Audio Files
Project 1: Ensemble Recording – Leeds Minster Evensong, Leeds Minster
Synopsis
This project is the Ensemble Recording part of the assignment, featuring Leeds Minster Choir’s Evensong performance within their home venue of the Minster.
Research
Trio Arisonto – The Venue, Leeds Conservatoire
The research I used most for this aspect of the assignment was primary, practice-based research – involving knowledge developed from carrying out various recordings that I could apply to my own final project.
This practice-based research began with being involved in a recording of a group named Trio Arisonto for Leeds International Chamber Series. This recording enabled me to gain insight into using contextual space within recordings, by ensuring the use of Stereo room microphones and also highlighting the importance of capturing the audience.
This project enhanced my ability to use out-of-studio recording equipment, such as the Allen and Heath QU-24, which ensured I could use it efficiently in my final project.
This recording also enabled me to practice my knowledge of Angular Expansion and Distortion within stereo-systems, focusing on selecting the correct Microphone array for the recording in order to ensure the stereo width was not reduced and accurately reflected the audience perspective.
Through the use of online visualisation of Angular Expansion/Distortion, I was able to accurately identify ORTF to be the most suitable array for the arrangement of performers within the recording. This is because the musicians’ arrangement closely matched the ORTF capture angle, allowing the best possible stereo translation on playback.
Involvement in this project allowed me to evaluate my decisions on the route I wanted to take for this aspect of the assignment. Having been involved in a CrossWire recording in second year, and multiple experiences aiding in live-sound at venues like Headrow House and Belgrave, I had significantly more experience in recording electronically-based performances. The Trio Arisonto project seemed to seal my decision in choosing a more classically-versed performance for my Ensemble Recording, providing me with ample experience to apply my practice-based knowledge myself within a different project.
West Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra (WYSO) – St George’s Hall, Bradford
Further practice for this project involved aiding my friend Barney Nicholls with two large orchestral recordings that took place outside of the institution.
The first ensemble we recorded was the West Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra at St George’s Hall, Bradford. As this was not my project, I was not extensively involved in the planning stages, apart from brief track sheets and logistics. Instead, I offered help in setup and operation on the day of the recording, as well as providing transport for us both and our equipment.
Our microphone setup consisted of 6 microphones, all in different stereo arrays. We intended to keep the equipment list small for this project, as Barney believed it would be a very short notice setup, and also due to the fact we were unable to visit the venue prior to the date of recording. When we arrived to the venue, we realised that we would have significantly more time than anticipated, therefore we could have brought more equipment. I offered the opinion that in these styles of recording, minimalism often outweighs having a large microphone list as to avoid phase issues and keeping the venue tidy, ensuring microphones were almost invisible to the audience. However, in evaluation of our efforts, we both thought that the recording lacked some of the upper-range string frequencies, and in retrospect it would have been good to place a microphone directed towards this section of the orchestra. This evaluative point therefore shaped our recording of the next orchestra I aided him in recording.
Airedale Symphony Orchestra (AS0) – Kings Hall, Ilkley
For this recording, we were able to scale the equipment list, and we eventually ended up taking more microphones than we needed. The final setup comprised of an A/B spaced pair at the very back of the venue, another A/B spaced pair on the balcony/box and a closer omnidirectional A/B stereo array directed towards the first strings at the front of the orchestra.
Interestingly, this project allowed me to gain experience in lighting, as I was requested to operate the lights due to an absence of staff at the venue.
In evaluation of this project, we felt that the recording quality of this project was greater than WYSO, however the quality of musicians was slightly lower (due to it being an unprofessional community orchestra). This, however, was a very minor point and it could have also been subjective due to the fact the music that they were playing was more modern-classical and less diatonic.
Project Management
Following attending a trip to Leeds Minster Choir with the Location Recording class led by Simon McGrath, I decided on recording the choir for the assignment.
Logistics and planning began with liaising with the director of the choir, Alexander Woodrow, who explained that it would be quite a long time before I would be able to involve myself in recording the ensemble, due to how busy they were.
This gave me enough time to plan the recording array and equipment used to a high standard. The equipment list was as follows:
- Allen and Heath QU24
- Stage Box
- DSnake Extension
- Power Extension Lead
- Location Macbook
- 2x Case of 10 largest possible XLR cables
- 4x Sontronics Orpheus
- 1x Neumann KM184 pair
- 2x Neumann TLM102
- Zoom H5
- 10x Microphone Stands
- Sennheiser DT990 headphones
- Other model monitoring headphones (avoid confusion from desk and H5 Monitoring)
I also requested help from Barney and another friend, Harry Scrowther, in setting up on the day. This allowed the recording to go much more efficiently and significantly helped in the packing up after the performance had finished.
