Nature Recordings

O

OldCorpse

Rockin the Boat
So this is kind of a crazy situation, but if you have the patience, read on. I was having some hearing issues and after a test with an audiologist, my doctor gave me some suggestions along the lines "can't hurt to try". According to her, some patients were helped by listeing to nature sounds. Ordinarily, in my leisure time, I listen to music, but the doc suggested that for some people it helps with tinnitis and high blood pressure to listen to gentle nature sounds, such as running rivers, ocean waves, birds in a forest etc.

Anyhow, I looked to locate such recordings, but they all have problems - at least the ones I examined. First, I need something that lasts for many hours, such as overnight while I'm falling asleep and sleeping. Most recordings are 1-4 hours long. Some of the longer ones, such as 10 hour recordings are actually loops composed of 2 hour pieces running over and over again. Unfortunately, I'm very sensitive to sound patterns (from listening to ambient music for years and years), and I seem to recognize and remember if I've heard a passage before, unless it's really pretty neutral. So I need something that is genuinely 10 hours long, or I'll recognize when the same bits keep coming around. Second, of the few 10+ hour recordings I've located, they often have problems such as weird volume drops and other technical issues. Sometimes there are unfortunate events on recordings, such as a fly that happened to sit right on the mic and there's suddenly strong buzzing, and the whole recording I find myself waiting for when that buzzing is gonna come. So bottome line, I need some neutral sounds of nature without human elements, such as airplanes, cars, voices, weird insistent sudden insects that are not typical, and so on, and all this for 10+ hours.

Rather than keep looking, I got the idea of making my own recordings. I'm in Los Angeles, CA, but I can take day trips to nearby places, such as the Angeles National Forest and so on. I thought of the beach, but unfortunately, it's almost impossible to find a stretch of beach for 500 miles around where you will not hear a human generated sound - cars, airplaces, boats or whatnot for a 10+ hour stretch. So recording waves is out.

My idea was to take a trip deeper into the forest, find a spot and set up my gear, let it run and come back hours later. How practical is that? Here what I thought of doing

1)Hike deeper into the forest off trails, where I can be pretty sure there will be no humans for quite a distance around.
2)Set up a tripod with an arm, and affix an omni mic, IN A BLIMP, get a big card, use my DR-60Dmkii or DR-70D with a long-lasting USB battery bank.
3)Monitor with headphones for some time, to make sure that the levels and everything else is OK
4)Let it run while I take off to do whatever
5)Come back grab my equipment and the following day listen to hear what I have
6)Go back a day or two later, and re-do the whole thing, because I'm sure I'll make some mistake or another which will need correcting.

Unfortunately I have ZERO experience doing nature recordings, so I literally don't know wht it is that I'm doing. Is my plan as outlined completely bonkers? Is this doable as described, or am I kidding myself? Thanks in advance!
 
OldCorpse said:
So this is kind of a crazy situation, but if you have the patience, read on. I was having some hearing issues and after a test with an audiologist, my doctor gave me some suggestions along the lines "can't hurt to try". According to her, some patients were helped by listeing to nature sounds. Ordinarily, in my leisure time, I listen to music, but the doc suggested that for some people it helps with tinnitis and high blood pressure to listen to gentle nature sounds, such as running rivers, ocean waves, birds in a forest etc.
Click to expand...
Makes sense to me, not in the least because those environments do not have constant background noise as cities like LA have.

I think the point is for you to sit and relax in the forest not to listen to forest sounds at home, or worse, in your car!

To take Rumi's saying quite literally: The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear!
 
Well, I use a self-recorded CD of a riffle in a local creek as white sleep noise at night. And, it does help a bit with tinnitus.

Only, I do not know how to record hours and hours without interfering noise. Certainly, not anywhere I have been here in the Eastern States.

I did get a solid hour by recording a riffle between high banks early on a Sunday morning. Stopping everytime a car came by, then starting a new track. I then carefully edited those tracks and sliced them together into an hour long recording and burned it to CD. I play the CD on continuous repeat all night long.

Now, from what you are saying that may not work for you. Each repeat there is a slight pause. I can sometimes just barely hear a splice point, but that is minimised because the whole track is so similar. It does a great job of covering up traffic noise and noise from neighboring apartments however, which was why I made it in the first place.

That recording is natural white noise, with some quite nature sounds in the background --birds, etc. I tried the commercial relaxation tapes, the problem with them was they are intended to be listened to. Mine is intended to just be background sort of like the AC running, only not so intrusive. I works for me.

I guess this could be considered sort of on topic for this forum, because it describes a method of recording background sounds in less than ideal conditions, which is often needed for film.
 
