Audio Files
Ensemble Recording
Synopsis
This ensemble recording was done in my local village church during the annual Christmas carol concert that I’ve been a part of for 11 years. The choir is made up of different people every year, some who sing with the church year round and some who join only at Christmas through some connection to the conductor. This year the choir consisted of around 25 people, along with one organ player. Recording live ensembles is something that I’ve started doing over the past three years during this degree, and is something that I am hoping to continue in the future. As the service takes place in a Church, it fits into the context of the Location Recording module.
In preparation for this recording, I contacted the choirmaster Simon Ainge to ask if recording the service would be possible—it is a public service that usually draws a large audience and the church is quite small, so I knew that I would be limited for microphone placements, and could be running cables in unsuitable places.
Research
In the first semester I engaged in practical research by recording small acoustic ensembles outside of a studio setting during Conservatoire events. While I think it would’ve been beneficial to specifically get a chance to practice recording a choir, these sessions still gave me a lot more confidence going into the project, because I had learned how to use the necessary equipment, I could plan the set-up in detail and knew how to work in a venue space. The experience of working in small groups for these projects with little supervision also prepared me for doing this project by myself.
Cable management was also a key takeaway for me from those recording sessions. As the carol service was a public event with an audience, and members of the choir needed to be able to move around throughout the evening, it was very important that cables were as taped down and as unobstructive as possible.
As the first excerpt from the recording is ‘O come, o come, Emmanuel’ I used a recording performed by the Choir of Magdalen College (Ives et al, 2009) as a reference for the mixing process. It also features just a choir and organ, although a bigger choir than the one I recorded. I found it useful to compare the quality of the mix, detail in the organ and use of reverb while mixing my recording.
Project Management
Initially I planned to record a small ensemble in a church—something akin to CRAWLERS.’ “Come Over Again” acoustic performance (CRAWLERS., 2021). However, the artist I reached out to pulled out of the plan some time into the year. I had already done this choir recording as a contingency plan by that point, and I had prepared thoroughly for it in case the original plan fell through and I decided to submit it.
Prior to the day, I made rough diagrams of the church’s layout and microphone placements. The week before the service I also conducted a risk assessment (see Appendix 1), and attended a rehearsal to find plug sockets and look at the space in more detail, keeping in mind the set-up I had planned. The choirmaster advised on the best place for me to set up the laptop, which was behind the organ.
I booked the equipment from the Conservatoire facilities desk a month in advance and picked it up before heading home for Christmas.
On the day of the service, I arrived at the church two hours before the choir’s rehearsal to set up without disturbing them. Originally I planned to have a pair of omnidirectional Sontronics Orpheus microphones as ambient mics in the far corners of the church, as this is something I’d done in other ensemble recordings and had always gotten a good result. However, because of the audience and layout of the pews, I wasn’t able to run cables back up to behind the organ, where the rig was sat. I planned to plug them into a Zoom H5 recorder and line up the audio afterwards, however one of the external inputs on the H5 wasn’t receiving any signal. Being so far away from Leeds, I didn’t have any way of fixing this myself or replacing the recorder.
Because of this my plans changed drastically, and I moved the Orpheus’ to behind the choir at the altar, and used the XY stereo pair built into the H5 to record ambience from the back of the room.
I gain checked and ensured everything was working during the rehearsal, and the recording was smooth throughout the service.
In post production, I used small amounts of compression and EQ on each track to bring out the voices and organ, and smooth out peaks in dynamics. My aim was to retain the character of the live performance in the recording, with the mix helping it to sound more polished and add clarity.
As this was a longer service and I only needed a couple of minutes’ worth of audio, I compiled three excerpts together, choosing the sections that I felt were most impactful, had the best performances and the least disturbance from audience members. Despite this, there are still one or two instances in the chosen clips of coughing, or a choir member dropping their pencil. Unfortunately these were unavoidable throughout the whole recording, which is another thing that came as a disadvantage from having an audience and recording a live performance, where there was no chance for doing multiple takes.
Later on in the year I went back to the Church to record an impulse response that I used in the final mix to have more control over the reverb levels while keeping the recording in its original space.
Evaluation
After creating the montage of clips and beginning the mix process, I played the recording during a seminar and received anonymous feedback (see Appendix 2).
There was positive feedback, such as a good balance between the choir and organ and a quality recording. Some suggestions for improvement included adding more reverb and sound of the church as the mix felt quite dry, and more attention on the low end frequencies to bring out the organ and lower voices.
I took this feedback and incorporated it into the mix.
There were a few things I didn’t have much control over during this project, from limited space for microphone placements to additional noise picked up during the recording the audience and choir members. Recording the entire service did give me more flexibility with selecting parts of the performance to use in the final submission.
