Blue Distortion

I was listening to Living on Earth, which is a podcast focused on Sound Journalism, and thought this was awesome. David Dunn does microrecordings and had a segment on Living On Earth which documented the sounds of a beetle infestation in a piñon tree.

David Dunn, stands nearby at the edge of a grove of needleless, dead gray piñon that look like the backdrop for a Halloween play. Like me, he wears headphones and has a recording machine slung on his shoulder. But the device connected to his recorder is a microphone like none I’ve ever seen.

He apparently uses piezoelectric transducers found inside greeting cards to record these sounds and amplifies them 6 times. It also looks like he is also using a Tascam Portable DAT Recorder, but, I could be wrong. The recording was fairly noisy, but, very interesting considering what the subject of recording was. I recommend taking a listen. Check the link and listen to the segment in mp3 format.

Anyone ever experiment with microrecordings? If so, shoot us an email, I’d be interested to hear any samples recorded as I think they would be a great source for experimental / freeform music. David also does experimental music, samples from some of his compositions can be found here.