Thanks. Right. I was hoping this would not be taken as "off topic", because, like you say, it's really about the technical challenge. Unfortunately I'm the kind of person - and I hate that, but can't help it - who notices things like splices (if they're noticeable at all!), so I really do need continuous, no loop sound. My thought was that if I go a distance off trail far away, cars should not be an issue... airplanes are a different matter - you'll be amazed at how much air traffic there is, once you pay attention :(...

And yes, I understand that sitting in the forest and listening is best, but it's just not practical other than once in a while. So the next best is to have recordings, especially if they can mask the traffic noise (which, to be fair is not very loud where I live), and basically act as substitute to my usual non-stop music listening.
 
OldCorpse said:
So this is kind of a crazy situation, but if you have the patience, read on. I was having some hearing issues and after a test with an audiologist, my doctor gave me some suggestions along the lines "can't hurt to try". According to her, some patients were helped by listeing to nature sounds. Ordinarily, in my leisure time, I listen to music, but the doc suggested that for some people it helps with tinnitis and high blood pressure to listen to gentle nature sounds, such as running rivers, ocean waves, birds in a forest etc.

Anyhow, I looked to locate such recordings, but they all have problems - at least the ones I examined. First, I need something that lasts for many hours, such as overnight while I'm falling asleep and sleeping. Most recordings are 1-4 hours long. Some of the longer ones, such as 10 hour recordings are actually loops composed of 2 hour pieces running over and over again. Unfortunately, I'm very sensitive to sound patterns (from listening to ambient music for years and years), and I seem to recognize and remember if I've heard a passage before, unless it's really pretty neutral. So I need something that is genuinely 10 hours long, or I'll recognize when the same bits keep coming around. Second, of the few 10+ hour recordings I've located, they often have problems such as weird volume drops and other technical issues. Sometimes there are unfortunate events on recordings, such as a fly that happened to sit right on the mic and there's suddenly strong buzzing, and the whole recording I find myself waiting for when that buzzing is gonna come. So bottome line, I need some neutral sounds of nature without human elements, such as airplanes, cars, voices, weird insistent sudden insects that are not typical, and so on, and all this for 10+ hours.

Rather than keep looking, I got the idea of making my own recordings. I'm in Los Angeles, CA, but I can take day trips to nearby places, such as the Angeles National Forest and so on. I thought of the beach, but unfortunately, it's almost impossible to find a stretch of beach for 500 miles around where you will not hear a human generated sound - cars, airplaces, boats or whatnot for a 10+ hour stretch. So recording waves is out.

My idea was to take a trip deeper into the forest, find a spot and set up my gear, let it run and come back hours later. How practical is that? Here what I thought of doing

1)Hike deeper into the forest off trails, where I can be pretty sure there will be no humans for quite a distance around.
2)Set up a tripod with an arm, and affix an omni mic, IN A BLIMP, get a big card, use my DR-60Dmkii or DR-70D with a long-lasting USB battery bank.
3)Monitor with headphones for some time, to make sure that the levels and everything else is OK
4)Let it run while I take off to do whatever
5)Come back grab my equipment and the following day listen to hear what I have
6)Go back a day or two later, and re-do the whole thing, because I'm sure I'll make some mistake or another which will need correcting.

Unfortunately I have ZERO experience doing nature recordings, so I literally don't know wht it is that I'm doing. Is my plan as outlined completely bonkers? Is this doable as described, or am I kidding myself? Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

And what happens when a fly lands on YOUR mic and buzzes?

If you're asleep, are you really going to wake up and say "A-HA! I HEARD that sequence of sounds 2 hours ago!"???

Why not obtain or purchase several different long recordings of nature sounds and string them together to get the length you need?

If you're really as disturbed by repetition as you suggest, then won't hearing the same recording you heard the night before cause you a problem? Won't your mind be listening for specific sounds because you "know they're coming"?

It seems like you propose the impossible. Maybe the answer is to adapt yourself to what is possible.
 
David W. Richardson said:
And what happens when a fly lands on YOUR mic and buzzes?
Click to expand...

I suspect that the recording with the fly was made with a naked mic, or a mic with just a foam on. I propose to use a large blimp - I'm thinking that a fly that lands on the blimp will not be buzzing amongst all the hair. I could be wrong of course!

David W. Richardson said:
If you're asleep, are you really going to wake up and say "A-HA! I HEARD that sequence of sounds 2 hours ago!"???
Click to expand...

The idea is to listen to this at other times as well, so that would be the issue then, even if it wouldn't necessarily be while I'm asleep.

David W. Richardson said:
Why not obtain or purchase several different long recordings of nature sounds and string them together to get the length you need?
Click to expand...

Because these recordings are all pretty wildly different, not just in what they record, but in levels and other characteristics. The jumps between them would be pretty distracting and again, I'd be focusing on "when is the transition coming?!". Not really a solution.

