For Australian artist, composer and lecturer Daniel Blinkhorn, sound is a means of telling the stories of natural habitats and the creatures reliant on them. His aim is to give audiences the chance to ‘contemplate the diversity and extreme sensitivities of habitats, coupled with the need to better understand our roles as custodians’.
He describes his compositional language as ‘a cross-pollination of instrumental, electroacoustic and videophonic music, all drawing from environmental sound’. Key to his acquisition of compsitional sounds is his use of DPA microphones in a variety of ingenious ways to capture the sound of some of the planet’s most important habitats.
Recording sound for creative composition as well as archival and eco-acoustic resources, he makes sound installations, as well as composing for film, fixed-media and acousmatic music, and ‘plenty of sound design’. Recently, Blinkhorn travelled through Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Zanzibar and the Côte d’Ivoire, caturing soundscapes with DPA’s d:dictate 4006A Omnidirectional Microphones supplied by DPA’s Australian Distributor Amber Technology.
He knew from the outset that he would not be able to re-visit many of the places on his itinerary, and chose his portable recording rig with care: ‘A key reason why I chose DPA microphones was familiarity,’ he explains. ‘Not only had I used them in places throughout Svalbard in the winter, and Alaska and Australia at the height of summer, but I knew that many of the places I would be visiting encompassed expansive distances. This made the choice of microphone even more critical. With the DPA 4006A’s I could take full advantage of the lower frequency capacities on offer when recording from further afield, plus their legendary ability to offer uncompromising high frequency sound capturing meant they were also ideal when I was closer to the subject matter.
‘Precision is very important to me when I’m recording in the field as I am attempting to capture all manner of nuance, depth and gradation of sound,’ he continues. ‘Neutrality is also important and the DPAs provided a clean, responsive, highly articulate, zero coloration to the field recordings. Natural acquisition of materials is paramount, and the mics performed faultlessly in a variety of complex auditory environments.’
As is usual for recording on location, Blinkhorn needed to record at a moment’s notice. His solution was to modify a blimp and house the microphones securely inside its casing in a stereo configuration: ‘After a little finessing and wrangling of the original blimp, I was able to attain a symmetrically balanced equilibrium between the two omnis in an attempt to capture as complete an audible image as possible,’ he explains. ‘It really did assist in an easier and smoother workflow, but as I do most of my work in surround sound, I also intend to start using DPA’s d:mension 5100 Mobile Surround Microphone because I believe it will augment this compact rig and enable myriad configurable possibilities: most importantly, surround recording.’
Blinkhorn also experimented with mic placement: ‘Given the expansive, extreme and varied audible materials in the left and right axis in many of the places I was recording [Maasai villages, open savannah, dense jungle], practicality and versatility were key – dismantling the rig quickly and easily was a major and time-consuming consideration.
‘One of the most impressive aspects of the DPA microphones was how adaptive they were to audible diversity. They captured the smallest nuance of animal sounds, yet also were incredibly well suited to acquiring people and cityscape ambience. As long as I kept a close eye on monitoring signals for unexpected transient and harsher industrial sounds, the d:dicate 4006As captured every nuance of sonic environment across such a wide range, very effectively.’
He adds that the 4006A microphones overcame almost every issue he encountered: ‘Previously when I have recorded in the field on high-quality microphones, I have faced numerous issues with durability and cheap componentry within the manufacturing process. Suffice to say this has had a negative impact on the final recordings. Some of these issues included extreme self-noise, internal [XLR] pins bending and snapping, power switches malfunctioning, phantom power completely failing, cracked casing, thread stripping on grilles and even inexplicable frequency response omission on certain microphones. Thankfully, none of these problems arose with the d:dicate 4006A microphones. They may not originally have been designed for field recording purposes, but they work beautifully within that context.
‘Also, as opposed to studio-based recording where very careful consideration must be given to avoiding leakage. Recording in the field makes you very accepting of leakage – indeed, it can even be desirable. I found the full gambit of sound could be captured flawlessly thanks to the quality of the 4006As and their remarkable omnidirectional design.’
Blinkhorn’s most recent audio release is frostbYte, a suite of four tracks ranging from MP3 to 5.1 surround sound, on UK label AudioBulb.
More: www.dpamicrophones.com