One of my main aims of this equipment plan was to reach an element of separation between aspects of the choir and then reflect this within my mix using panning. This was captured using the Sontronics Orpheus’, which were placed directly towards the sections of the choir. The largest risk with using this amount of microphones at relatively close distances was phasing, which I attempted to mitigate by ensuring fixed distances between areas of sound sources that each microphone would pick up.
I used the KM184 pair in an X/Y configuration for a simple stereo capture, whilst using the TLM102 pair for A/B spaced pair room capture.
Following information I gathered in attending the module’s seminars, I captured the room reverb IR and then fed this back onto the recording in post-production to blend all aspects together slightly better.
I noticed upon arrival to the venue, that the organisation of the choir was not beneficial within a typical recording setup. This was because the choir was effectively sectioned in halves and singing towards each other, meaning that there could possibly be an element of unwanted phase that I had to be wary of. Aware of this, I ensured that each of the Sontronics Orpheus microphones were set to Cardioid polar pattern, to largely remove the audio being picked up from the back of the microphones. However, due to the venue being so large, and it having lots of surfaces where audio could reflect from, it was impossible to completely isolate different parts of the choir to the extent to which I would have liked. This meant I had to manage my recording setup to absolutely minimise phase issues by placing microphones closer to sound sources. Ultimately, this caused a higher degree of page turning and other unwanted artefacts, but preserved a greater level of phase coherence than if the microphones were placed differently.
Evaluation
On surveying my work to peers, I realised the use of hard stereo panning was either very well received or critiqued, depending on the individual. Personally, my aim when recording this project was to recreate the moment of being in the audience and listening to the choir myself. This means that due to the large space in which the choir was recorded, elements of the choir were heavily directional and seemed to naturally fall hard left or right and therefore I aimed to reflect this within the mix.
In hindsight, I may have opted for a different microphone placement in regard to the spot-miking of the choir. Although the closeness worked in terms of isolation, artefacts within the performance such as breaths, coughs, and page-turns were more present in the recording stage. This is an unavoidable circumstance, yet with further mic placement and treating elements of the choir as dynamic, groups of sound, I may have been able to minimise this at the cost of isolation.
An important evaluative point to mention is throughout my practice-based research with Barney Nicholls, we both received praise for our professional and successful attitude towards both of the Orchestra projects. We also were told by one of the individuals responsible for the Orchestra that there may be paid opportunities in the future once we have finished university. This is an obvious point for commercial viability of undertaking projects like these, and it is definitely something I am interested in for the future.
Project 2: Documentary Piece – ‘The Industrial Language of Pitmatic’
Synopsis
This piece forms the second part of the assignment – an audio documentary encapsulating the heritage of my accent, rooted in the historic North Eastern mining industry. The documentary features numerous audio excerptsI have captured within my composition that relate to the contextual basis and are used to evoke a sense of atmosphere that I associate with the topic.
Research
Research began for this project by making myself familiar with elements of dialectology, more specifically North-Eastern accents and their historical and present marker of cultural identity within this region. A key piece of research which enabled me to understand the survival of North East English dialect was a study by Mike Pearce titled “Dialectological Landscapes of North East England” Pearce, M. (2017). The study is an in-depth analysis of North Eastern speech and outlines important focuses such as the “‘survival’ of traditional dialect lexis” Pearce, M. (2017), which aided my formulation of content for the documentary when linking the speech to historical industries such as coal mining. Another aspect of this study which aided my content development was the section: “A perceptual dialect map of North East England”, Pearce, M. (2017) which surveyed 1600 people across different areas of the North East about their perception of their own dialect. Within the survey, a notable response from Blyth explained the perceived difference between Northumbrians and Geordies: “I do not consider myself to be a ‘Geordie’, I am a Northumbrian.”
Having originated from the region myself, I gained a lot of knowledge of the subject just having lived there for a large portion of my life. My locality to the region enabled me to efficiently determine areas of interest that would be useful for research. Two key areas that I visited were Beamish Museum and Woodhorn Museum.
Beamish Museum
For both Museums I visited, I took the Zoom H5 portable recording device to capture all of my material.
Attending the module seminars enabled me to learn how to properly capture and make use of Impulse Responses. I aimed to demonstrate usage of this methodology throughout my piece and therefore captured multiple IR’s across my visits to both Museums. I only ended up using two of these in my piece, but I have now amassed a collection of my own IR’s that may be useful in other projects I am a part of later on in my production career.
The two most significant pieces of audio I was able to capture at Beamish were the interviews with both the Mining Life Engagers: Alexander Appleton and Ron Hindhaugh. These feature at 3:15 and 3:30 within the documentary. It was helpful to demonstrate a second point of view regarding North Eastern speech to establish credibility and diversify the voices heard across the documentary.
