What equipment are you using for your Virginia field recordings ("Dogs in the Yard, Birds Overhead")?
I feel really fortunate to have been able to vastly upgrade my recording rig in the last year. In the past, I would go out into the field, including the Brazilian Amazon, with a small Sony DAT recorder and any affordable, handheld stereo mic. I'd also bring an assortment of contact microphones and small binaural mics. I had some success with a Crown SASS mic [PZM stereo]. At the moment, I am using a Sound Devices 722 hard disk recorder, a Schoeps CMXY stereo [condenser] mic and a Sennheiser MKH short shotgun microphone. I bring along a mic stand but also a pistol grip and short boom pole. The Sound Devices is an amazing machine. It has excellent preamps as well as a 40 GB hard drive. I generally record at 24 bit, 96 k. The Schoeps in particular captures high frequencies like nothing else I know of. The recordings I've been doing will end up in various forms, both as multi-channel installations as well as stereo tracks for an upcoming CD on the Portuguese label, SIRR. I don't have the ability to record in surround so I will often process stereo tracks with a very nice plug-in, ARL Sound Stage, that my friend Paul Geluso worked on. Some of the recordings remain fairly pristine; others are mangled and played with. I've been using Ableton Live for several years for mixing and processing, but recently I am trying to stay a bit outside the box, using a small Doepfer analog suitcase-style synth as a processor. It's all been a bit of a learning curve — recording with something as sensitive as the Schoeps means either leaving the mic to record alone and/or learning to do as little breathing, moving or twitching as possible. When I first got it, I thought there was some problem with an occasional cracking noise that I heard through the headphones. I eventually realized it was the sound of my wrist! One of the most amazing sites I've been recording in recently is a newly discovered forest about two hours south of Richmond. The forest is incredibly quiet. Occasionally an owl will call out in the late afternoon. I've also heard the inevitable boom and splash of trees falling in the distance.
How have your techniques changed from when you first started recording outside of the home/studio environment?