If I did this project again, I would also include wider ambient microphones behind the audience to capture the space better. While I still captured some ambience with the Zoom H5, having a pair of omnidirectional microphones like the Sontronics Orpheus positioned in the back corners of the church would’ve given me more control over the levels and panning of the ambient microphones.
I used a pair of Neumann KM184s as close-mics, positioned one on either side of the walkway to pick up both sides of the choir. If I were to redo this recording I would place them higher up in order to pick up more of the overall group recorded, as there’s a resulting focus on the one or two people immediately in front of each microphone, and the rest of the choir aren’t as audible through them.
Also incorporating a microphone to pick up more of the organ would’ve given me more control over that in the final mix. While it’s still audible and sits relatively balanced among the voices without a separate microphone, being able to EQ or add processing to just the organ could’ve helped it to have more presence in the final product.
Overall I am happy with the final result of the recording. While there is scope for improvement I think the essence of the performance was captured well in the space and given the restrictions I had, and when faced with obstacles such as faulty equipment I handled it efficiently. This choir do not get the chance to be recorded, and I think that capturing and producing something that replicates the true sound of the performance and can be given back to them to keep has a lot of value in preserving and keeping record of their work.
Track/Composition
Synopsis
The idea for this composition came from one of my favourite books, Curious Tides (Lacelle, 2023). The book has a very strong atmosphere and many different settings and spaces that I could try to capture in the piece, which I felt suited the context of the module.
The book is a dark fantasy novel set in a school, featuring secret societies, blood magic and an underwater cave that holds the door to another world. These settings and tropes influenced my choice of sounds to record and use in the piece.
I wanted to try and tell the story of the book through sound. Following the storyline also meant that there was a pre-existing structure that I could build the composition around. Some of the spaces used and recorded when capturing material included a church, a port city, inside old cottages and university buildings.
Research
Practical research for this project included practice using the Zoom H5 recorder, and learning how to operate it. The field recorders are sensitive to things like wind and handling noise, and so recording things multiple times meant I could work on reducing them as much as possible with the dead kitten and set-up—placing the recorder down on a surface where possible or holding it steadily, and listening through headphones to check for any unwanted rumbling or noise. There were multiple days where I went out with a field recorder and yet didn’t end up using any of the samples I’d recorded, because I wasn’t happy with the capture or quality of the sound.
Originally I wanted to capture sounds of the river in Hull as a large body of water, but the wind that would’ve made that possible would’ve also likely had a negative impact on the quality of the recording by adding excess noise (Virostek, 2018) so it was a calm day when I made it to Hull in March, and I recorded the fountains in the city centre instead.
In 2022, Jaidev Shriram et al. proposed a project to create full length soundtracks for books, using pre-existing soundtracks from film adaptations. Because of the characters and settings, “book soundtracks” allowed space for recurring motifs for main characters, and scene specific characteristics. The result of the study after asking participants to read two chapters of a book backed by a complimentary soundtrack was that the music “enhanced the experience” and “set the environment” for the readers, when the music was “stylistically cohesive and emotionally relevant”.
As there are not many accounts of composition specifically for books and the reading experience, I also looked into film composition.
Foley is the recording and recreation of aural material to lay over shoots in post production, often used to enhance and “captur[e] the dramatic ‘feel’ of sound effects” in film (Wright, 2014).
In film, there are two categories used to describe sound: diegetic and non-diegetic. Diegetic sounds are those that happen within the space of the film, or can be heard by the characters, whereas non-diegetic can only be heard by the viewers (Stilwell, 2019). However, the line between these two terms is not concrete, and may be crossed when music shifts from an intro sequence to playing from the radio of a car, for example.
In Environmental Sound Artists: In their own words, Bernie Krause (2016) defines sounds as biophonic, geophonic and anthropophonic. Biophonic sounds come come from non-human organisms in certain habitats. Geophonic sounds include the natural effects of wind, rain, water or the movement of the earth, and anthropophonic sounds are generated and controlled by humans. This composition uses both anthropophonic and geophonic sounds either in their raw form or processed through synthesis or sampling to use as ambience or instruments.
I also focused on recording foley sounds that would appear in certain scenes, such as footsteps, pages of a book being turned, or crashing waves, and used them in place of or combined with non-diegetic sounds such as melodies, ambient pads and percussion to create a piece that matched the emotional tones and atmosphere of the story.
Project Management
Given that the piece’s structure follows a published book, I started planning by rereading the book during the first semester and making notes of key plot points and settings. I then used these descriptions to decide on what sort of sounds I wanted to capture and include in each section.
From February onwards, I started planning visits to locations to capture recordings. Two of the most important sounds in the track are a ticking clock, and different kinds of water flowing, which also represent the two main characters in the story. There are sounds of rain that I recorded from my window as well as the water fountains recorded in Hull.
As I couldn’t record the sound of the ocean or crashing waves, I automated the volume and high-cut frequency on the recording of the fountain to come in and out, and give a similar effect.