Furthermore, at around 0:25 in the documentary, I aimed to place the listeners within the cave that I captured the audio from at Beamish mineshaft. I stretched the audio using a software called PaulXStretch to develop a soundscape that could be used to link different pieces of shorter audio together.
Woodhorn Museum
Woodhorn Museum is a museum located in Ashington, Northumberland that focuses more specifically on mining-culture within the North East. It is a transformed colliery, much like Beamish, however more informationally educational, as opposed to the immersive replication of the past that is at Beamish.
My visit to Woodhorn allowed me to capture many more useful pieces of audio, such as the hammering sounds of blacksmithing, horses, minecart pistons, and another IR which was the engine room.
One of the most notable sounds I collected at my time at Woodhorn was the Capell Fan. This is the massive, industrial whirring sound effect heard at the very beginning of the documentary, layered amongst many other loud noises to transport the listener to a working mine.
The Capell Fan, invented by Reverend George Marie Capell (Capell, 1907), was a revolutionary piece of technology that provided safety for those working in the mine by displacing dangerous gases and air into the atmosphere, allowing suitable ventilation for workers (University of South Florida, 2020).
Cruel Nature Records, an independent label based in Northumberland, released the album “Divvin’ Gan Near The Capell Fan”, which exclusively used field recordings of the Capell Fan in Woodhorn. In the album description, they highlight how the Capell Fan at Woodhorn Colliery is the “last” surviving example of this technology, a fact which I felt was culturally significant and almost poignant. (Cruel Nature Records, 2014). Researching this information about this piece of equipment led me to ensure that I would capture it when I visited the museum and use it within my documentary, due to its significance.
Project Management
After I had collected both my contextual and sonic research, I began to write the script. This part of this project took the longest as I aimed to keep formality whilst including an element of personality to the documentary, a task that was difficult for me to achieve.
Once the script had been written, I recorded my speech in studio 108A, with a Shure SM7B and Cloudlifter. This setup is extremely popular amongst podcasters and other formats of recorded speech. In the Sound on Sound article “Podcast Like a Pro!” Mike Senior explains a dynamic microphone can be more suited for recorded speech due to its less-harsh frequency response to sibilance and other high frequency content (Senior, 2020). This is because microphones that use capacitance capture a much greater level of detail than dynamic microphones, which use electromagnetic induction.
Management of the project overall may have been less linear than the ensemble recording, solely because of the fact I did not have to rely as much on the availability and schedules of other people. This allowed me to enable a more creative workflow across the production of the project, meaning I could add or subtract content that I felt necessary upon listening back to early sketches I created.
Logistically, the only aspect that I had to manage in detail, was the hiring and scheduling of equipment to be brought out of the institution and up to my home area. This was not difficult due to the short travel time it takes to get back to Northumberland, and also due to the fact I could plan it on a weekend and only rely on myself for availability.
Evaluation
Overall, I felt highly satisfied with both the process and final result of this project. Exploring something culturally relevant to my own upbringing enabled me to immerse myself in the production and capture of the atmosphere I intended to create.
However, there were some parts of the project that I felt could have been improved. One aspect that I felt could have been changed was the script content itself. Upon listening back to the documentary, I thought that there were points that may have been left with less explanation than they should have. An example of this is during the interview section with the Mining Life Engagers at Beamish Museum, where alternative voices and opinions are offered, but not followed up with ample explanation, especially due to the fact that a listener who is not local to the region may have a difficult time understanding what is being said.
Out of all the projects within the assignment, I would say that I was most satisfied producing this documentary and it may be an avenue that I would like to explore further down the line in regards to my future career as a producer.
I would say the viability of creating documentaries such as these are much easier logistically as I mentioned before. This may be part of the reason as to why I found it one of the more positive aspects of my assignment. On the other hand, it is useful to mention that collaboration is an important part of being a producer and should be practiced extensively to ensure maximum recomendation for career opportunities. In reflection of this, I may look to creating audio documentaries exclusively for enjoyment, whereas look towards projects like the ensemble-recording aspect to this assignment as career-related and commercial.
Project 3: Composition – ‘FEV1’
Synopsis
This project is the Track/composition part of my assignment. It is an electronic, uptempo piece that aims to explore my recent health struggles and my feelings surrounding it. Specifically focusing on my Asthma, hence the title “FEV1” which refers to Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 Second – a statistic that is measured during spirometry tests on diagnosis of the disease. Although the context seems quite negative, my aim was to provide an alternate point of view, trying to establish a sense of hope amongst the track as well as the obvious negative connotations that the topic evokes.
Research
Starting this track began with finding reference material for the genre I proposed to create. One of the main references I used for the genre-basis was the artist Floating Points and his track ‘Bias’ (Floating Points, 2019). I thought that the dark-nature of the track, and its specific focus on bass and percussion elements reflected the context of my piece well.
