In the frequencies between 4.5kHz and 6kHz there’s a steady whir of insect(s), a species that I cannot identify. In the range from above 200 Hz to just over 300 Hz the sound of water pouring from in the spring is present. Other sounds are distributed over a broad frequency range: 
If you are interested in listening to the entire unedited, 4-hour recording, feel free to contact me. Patrick says, “we are always looking for new material, whether raw field recordings, field recording based composition, or introduction submissions. we are also now accepting proposals for full editions of our guest curated framework:afield series. send proposals or material, released or not, on any format, to the address at the bottom of this mail. if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!”