Over Easter I recorded a friend’s grandfather clock in their house’s entryway for a few minutes over the hour, to record both the ticking and chimes. The manipulation of time is a significant part of the story, so the tempo of the piece reflects that at 120bpm, which matches the ticking of the clock.
A lot of other sounds used in the piece were recorded around the university campus, keeping to the school setting which correlates to a large majority of the book’s setting. For example, the main percussive part are from footsteps going down flights of stairs.
These recordings were time stretched and pitched up or down, and distorted using a bit-crush or clip distortion plug-in to give them more depth as percussion elements with low-end frequencies.
The main melody instrument used a single A note held on a flute, recorded in a large kitchen with a lot of natural reverb and then ran through a sampler to control and play with a MIDI keyboard. I also ran the same recording through PaulXStretch to create a high-pitched whistling sound, as well as through a spectral synthesiser to create an atmospheric pad that plays underneath parts of the track.
The writing for this track took longer than I expected it to, as it’s not a type of composition I’ve explored heavily before. Because of this a lot of the mixing was done as I went, in order to try and save time closer to the deadline. This could’ve been better managed so I had more time to focus on the mix individually.
Evaluation
Time management was my biggest problem with this piece. It was the track that took the longest to develop, as it’s not a type of composition I had much experience in beforehand. To account for this I should’ve made a start on the track sooner rather than later, which I think would’ve led me to be happier with the overall outcome.
As time and time manipulation is a big theme in the plot of Curious Tides, utilising tempo automation was something I would’ve liked to explore more in order to replicate that, whereas in the final product the ticking clock just slightly shifts in and out of perfect time during certain parts to hint at the fluidity of it in the story. The original recording of the grandfather clock was not perfectly in time anyway, due to it being an old analogue clock, and I had decided to edit it to stay in time for most of the piece.
I also would’ve liked to have developed the track more especially towards the end, adding more parts and creating more tension in the structure of the piece before the end and have more variation between repeated sections.
That being said, the piece captures the atmosphere of the book well and creates a complimentary soundtrack that follows the key themes of the book, which was also one of the first notes I got as feedback from someone who is also familiar with the story.
Audio Documentary
Synopsis
This audio documentary aims to explore the power of dance through social, physical, political and cultural contexts and how it is used as a positive tool for both individual wellbeing as well as a wider sense of community and connection.
The rationale for my decision on the topic was that it’s something I have personally felt the effects of, as well as being involved in a community of people who could also offer their insights. This project gave me a chance to dig deeper into researching some areas and include my hobbies outside of music.
During the recording stage I involved a lot of the people I know through dance. I interviewed Anaïs Nevoh on her experiences doing group dance performances in Leeds through classes and societies, as well as her perception of dancing and communities growing up in Mauritius, where they have a traditional dance called the Sega with a long history that still makes up a prominent part of current celebrations and gatherings. For the recordings playing underneath the narration and interviews, I took a Zoom H5 to dance practices with friends where we learn different songs that we all enjoy. In the audio documentary, the songs being danced to are Stateside by PinkPanthress (2026) and UNIQUE by P1harmony (2026). I recorded in these dance studios to capture the real time sound of our practices, with the ambience and sound of the studio spaces to set the scene and add relevant ambience to the narration.
Other ambiences include a recording taken from outside Yorkshire Dance during the daytime, which correlates to the scene being set at the start of the documentary. Towards the end, there is a recording of a band that marched during the May Day parade. I recorded and included this because of the link between May Day festivals and Morris dances.
Research
Audio documentaries and storytelling has been growing in popularity in recent years, creating huge transnational audiences through multiple platforms, from short-form content to long-form essays and podcasts (McHugh, 2014). This boom is a result of the accessibility of the medium; anyone with access to a phone has the agency to tell their story through audio without external influence, and audio documentaries and podcasts don’t require the listener’s full attention as opposed to video or print.
In addition to this, the non-intrusive nature of audio facilitates revelation, and the expressing of deeper emotions compared to those experienced from video. This is linked to a quality known as “affect”, which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “emotion or desire as influencing behaviour”. As such, using ambient sounds like birdsong, or passing traffic provides “subtle lessons in the subjectivity of sound and its ability to evoke reaction” (McHugh, 2014).
Listening to audio documentaries and podcasts served as research into different styles of narration, storytelling and composition within audio documentaries to give me ideas to incorporate into my own. ‘When The Birds Sing, We Are Safe’ (Issa, 2021) has a narrative script that begins with an anecdote, and this inspired the beginning of my piece where I reference an experience from last year. The delivery of the narration is soft and close, recorded in a studio. ‘When The Birds Sing, We Are Safe’ doesn’t use any other audio besides the narration, but ‘Witch’ (Rakusen, 2023) includes music and sound effects to create atmosphere that surrounds and adds emphasis to elements of the narration. Interviews are also incorporated that are recorded on-location.
