Oaka Interviews #1 - Andy Martin
Welcome to the first in the series of Oaka Interviews. I have selected a range of field recordists, sound designers and musicians doing interesting things with sound. First up is field recordist, Andy Martin….
Can you describe your practice? Where are you based? What areas of sound and music do you enjoy exploring?
I am a nature sound field recordist, sound designer, and sound artist based in Seattle, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) region of the United States. I’ll record anywhere, though, from Costa Rican rainforests to Louisiana swamps to Alaskan boreal forest. Sometimes it’s for hire; sometimes it’s for my own curiosity. I’d really like it all to be for hire, honestly, as it opens up more opportunities to visit and listen in regions of the world I otherwise wouldn’t be able to send myself! It all gets the same care and attention, though.
I’m not a prolific sound library producer, largely because of the high-maintenance social media presence that is required these days and that many of my peers excel at. Instead, my focus is commissioned recording, bespoke libraries, and personal works of sound art. If left to my own devices I’ll just keep wandering and recording, so a commission helps keep me focused. I really enjoy helping a client find the sounds they want, identify the ones they need, and seek out that original material.
While I mostly sell myself as a nature sound recordist these days, I’m always excited to record nearly anything except cars and firearms — there are other recordists far better suited for those specialties. As the principle sound designer for Suckerpunch Productions on the first three inFamous games and primary powers and environments sound designer for the final two, I had the opportunity to flex hard on deep-dive exploring nearly anything I could find that made sound, from glass resonance, vibrations, and breaking to the largest electric arc AOD and induction furnace on America’s West Coast to fencing and sword arts clubs to paper, EMF, and concrete to local wildlife and natural ambiences.
More than a recordist, though, I fancy myself a witness to natural soundscapes that would be lost or overlooked otherwise. Many are fragile and at risk from human encroachment. I don’t have any formal scientific training and don’t pretend to be a knowledgeable ecologist. While there is much scientific study ongoing into studying the conservation of endangered ecologies via soundscape monitoring, I believe there is a need for the emotional attention from non-scientists to give the work context and meaning – not that scientists are not emotional or creative beings, but they’re deep in the important work and may not have the time to dedicate to artistic expression. The folks leading the forefront of this movement have been around for a while now, but it’s still definitely one I try to bring a voice to whenever possible. Nature recording is a form of journalism, reporting on the lives of the voices in the soundscape, and the sound art work I engage in is the interpretive opinion that expresses the essential motives of those voices.
Do you use field recording in your practice? If so, how? How do you think the use of field recording influences the listener?
As background, I’ve been a sound designer for over twenty years, mostly in games but with some stints in post, film, and interactive VR as well. I started nature recording out of necessity to develop a regional sound pallet for inFamous: Second Son, which was based here in Seattle and the local environs. We wanted the game to sound as grounded in our backyard as much as possible, so my colleague Brad Meyer and I tried recording as much as we could when we had the free time. I quickly learned the same lesson all field recordists do, though: recording birds in the city is a fairly fruitless endeavor and natural ambiences are nigh impossible. We’re gifted with a bounty of natural beauty and diverse ecosystems here in the PNW, so I grabbed my microphones and headed out into the mountains. The farther I went, the less anthropogenic sound there was, so I found myself going both further and farther. Pretty soon I was camping so I could stay out longer. This became a feedback cycle that ended up with me eventually leaving my safe full-time gig to pursue nature recording full time.
That’s a tangential way, I guess, of saying I use field recording extensively in my practice, whether as a field recordist-for-hire or as a sound designer, sound artist or sound collector or sound library creator. If I can provide my own original recordings for my sound design projects I will. This isn’t out of a point of pride (maybe a little…), but because I believe the more original and unique a sound is, however banal, the less likely the listener will have their experience broken. There are so many sounds that have been used, recycled, and used again from both major libraries and boutique Indies that even casual audiences pick up on repetition and trope. Being able to create with a wholly original recording, while not necessarily the speediest and efficient of processes, will inevitably aid the sound designer and editor create a fresh and immersive soundscape.