Ideation for the project context began with attending a module seminar that explored the work of Jacob Kirkegaard, and his work “Labyrinthitis” (Kirkegaard, 2008) which is developed from “sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs” (Moore, Kahn and Kirkegaard, 2008). I was inspired by the unusual instrumentational basis to this piece, and therefore formed my own, personal artistic attitude toward this part of the assignment.
Research therefore simply took the form of pre-existing knowledge of my own disease and therefore I was able to create another more personal production, similar to my documentary.
Project Management
Capturing audio for this project was also done with the Zoom H5 portable recorder. I did not want the audio content to be completely and explicitly related to the context, therefore I aimed to capture audio that reflected my own personal relationship with the topic. An example of this being audio taken from Tynemouth seafront, a place I go that offers a sense of relief and fresh air when I feel at my worst.
In contrast to this point, there are more explicitly subject-specific audio content also, such as my breathing, which I captured when I began to feel wheezy before taking my inhaler. I arranged these samples in a rhythmic way to support the drums.
There is also a high pitched, whistling sound that can first be heard at 0:17, which is the sound of my wheezing, placed through the PaulXStretch software and stretched an enormously large amount, then tuned to the key of the piece.
Most of the sounds used for this piece, excluding some of the drum and percussion elements, are repurposed and processed audio that I have captured myself and manipulated to create my own instruments/timbres.
An example of this is the bass sound I created for the track. I used Wavetable synthesis to create an 808-like sound using a sample of a Seagull I captured at Tynemouth priory.
I did this first by selecting a small portion of the sample that had a distinct pitch, then stretching the sample to allow proper Wavetable analysis. I then adjusted the Wavetable position to more closely resemble a typical Sine Wave used in the classic 808 bass sound. This obviously could not be perfectly replicated, however this was beneficial as the subtle artefacts of the wave shape contributed to the uniqueness of the sound. I then mapped an envelope to the coarse pitch of the oscillator and set the envelope to mimic a transient punch.
The end result sounded like this:
Although not fully based from my own recorded material, the drum/percussion elements still included my own sounds to a large extent. I created the Kick sound from a transient sample of my feet walking along the beach. I also created a ticking/hi-hat sound from the sound of me tapping my shoes together to get rid of the sand, blended with a sample of a stone hitting the water and splashing.
These sounds can be heard in these two examples:
As you can hear in the examples, the drum elements feature a large amount of sample manipulation and processing. This is a feature that is prevalent within the aforementioned reference track “Bias” (Floating Points, 2019).
Evaluation
The process of this project came most natural to me as I primarily write music electronically, so I felt satisfied with my production methodology and my electronic music techniques that I applied to this project. The final product and the context may not be able to be understood without proper briefing of the topic, but this is quite standard amongst other experimental electronic music. On the other hand, it may have been beneficial to capture more audio that was contextually relevant, such as sounds of inhalers, or even spirometry function testing sounds. I would say if I managed my time more adequately to this project, I may have included these samples and in reference to the module material, used Jacob Kirkegaard’s work “Labyrinthitis” (Kirkegaard, 2008) as a deeper point of inspiration, which had extensive relevance to my piece due to it’s experimental usage of the natural sounds of the human body.
In evaluation of possible commercial viability, the reference track “Bias” has reached over 7 million streams on Spotify. This demonstrates that there is a large demographic that this kind of music appeals to, even though it is a slightly more experimental form of EDM. This means that releasing my project may be a possibility I would look towards.
Appendices and Bibliography
Appleton, A. (2025). Beamish Interview (a).
Capell, G.M. (1907). System for ventilating mines, &c..
Floating Points (2019). Bias. Ninja Tune.
Hindhaugh, R. (2025). Beamish Interview (b).
Kirkegaard, J. (2008). Labyrinthitis. Touch.
Moore, A., Kahn, D. and Kirkegaard, S. (2008). Liner Notes for ‘Labyrinthitis’.
Pearce, M. (2017). Dialectological Landscapes of North East England – The ‘survival’ of traditional dialect lexis. [online] Google.com. Available at: https://sites.google.com/view/dialectologicallandscapes/the-survival-of-traditional-dialect-lexis [Accessed 2 Mar. 2026].
Senior, M. (2020). Podcast Like A Pro! [online] www.soundonsound.com. Available at: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/podcast-like-a-pro.
University of South Florida (2020). Capell Ventilation Fan for Mining. [online] Usf.edu. Available at: https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/77500/77554/77554_crpll_fan.htm [Accessed 10 Apr. 2026].
Cruel Nature Records (2014). Divvin’ Gan Near the Capell Fan. [Bandcamp] Cruel Nature Records.
Watson, C. (2015). St James’ Park. [online] BBC. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05mrptn [Accessed 6 Apr. 2026].
