Audio field recording when close to the sea is a dream. Between the loud birds, the wind and crashing waves, there is always something to record. Audio should speak for itself and should, for me at least, evoke feelings, ideas or memories. Often sounds, like smells, can be far more powerful than images. I love images, but it’s only fairly recently that an amateur on a low budget can record sounds of a decent quality.

The Zoom H2 has been on the market for a while and has been replaced with more powerful models. Yet it did a great job recording the fog horn from this lighthouse in Liverpool a few weeks ago.

The evenings are usually a little quieter as far as noise goes. It means that I also have less editing to do to get my sounds in good shape. Editing sounds is not as simple as it looks unless you approach it with an axe.

Sounds boring, right? But we live in a noisy environment every day. Only those who live in the countryside with no living soul for miles around can say they live in a quiet place. But will they have silence? Absolutely not!

Even in the quietest places, there is sound all around you. All one needs to do is listen.

Like here, to the sounds of the Public Gardens in Halifax. If you have a sound system with 4 speakers, 5.1 or 7.1, you can enjoy this recording in surround.

Recording audio is an expensive hobby. You need the recorder, you need microphones, you need a mixer, you need filters, you need a studio… Yeah, that’s what we still think from the good old analogue tape-days. Nowadays, things are a little easier, both on the gear and on the wallet. What remains to be purchased is at least a capable recorder.