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The River Issue

Feb 2015

for the best experience we recommend wearing headphones
and going for a walk

The River Issue

Over five frosty days in January 2015, 26 students and two guest tutors – Chris Watson & Jez Riley French – gathered with staff from the UWS Creative Media Academy to undertake an acoustic exploration of the River Ayr. The workshop was delivered with the support of the EU-funded Honeycomb Creative Works program.

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Interest in the sound recording of natural and human environments has grown rapidly in the last few years. Described in various ways: location, field, natural, wild etc., these recordings can be put to a multitude of uses including film, television, radio, art installations, web and CD releases, video game soundtracks, as part of musical compositions and so on. Although we often think of these art forms as primarily visual, in fact the sound track often plays a dominant role in the viewer/user's experience.

 

Learning to create original and effective sound tracks is a crucial and major part of many creative processes. New digital equipment makes recording and editing sound more accessible to many non-specialists, but also requires skill and experience in order to get the most out of it.

 

This five-day course aimed to teach students the skills necessary to produce superb field recordings that can be used in a wide range of different media projects, and give them hands-on experience with some of the latest equipment.

 

The course was attended by film-makers, sound recordists, radio producers, audio artists, musicians and video game designers, both professional and amateur.

 

It was taught by Chris Watson, one of the world's outstanding field recordists, whose work ranges from CDs released in his own name to the soundtracks of countless BBC wildlife films, and by audio specialist Jez Riley French.

 

 

About the Trainers

 

Chris Watson is a composer who specialises in recording the sounds of wildlife and the natural world. His freelance career in film, radio and TV has taken him to some of the worlds’ remotest places. Watson worked on David Attenborough’s Life and Frozen Planet productions for the BBC, which both went on to receive BAFTA Awards in the Best Factual Sound.

 

 

 

 

Chris’s compositions are based on the voices of animals and habitats in the natural world and the built environment such as heather moorlands, tropical forests, deserts, steelworks and the arctic ocean. As well as creating soundtracks for broadcast, Watson produces multi channel sound installations, live performances, public lectures and workshops. His music career stems back to the early 1970s when he was a founder member of the experimental group Cabaret Voltaire. In 2000 he received an Award of Distinction for his Touch CD ‘Outside the Circle of Fire’ in the Digital Music section of the Prix Ars Electronica.

 

The University of the West of England awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Technology degree in 2006, and in 2011 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts, London. He has undertaken commissions from Aldeburgh Music, FORMA Arts & Media, the British Film Institute, The Louvre and Museums Sheffield.
See www.chriswatson.net

 

Jez riley French is a composer, artist & audio specialist whose output involves elements of intuitive composition, field recording (using conventional & extended methods) photographic images (including their use in photographic scores) and improvisation. He has performed, exhibited and had his work published widely across the world and also lectures in both field recording and the act & art of listening. Recently his work has been exhibited at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Artisphere (USA) & at festivals and galleries in Italy, Japan, Czech Republic, Australia, Iceland etc. He also curates the 'a quiet position' project / facebook group on aspects of field recording / listening.

 

 

 

 

Jez also makes & sells his own hydrophones and contact mics. In recent years Jez has been working closely on a number or projects that seek to capture a sense of place and moment that is both highly personal and yet offers a fascinating opportunity to look and listen anew to the environments in which we spend our time.
Visit http://jezrileyfrench.co.uk

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Chapter
01
Glenbuck

Glenbuck Loch is the headquarters of the River Ayr. Created in 1802, it is a man-made reservoir from which water was released every evening at 6pm to drive the mill wheel of the cotton works at Catrine.

01/23

At the Loch

Jez riley French

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Hydrophones between two plates of ice sheet, swans walking on ice in distance, stones skimming.
Contact microphones on fence wires around the loch, snow falling onto wires.

Jez riley French

02/23

Fence

Andy Truscott

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Unedited field recording made by attaching a contact mic to a wire fence in high wind.

Andy Truscott

03/23

Swans

Christopher Menary

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Swans pecking for food on the frozen surface of the loch, recorded with a contact mike

Christopher Menary

04/23

Waterfall

Alex Boyd

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Waterfall on the Hareshaw Burn, which feeds into the Loch.

Alex Boyd

Chapter
02
Ballochmyle

Ballochmyle Viaduct was built in 1848 to carry the Glasgow to Dumfries railway. About a mile up the wooded gorge, a sandstone cliff hidden in trees is covered with cup and ring markings dating from the Bronze Age.

05/23

Wheelbarrow

Colin McKay

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Contact mic on wheelbarrow picks up the sound of the river, and a train passing over the viaduct.

