I went to Chorlton Nature Reserve with Alex Larumbe and Aaron Taylor on Friday 21st June to record various natural ambience sounds. My original intention was for us to try and capture different bird ambiences, however on the day we actually ended up recording a bunch of different woodland foley sounds instead - things such as log impacts, twig snapping and foliage rustling.
Alex and me on our recording adventure!
We found a few of these cool wooden shelters at various points in the woods. Reminded me of the temporary structures you can build in The Forest!
We also got some good sounds from various metallic structures around the nature - e.g. squeaking metal hinges of the public footpath gates, and rattling of the rubbish bins - as well as some really great water sounds from the River Mersey which runs alongside the reserve.
Me busy coaxing some tasty squeaks and squeals out of a metal gate.
The River Mersey is right next to the nature reserve, so we stopped to capture some good water ambiences from it.
After a bit of a precarious climb down the side of the canal bank, we were able to get some good close-up sounds from the river as well.
On this trip we had to rely on just my Zoom H4n and Zoom H2n field recorders (as we sadly no longer have access to the treasure trove of mics and other field recording equipment at Futureworks now that I’ve finished my degree), but nonetheless I was still I was pleased with the quality of the recordings we were able to make using just the minimal kit I own.
My trusty H4n and H2n. Small, but mighty recorders!
Though the trees of reserve did soak up a lot of external noise, the distant roar of traffic could still be heard (particularly in the larger open field areas) and planes (presumably jetting off from Manchester airport) would pass by every now and again. Those caveats aside however, I was actually quite pleasantly surprised with the quality of sounds we were able to capture with this very budget setup.
I’ve still got to fully go through and clean up, edit and metadata-tag all the recordings from both recorders, but for now, here’s a video of some of the river ambiences we captured, plus some daft bonus footage of me frolicking and crunching around on twigs and branches. Enjoy!