In Fernworthy Forest, on Dartmoor — ambience in a stand of Sitka spruce (1)

A peaceful refreshing early spring (late March) ambience in Fernworthy Forest, on Dartmoor, Devon, UK, captured during a recording session, the prime purpose of which was to record my giving a formal reading-aloud of my recent very topical poem, For Ukraine — A New Painting On My Wall, In Which….

Having put the poem itself online, I then wanted to attempt a recording of my giving it a formal reading-out, in a harmonious and peaceful situation. It came to me that the interior of a reasonably dense stand of the main forestry tree in Fernworthy Forest (Sitka spruce) ought to work very well, so I chose a fine sunny day to make that attempt (23 March 2022). Although gloriously sunny, the day was tempered by a quite chilly easterly breeze, so I had to take with me extra layers for lingering during the recording session.

So, I hitch-hiked out via Chagford to the WSW end of Fernworthy Reservoir, then ambled up the unpleasant gritty forestry track that eventually comes out on the open moor opposite Teignhead Farm ruins. I'd got an idea that I might use the dense stand of the spruce trees just before that opening-out to the WNW on the open moor, but I paused many times, looking at other stands of the spruce, and pausing to listen to the level of wind noise in those trees. For my recording, that had to be a very gentle background sound, for clarity not only of the poem but also for the birds.

The track was taking me consistently uphill, and this was keeping me and the trees fairly exposed to that breeze, but I had some confidence that if I found nothing suitable beforehand, that last dense patch of really tall trees ought to do the trick because there one is over the top of the hill, and the trees ought to become more sheltered as one continues that way.

That's how it worked out. Once there, I struck out to right of the track, through hilariously difficult terrain between the trees, much care being needed, and finally settled on a spot that seemed workable, sufficiently removed from the track not to get significant disturbance from walkers passing-by along there..The poem recording worked well, thanks to my doing multiple 'takes', and I recorded two versions differing in perspective, with a lunch-break between them.

So naturally, with the recorder still in situ for the next poem recording, I set it running just for the beautiful and teasingly tenuous ambience — the tenuousness caused by the tallness of the trees and their lack of significant lower branches, so the sound of the breeze and birds is all a bit remote, evoking a sense of spaciousness, with a 'pure spring water' feel about it all.

Photos taken during this recording session, close by where I had the recorder running.

Techie stuff:
The recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two furry windshields (Windcut, custom), with the onboard mics still set at the narrow (90°) setting instead of my standard 120° setting for natural soundscapes. It was placed on a Sirui Compact Traveler 5C Tripod, which has fully adjustable angle of each leg, and leg section locks that are quick and positive without any risk at all of getting painful and sometimes blood-drawing 'bites' that I got from the clip-type locks of cheaper tripods I'd been using previously.

Post-recording processing was to apply an EQ curve in Audacity to compensate for muffling from the furry windshields, and then 160% widening of the soundstage in A1StereoControl to compensate for the narrow recording angle. That in turn has had the effect of zooming-in, so the birds and wind sound are less quiet and remote-sounding than with the final ambience recording in this session, which was made with my normal 120° mic angle. Thus this session's two ambience recordings are significantly different in perspective.

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