Colin McKay

06/23

Burn (i)

Ceylan Hey

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A burn flowing into the River Ayr near Ballochmyle, recorder with a hydrophone.

Ceylan Hey

07/23

Burn (ii)

Peter Snowdon

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Another burn, below the cup and ring markings, recorder using the built-in microphones of a handheld Sony recorded, held inches above the surface of the water.

Peter Snowdon

08/23

AV Box

Ceylan Hey

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Water flowing through a box on the bridge below the viaduct, somewhat mysteriously labelled, ‘AV’. Recorded with a hydrophone.

Ceylan Hey

09/23

Quarry

Fiona Duncan

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Water dripping off the rockface of an old quarry, with distant traffic noise. Recorded with spaced omnis one metre from the wall.

Fiona Duncan

10/23

Gorge

Jez riley French

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Contact microphones on bridge water transfer box, DPA4060’s recording ice melt.

Jez riley French

Chapter
03
Wallace’s Cave

A cave which claims to have sheltered William Wallace lies beside the river, just below Auchinleck House, the ancestral home of James Boswell.

11/23

Cows

Murray Collier

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Cows eating in the byre by the car park at Auchinleck House, where we left our vehicles to descend to the river.

Murray Collier

12/23

Small Burn

Murray Collier

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The stream that runs below Auchinleck House.

Murray Collier

13/23

Walking Through Snow

Christopher Menary

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Following the path down towards Wallace’s cave.

Christopher Menary

14/23

By the Lugar Water

Bryan Gonzales

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Two ways of listening to the river: through a hydrophone (left channel) and a shotgun mic (right channel).

Bryan Gonzales

15/23

In Wallace’s Cave

Catherine Hotchkiss

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Atmosphere recording in the cave where William Wallace is said to have hidden while fleeing from English soldiers.

Catherine Hotchkiss

Chapter
04
Ayr Docks

The Port of Ayr extends over some 40 acres at the mouth of the river. The North Dock handles over half a million tonnes of commercial cargo a year, including forest products, minerals, scrap metal, animal feed, sand and rock salt.

16/23

The Mouth of the River

Chris Watson

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Boats, planes and trucks cross paths where the river joins the sea. Unedited field recording.

Chris Watson

17/23

The Docks

Jez riley French

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Soundscape of the port of Ayr, mixing a stereo pair placed in the nearby dunes with a contact microphone placed against a metal plate in the harbour.

Jez riley French

18/23

The End of the Pier

Tomas Pelaez

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Long meditative recording in mono, from close to the water level. A more gentle, unedited perspective on the same environment as the previous track.

Tomas Pelaez

19/23

Waves on the Sand (i)

Jackson Marlette

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Hydrophone recording of waves on the beach.

Jackson Marlette

20/23

Waves on the Sand (ii)

Catherine Hotchkiss

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Another, very different hydrophone recording of waves on the beach.

Catherine Hotchkiss

21/23

By the Shore

Maurice O’Brien

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Shoreline near the mouth of the river, recorded with spaced omnis.

Maurice O’Brien

Chapter
05
Composed Soundscapes

Two edited compositions produced by participants in the module.

22/23

From Source to Sea

Sean Kerwin

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A journey in sound that takes us along the whole length of the river.

Sean Kerwin

23/23

Definitely Orange Juice

Louise Wilson

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The River Ayr reimagined as a series of colours and turbulences. Sounds of ice and water from the river Ayr rub shoulders with recordings of the River Kelvin, and a sample from a video of Oliver Sacks discussing colour blindness.

Louise Wilson

Credits

River Edition Editors
Nick Higgins & Peter Snowdon
 
Module Tutors
Chris Watson & Jez Riley French
 
Module Convenor
Peter Snowdon
 
Module Co-ordinator
Rosie Crerar
 
UWS Honeycomb Project Lead
Nick Higgins
 
UWS Technical Support
Keith Bird & Jamie Hare
 
Module Participants
Chris Dooks / Graeme Thomson / Robert Ruthven
Lorenz Stuart / Andy Truscott / Jackson Marlette
Ceylan Hay / Mark Kelly / Anneke Kampman
Tomas Pelaez / Bryan Gonzalez / Daniel Mackay
Catherine Hotchkiss / Murray Collier / Colin Mackay
Fiona Duncan / Conal Blake / Christopher Menary
Sean Kerwin / Fergus Clark / Maurice O’Brien
Gareth Roberts / Alex Boyd / Louise Wilson 
Thomas Caldwell
 
Bus Driver
Gordon McCrone