David W. Richardson said:
If you're really as disturbed by repetition as you suggest, then won't hearing the same recording you heard the night before cause you a problem? Won't your mind be listening for specific sounds because you "know they're coming"?
Click to expand...

Yes, that is a concern, which is why I'd like recordings which are pretty neutral and constant. Waves are a good one, as it's hard to spot repetitions, but I'd like other options than just waves and more waves or waterfalls/rivers. A forest that has a pretty steady sound without sudden out of the ordinary sounds (like an exotic bird) would be a "good enough" one, which is what I'm hoping to be able to accomplish by doing my own recording.

David W. Richardson said:
It seems like you propose the impossible. Maybe the answer is to adapt yourself to what is possible.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm hoping it's not impossible, which is why I posted this question as a kind of "reality check". I freely admit, I might be completely underestimating what's involved, as I have zero experience recording nature sounds, but I'm hoping experienced folks on this board who have done similar things, might chime in with some observations and advice.
 
What you are looking for is really hard to find, because its really hard to do, and there is very little reward for recording and then processing the extended clips.

Gear wise, you want the best gear you can manage, particularly the mics and the preamps you are using. Nature ambiences can be very quiet, and many mics just arent quiet enough to handle it.

And to record 10 hours straight, you'll need some big batteries i suspect.

And you will need to listen to those recordings to make sure you don't capture stuff you don't want, like your flies, or an aeroplane (its really hard to truly escape human noise in this age), or a car on a road you didn't know was there. For that length of time, any time you check your recording, you'll likely cause sounds on your recording.

Cross fading between splices can make a fairly seamless audio clip.

It might be worth checking out places more specific to this kind of thing, like https://www.reddit.com/r/fieldrecording or similar.
 
Thanks, Stiffman, that's what I was afraid of - that it would be very hard to do. My idea was to check the sound in the beginning and then take a chance on leaving it alone for a few hours and then checking what I have once I'm at home. Hopefully nothing untoward happens to derail the recording, but you never know and I'm aware that basically I'm gambling and taking a chance. I'm disappointed to hear that top gear is preferred - I'd rather not leave a high-priced mic alone for hours; I was going to use a fairly inexpensive omni mic - the LyxPro SDPC w/omni capsule, we had a thread here on this forum and people like this mic, I have had good experience with it, but to be fair I only used the super-cardioid capsule and only for dialogue. I was going to pair it with either my Tascam DR-60D or DR-70D and a big power bank that can power it for over 20 hours (and I'd need only 10). If for whatever reason I lost this gear, I'd be relatively OK with it, but losing a much more expensive mic and gear would grind my gears, so to speak :).
 
I don't want to discourage you from trying.

If you have the gear, it can't hurt to try it. Give it a trial run or two at home to see how things go before you go out into the wild. See how your recorder deals with that amount of time. I'm guessing a recorder that can record for that time will have to break the recording into large files.
If you're using the DR-70D, it can't hurt to try the onboard mics as well.

Also try some editing with your test files in your given audio editor. I have no idea how they will deal with such big files. You might need to break the files up for playback anyway, again I'm not sure.
While editing, something like the spectral display on Adobe Audition might help you to scrub through the audio and visually identify some audio issues without listening to the entire recording at once.

Noise and sensitivity really comes into play when trying to record quiet sounds. depending on what you are trying to record in particular, you might have reasonable luck.
Something like a running stream you might have a reasonable success.

Give it a try, you understand the sounds you are trying to capture, so you know what you are happy with.
 
My suggestion would be to avoid chasing rainbows and try a different approach. Create several layers of sounds which are randomly distributed over your timelime. No gaps, repetition, etc.
 
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OldCorpse said:
Thanks, Stiffman, that's what I was afraid of - that it would be very hard to do. My idea was to check the sound in the beginning and then take a chance on leaving it alone for a few hours and then checking what I have once I'm at home. Hopefully nothing untoward happens to derail the recording, but you never know and I'm aware that basically I'm gambling and taking a chance. I'm disappointed to hear that top gear is preferred - I'd rather not leave a high-priced mic alone for hours; I was going to use a fairly inexpensive omni mic - the LyxPro SDPC w/omni capsule, we had a thread here on this forum and people like this mic, I have had good experience with it, but to be fair I only used the super-cardioid capsule and only for dialogue. I was going to pair it with either my Tascam DR-60D or DR-70D and a big power bank that can power it for over 20 hours (and I'd need only 10). If for whatever reason I lost this gear, I'd be relatively OK with it, but losing a much more expensive mic and gear would grind my gears, so to speak :).
Click to expand...

Actually, I think your DR70 and the LyxPro's would do OK. The problem is not the equipment, but that it is almost impossible to get away from human noise anymore.

