Research: Ecclesall Woods

Ecclesall woods is an area located in Sheffield, between Abbeydale Road South and Ecclesall.
The Woods is home to a saw mill, coal pits and a bridge, amongst other notable points of interest.

We plan on making use of the wide array of tree’s here and hope to pick up some interesting sounds from the sawmill.

Here are some images collected from the internet of the woods :






Research: Ecclesall Woods

Sense of space - rough time line

Here's a rough timeline for our sense of space project.

Sense of space – Proposal

Sense of space – Proposal

For this piece we have chosen to explore and define the life of a tree through sound.
The piece will tell the tale of the life of a tree, from start to end, young to old, alive to dead.
The sounds used will progressively change, reflecting the seasons and health of the tree, climaxing with its destruction at the sawmill.

We will use a variety of sounds to capture the essence of the tree, using contact microphones whilst striking the bark, capturing the vibrations and then tinkering with reverb to create the feeling of the tree breathing.

We will also capture the sound of surrounding wild life, snapping twigs, crunching leaves and as much of the natural atmosphere that we can.

We will then piece this together in soundtrack pro, using layers in such a way that it will hopefully be evident what the narrative of our piece is with out explanation.



Contingency plan :


In case for any reason our planning fails or if we are unable to access the location, we will go ahead with the kitchen recording idea, purely for ease of access, it provides an ideal back up plan.

'sense of space' final idea

‘Sense of space’ final idea.


After discussing our idea’s today during the tutorial we have decided to focus on the idea of ‘the woods’.
We are still unsure on the exact concept of our piece however and will be location scouting later on in the week.

What we have decided is that the piece will be heavily influenced by nature and the ‘life’ of the plants and wild life, we will also incorporate the use of contact microphones, to record the vibrations of our location and create a feeling of the tree’s ‘breathing’.

Sense of space research - Chris Watson

Sense of space research - Chris Watson

Chris Watson is a famous sound recorder from Sheffield, known for his work on natural history and for fronting the band cabaret Voltaire.
Not only has he worked on many documentaries (including those with David Attenborough and Bill Oddie) he has also released albums comprised of field recordings and collaborated with several other artists.

After being introduced to him in class, I decided to research his work further to help improve my own knowledge of soundscapes and recording in the field.
Hopefully this research will also lend it self to my inspiration, helping me to create an original concept for the ‘Sense of space’ project.

What Watson does exactly is use combinations and layers of natural, recorded sounds to create an entirely new, atmospheric soundtrack.
This can range from an ambient gust of wind shuffling the leaves on a tree, to a mass and manic squawk as a near by flock of birds chaotically fly above.

Watson pieces together these clips in a method similar to producing a usual song, creating a narrative and transporting listeners to another world.

Here are some examples of Watson’s work -


http://chriswatson.net/mp3s/Guanacaste.mp3


http://chriswatson.net/mp3s/Wilddawn.mp3


TBC.

'Sense of space' ideas

Sense of space ideas


‘The Kitchen’

An ideal environment to collect a wide array of playful sounds, the kitchen hosts a countless assortment of potential ideas.
Not only is a busy social area, with music, chatting and laughing to name but a few of these interactions, it is also a place of work and sometimes, physical labour.

The clash of sounds heard in the kitchen can be chaotic, with chopping vegetables in one corner, a kettle boiling in the other, the sink running water whilst the fridge door bangs open and close, a pan sizzling away as oil and fat pops around meat, the drone of the radio lost amongst chatting voices.

The list of explanations could go on and on, becoming increasingly manic or solitary and mellow, the sounds captured in a kitchen could tell a thousand stories and express any kind of mood or ambience.

Not only is it a highly expressive idea it would also be fairly simple to record, we have all the resources at hand and it would be a wholly natural process.
We could also make fantastic use of directional sound, with different sounds occurring around various spaces of the room.



‘The Woods’

Another straight forward environment but interesting none the less, would be to go recording in the peak district.
This would allow us to capture all manner of natural sounds, ranging from the weather, to animals and all sorts of natural wonders.
The crunch of leaves beneath the feet and the rush of a stream against stone, the twitter of birds nesting in trees and the moaning baa of sheep.

We would be borrowing heavily from the work of Chris Watson with this piece, relying on the piecing of natural sounds to create an accurate yet appealing recreation of the natural world.





‘The train station’

Another area of countless emotions, the roaring of trains as they enter and leave the station, the hum of the engines as the trains lay dormant, the hiss of the doors opening and shutting whilst the Omni-present announcer’s voice bellows from the ceiling mounted speakers, organizing the where-abouts of the countless lives scuttling below.


A train station is full of stories and varying feelings, happiness of greeting a missed love one of travelling on holiday, the sadness of seeing someone leave, the stress of being late for work, I could go on and on.
This is reflected heavily in the atmosphere of the station, bristling and manic in the morning, lonely, haunted and echoing at night.

This would be an ideal location to represent a sense of space as it is an area that at certain times can feel vast and empty but at others, completely claustrophobic.
There are difficulties with recording in this location however, the first being admittance, I'm still unsure as to whether we be allowed access to this are.
The other being due to extreme nature of some of the sounds, I don’t know if we actually hold the technical know how to properly capture the assortment of different sounds perfectly by themselves.