Field Recording
Listen001: Prayer. Hawkers. People.
On 25, Jul 2011 | 2 Comments | In Field Recording | By Varun Nair
In my spare time I have been editing and cataloging all the sounds I’ve recorded off the Zoom H4n with the hope of catching up with the months of backlog. A lot of the sounds were recorded impulsively and then forgotten. Out of what I’ve ploughed through so far, I found two that felt interesting enough to share.
Early one morning I decided to walk down to the nearby Mosque and record the morning prayer. While the recording did not come out as clean as I would have liked, the combination of the prayer and the sounds around creates an interesting vibe. Something about this recording makes me feel humbled – every time I listen to it.
Mosque Morning Prayer on SoundCloud
A few months ago I spent a Sunday walking around Mumbai discreetly recording sounds. This one was at Nariman Point, which is one of the southern tips of Mumbai by the sea. It’s usually crowded with people on weekends – families, loners , children, hawkers and beggars. The sea is usually calm (there’s no beach) and the little sound it makes is masked by traffic and the people around. Being a country with a hugely diverse culture there about 29 recognized major languages and hundreds of dialects. You can hear a variety of languages being spoken in this recording – although it’s dominated by Gujarati and Hindi. Also keep a ear out for the hawkers and the little drum used for monkey dances (although it’s banned, it still exists). This was recorded while I walked down the stretch – with the microphones pointed at the people for stereo spread. It was late evening.
Nariman Point – Hawkers & People on SoundCloud
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The morning prayer recording is fantastic, any way you’d release the source wav file? I’d be willing to pay for it.
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