New Release: Birds Of Mabry

ByJody

In July, I released a track using my first dive into field recording. I entitled this track, “Birds Of Mabry: Beneath The Tree.” One day when out walking, I noticed a plethora of sounds coming from this old tree. It seemed the local birds loved this old tree. I immediately said, next week I’m coming back to record this. So, luck would have it, I chose a nice 96 degree weather afternoon and besides school children playing many many yards away, it was completely empty. I was evidently the only one crazy enough to be out there in the hot sun. I let the recorders run awhile while I sweated out a few pounds.

Birds Of Mabry: Beneath The Tree

When I came home and gave it a listen, for some reason, this F# minor to G major loop immediately found its way into my guitar fingers.  I then embarked on recording it over the top of the birds.  I just pushed record and played it in one big take.   I wanted it to be as if I was sitting there under the tree playing my guitar along to the birds.  I also didn’t want to focus on perfection, there were things I played afterwards I kind of wished I had played slightly different….but my goal was to capture the energy:  NATURE, RAW, THE MOMENT.  Perhaps in some way, to forget about humans for a moment…

Effects

I did use a little bit of tape delay on the guitar with a very small smidget of LFO fluttering. No compression was used in the project whatsoever. Sorry, but I think it’ silly to tape nature in it’s raw form and then start compressing down Mr Bird’s voice because he is a smidget loud, haha. I don’t have the file in front of me at the moment, but I’m 99% sure I added just a touch of reverb onto the birds to create a small bit of distance.

EQ

I had to cut a little bit of the F# bass string frequency on the guitar so it wouldn’t overwhelm the mix.  Other than that, just EQ cuts on the field recording to get rid of traffic, wind noise, or whatever random noise decided to show up occasionally.

Equipment

  • Recorder: Zoom F6
  • Microphones: Sonorous Objects S0.1 stereo matched omni directional mics.
  • DAW: Logic Pro X

I’m really loving my Sonorous Objects microphones, they work great and don’t break the bank! Stay tuned for more recordings from Nature. I’ve already released an album: “Sounds of Georgia: Field Recordings” over on my bandcamp that includes only the raw files (not my guitar or instruments!). I’ll be adding tracks to this each month until I get about ten or so….and then on to another album

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Professional musician and educator of 27 years. I've played Banjo and Acoustic Guitar on the stages of Carnegie Hall, The Grand Ole Opry, and The Ryman Auditorium. 4X winner of the Georgia State banjo and flatpick guitar competitions. My banjo playing was featured in the "A Waltons Thanksgiving" movie.

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