You might think about recording a pink noise generator and playing that back a softly as you can and still mask unwanted noises.

You might also try meditating (zen style) for a hour a day. I find stress makes my tinnitus worse, so leaning to relax might help.

Check out "Wavgain" you can use it to adjust the loudness levels (not peak levels) of recordings so they match. I am doing that with a lot of CD's at the moment, so I can play them in the CD changer with out annoying level changes. Bugger, but it is a lot of work to ripp 100's of CD's, adjust the loundness, and reburn them. Be even more if I did what I thought I wanted to, and make sure the new CD's were completely full of only songs I wanted to hear. I am about halfway done just redoing the CD's as the are. I am averaging the levels on each CD so they maintain their releative level from song to song but with the whole CD at -20dbLU.

The one thing I don't think you want in this effort is loud sounds.
 
This is BG sound, you could record it with a DR40, you do not need high priced gear.

However having done a lot of nature recordings and such maybe if you go backpacking in the Sierra's and get over 10,000 feet or so you might have a shot at no human sounds for 10 hours. But you realize that over that period the soundscape is going to change quite a bit.

If it were me I would make it rather than trying to record it. Also I would give those sleep/ noise boxes a shot first. Not sure how loopy they are or if they are doing a random assembly that constantly changes but it is certainly the easiest choice.

Other than Death Valley I doubt there is anyplace you can go for a day trip that will have a decent chance of no human sounds. I did years of recordings around the SF Bay area and the one time we kicked ourselves for missing was the three day air moratorium after 9/11, no flights and everyone was in shock and staying home and it got really quiet. Unfortunately we were also in the same shape and it never occurred to us to do recordings till all the noise came back. At best you are likely to get a few minutes to maybe if you are very lucky a half hour before some small plane, or motorcycle or? interrupts. So you are going to have to edit anyway. Take the long recordings and edit and mix them. Even at 13,000 feet in the Sierra's you get planes every once in awhile.
 
Thank you, everybody. It seeems like the primary challenge is avoiding the sounds of civilization, especially if I'm limited to what I can get within a day's car drive from Los Angeles. I may have to do some re-thinking of my plans. Food for thought.
 
Noiz2 said:
However having done a lot of nature recordings and such maybe if you go backpacking in the Sierra's and get over 10,000 feet or so you might have a shot at no human sounds for 10 hours.
Click to expand...

Sadly, high in the Sierra's there's typically no sound at all besides some wind. No insects. No birds. Above the tree line hardly any sound at all. I've sat for hours on a rock outcrop and listened. Intently. There's really nothing to hear which is what I liked about it (I'm from the east, there's nothing like that here). But what the OP is asking for is nature background, not silence, so I'm thinking the high country of the Sierra Nevada's isn't really an option.
 
Waves are actually not the good solution they may seem to be. Assuming you mean waves crashing on shore, since waves moving through deep ocean make no significant sound. So what else do we find at seashores? Well, besides people -- who tend to make noise -- we also find birds. Specifically seagulls. And they make noise. Noise that might be sudden and relatively loud, breaking the quiet in distracting ways. The same will be true of deep forests -- bird sounds will be unpredictable and potentially disruptive.

What you may need are synthetic sounds -- the audio version of CGI. Synthetically-generated wave sounds, for instance, would be free of all other types of noise -- people, birds, planes, etc. Where do you get such sounds? I have no idea.
 
All this seems pretty hard to do for just a 'can't hurt to try' treatment. Maybe find something with a better chance of being effective?

For instance, biofeedback might be more effective for high blood pressure than listening to nature recordings, especially given your high degree of critical analysis.

Reducing alcohol intake can improve tinnitus. Then there's aromatherapy -- lavender essential oil is reported to help soothe, tranquilize and calm nervous tension, stress, insomnia, anxiety and palpitations. Since stress is a major contributor to both high blood pressure and tinnitus, it might be worth looking into.

Just a thought.
 
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Bruce Watson said:
Sadly, high in the Sierra's there's typically no sound at all besides some wind. No insects. No birds. Above the tree line hardly any sound at all. I've sat for hours on a rock outcrop and listened. Intently. There's really nothing to hear which is what I liked about it (I'm from the east, there's nothing like that here). But what the OP is asking for is nature background, not silence, so I'm thinking the high country of the Sierra Nevada's isn't really an option.
Click to expand...

Well the tree line is I think 10k so maybe just under it. Silence was not something I remember from the high Sierra's. Thousand Island Lake which is at 9,833 is full of frogs and bugs, meadows with birds etc. But it's about a three day back pack in. The biggest shocker I remember is a full moon. A full moon at almost 10K is just huge and it's so bright you could read by it. That and we saw an actual satellite travel across the sky.
 
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