‘St. James’ Park’ (Watson, 2015) uses ambient recordings and foley to create atmosphere that links to the topic of narration, for example recording the sounds of a match from the surrounding park and overlaying it with his narration about the crowds in the arena. This influenced the inclusion of recordings from dance practices in my documentary, to create a similar sense of atmosphere and giving further context beyond the narrative.
In order to write the script, I read papers studying dancing within communities, the cultural significance, history and physical and mental benefits to dancing. I also conducted an interview as primary research and recorded the audio using a Zoom H5 field recorder while sat in a dance studio, which captured the surrounding ambience and natural reverb of the space, including the sounds of classes and rehearsals happening in the rooms around us.
As Les Back and Michael Bull (2003) said, “Sounds are embedded with both cultural and personal meanings; sounds do not come at us merely raw.” Recording the sound of specific spaces for mediums such as audio documentaries is effective because it includes additional meaning and context that is offered to the listener so they may form a reaction to it, as opposed to a recording done in a studio, where the sonic quality is typically dry and more focused and may not offer any additional context or meaning.
Project Management
While the overall topic of the documentary stayed consistent throughout the project—focusing on dancing in communities and the positive effects of it—the type of narration changed from one with a narrative focus to a more informative approach. This was because my original idea would’ve required a lot of consistent recording of group practices and interviewing multiple members of that group over a longer stretch of time, however with a lot of the dancers being students with busy schedules a lot of plans to get together fell through.
Because of this I took the more informative route, and started reading studies around the ways that dance affects us physically and mentally, and also started looking into the history of the art.
I reached out to a friend who I met through dance and asked if she’d be available for an interview, and booked out a space at the Dance Studio Leeds to conduct the short interview and record some ambience of the space and us dancing.
When recording the interview with Anaïs, I considered where to place the field recorder in relation to where we were sat. I settled on placing it between us, thinking that our voices could sit on different sides of the stereo field. However, in the final product almost all of my talking has been cut out, and so in retrospect I should’ve positioned the XY pair so that Anaïs’ voice sat in the centre.
Similarly, when recording the dance practices I experimented with positioning the field recorder in the front centre of the space, to maximise stereo image in the footfalls, and putting it in the corner of the studio to capture more of the overall sound of the space.
Once the topic decision was made, the timeline for this project started in January, with the interview taking place in February and the group rehearsal recordings taking place later on in early April. I recorded the narration around the same time, although rerecorded it later on with a different microphone as I wasn’t happy with the sound of the first one. I originally used an SM7B as they are popular podcast and broadcasting microphones for the frequency response that captures the voice clearly and a smooth, warm tone (thepodcasthaven, 2026). However after listening back to the recordings I wanted a brighter sound with more clarity in the high end, so rerecorded with a Neumann TLM102 large diaphragm condenser.
Post-production included light amounts of EQ on both the narration and the recordings to cut out any unwanted low end rumble from the wind when recording outside, or resonant frequencies from recording in spaces outside of a recording studio. I also added a small amount of a short reverb to smooth out the harshness of the dry narration signal. However, I still aimed to keep the clean, bright character to the voice that the three audio documentaries used as references all had.
Evaluation
I sent the documentary to a friend after doing some work on the mix, and they gave feedback on a couple areas where the background felt too loud or overpowering compared to the narration, so that I could go back and re-listen to these parts and adjust the balance.
As an informative audio documentary, I think my piece maintains the focus on the narration and information being shared through the interviews. There could have been more experimentation with supporting materials and ambience, however as the specific topics and talking points changed throughout the process I was limited by time and ability to travel. For example, while the recording of the May Day band while Morris dancing is being referenced is effective, given that Morris dancing is very common on May Day, I would’ve liked to instead include audio recordings from an actual Morris troupe. However once that part of the script had been written I did not have the time to try and source one.
The tone of the narration is cohesive with its main reference (‘When the Birds Sing, We Are Safe’ (Issa, 2021)), its closeness works well as the documentary opens with an anecdote of a positive past experience, and remains audible and has clarity throughout the piece. In some ways, the minimal composition of background material allows the focus to remain on the narration and interview, of the stories and facts being shared.
Bibliography:
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- CRAWLERS. (2021) CRAWLERS – Come Over Again (Acoustic) [Video] Available Online: https://youtu.be/bUkFfZgNEjQ?si=DaMExXPY6Qa_wd2F [Accessed 08/05/26]
- Issa, H (2021) When the birds sing we are safe. Into the Wild [Podcast]. 15 December https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0012x6z [Accessed 10/05/26]
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Appendices
Appendix 1 (Carol Service Risk Assessment)
Appendix 2 (Choir Recording Feedback)
