Titchwell Music

Titchwell, specifically the Titchwell, RSPB nature reserve where i field recorded, provided a rally rich assortment of sounds to act as the palette and inspiration for the piece of music for this location. The wooded area near the car park was alive with a variety of different bird song, some of which was masked by car noise from the nearby car park and road.

A challenge on the day i recorded at Titchwell was that it was really busy, lots of bird watchers/twitchers and quite a few dog walkers, so a lot of recordings were 'ruined' by passers by. I did at one point capture a really cool doppler effect of an asthmatic bulldog being walked past whilst i was recording, i did briefly try consider using that as the starting point for the piece of music, but couldn't make it 'musical' enough.

As i started writing the music for this location i decided to alter my approach from some of the previous pieces of music where i tried to incorporate the field recording samples as instruments within the music. for this piece of music the use of field recording took on two forms, firstly, I used some recordings of wave and wind noise, and the trickling of water in a drainage ditch to provide a background ambience to parts of the music.

Secondly, I used the various bird songs to sort of decorate the music, almost, to my mind as like a passenger along the journey that the music takes. There is something in the music that i think evokes my field field recording journey at Titchwell, essentially a long straight walk from the car park and wooded area, along the salt marsh, to the sea. Certainly the final section, where i repeat the main part feels like a release at the end of the long path when the beach opened up before me.

Below is the original field recording video and audio so you can see (or maybe not :) ) how the original influenced the final piece of music.