As an advocate for fidelity in sound design, I’m usually standing on a soapbox regarding appropriate use of natural sounds in created soundscapes. While it's true that story and emotional support far outweigh accuracy in film, television, and games, these are often used as excuses for not having the time and budget to investigate ecosystem behavior, not wanting to put in the time or effort to do it, or not wanting to admit to not caring. The truth is, though, that listeners and audiences know the difference both on an unconscious level and from actual knowledge. Anyone who spends time outdoors begins to have an innate feel for what their local environment sounds like, and there are fewer things more disappointing than seeing your home represented on screen but not having it feel or sound right. On an unconscious level, we have all experienced acoustics in action, and the more outdoorsy have experienced a wide variety of acoustic environments, from meadows to canyons to forests to lakesides. When a recording has an obvious hint of canopy wind or hardwood-tree reverberation played against an open field, our brains and ears know there is something wrong even if we can’t say what it is. Our animal brains pick up on the disjunct between what is seen and what is heard. Most often audiences will say, “it didn’t feel right” or “I didn’t enjoy that. I just couldn’t get into it” without realizing it’s because their visual experience wasn’t being supported by their aural experience or was even being actively undermined. Fidelity to an environment doesn’t need to be perfect, and in creative scenes in fantasy jungles and alien worlds it CAN’T be. Starting with simple awareness of bioacoustics, an understanding of wildlife behavior, and an ear for the stir of air in a tree and a river in a canyon, one can — when using natural sources both biological and geophonic — create the most convincing worlds that will win over even the stiffest of skeptics.
Outside of sound design for visual media, the influence on the listener is often much more obvious and profound. There’s a growing awareness of the soothing effects of listening to nature sounds, either focused or in the background. The natural rhythms of life have been shown to aid listeners in focus, lower their blood pressure, and reduce stress. For some they aid in sleeping by masking intrusive noises from outside or filling the void of a too-silent hotel room. For others they help them wake up and stay energized by providing a natural experience of the world waking at dawn. We aren’t so far removed from our pre-modern human ancestors that our brains don’t recognize the energetic morning explosion of song and activity that happens between first light and sunrise. The urban world is one of chaotic and unstructured sound, noise upon noise competing with more noise. Truly natural soundscapes have a pulse, a rhythm, an order, and an orchestration. Singing animals find their own unique place within the soundscape by singing in unoccupied spaces in the audible spectrum, changing melodically to stand out, separating physically to create space by distance, singing around other voices in a chorus, or waiting patiently for a quieter time of day. The cycle is nearly the same from day-to-day, but changes dramatically with the changing seasons.
Awareness of such association with natural sound and ordered soundscapes is something I backed into. While I have a musical background, growing up playing piano and saxophone and attending Berklee College in Boston, the reality of nature’s own musical score was something I discovered only when I moved out West. Growing up in the mid-Atlantic states in the US and with family roots in the Deep South, insect and amphibian choruses and songbirds were a deeply enmeshed part of my childhood psyche, enough so that I took them for granted. Moving to California after college and later to Washington state after a stint in the hot insect-filled summers of Georgia, I was suddenly confronted by the silence that comes with extended seasons absent of insect choruses. Sleep was and remains difficult without the soft cha-cha-chas of katydids, long trilling notes of crickets, and buzzing high notes of cone-heads. I even miss the loud whines and buzzes of cicadas during the day, with their volume and number telling just how hot and humid is is outside. I’ve never been a purchaser of noise generating sleep aids, but I’ve certainly used my own recordings to help me find a resting point in a busy day.
Where do you draw your inspiration from? Do you find you are drawn to recording naturally occurring sounds or urban environments? Why do you think you might sway in a particular direction?
To this day I’m not sure if I camp to go recording or if I go recording to camp. Either way, the time alone with just my thoughts and the sounds of the living world to keep me company is all I need to reinvigorate me and refocus my wandering brain. As someone who lives with ADHD as an overarching influence in life, I find that this time outside is among the very few experiences I have where I can genuinely feel myself able to follow a singular train of thought. Even more so than the chance to explore a new environment, this is what draws me out. I’m not sure if I would have the same feeling if I wasn’t recording, though. Even though I’m not constantly recording, knowing that this is the goal keeps me going. If I’m on a long trip, I’ll usually not even record for the first few days, or at least I won’t record with any concerted effort.
Instead I’ll explore the region, listening for its rhythms and special places, learning what it has to say. Is there a hidden wetland down the trail? Or perhaps might there be a riparian glen that wasn’t obvious on a map? Or will I find a snag populated by a family of woodpeckers or owls? Or an elk migration trail? All of these are revealed only through exploration. Setting up to record immediately prevents their discovery. If something seems promising, it gets scribbled down in a notebook or marked as a POI (point of interest) in a GPS app on my phone. If it seems that it may be promising later, but I’m unable to return at that time to find out, I’ll leave a small recorder nearby that can help me assess it later. Sometimes I’ll just sit, listen, and appreciate. Passing a couple hours letting a dawn or dusk chorus wash over me is like taking a nice sooting bath, both relaxing and cleansing.
This is to say, I find the promise of nature inspiring. What will happen? Who will pass through? What are the locals (birds, insects, rodents, wind-capturing trees, babbling brooks) doing when I’m not there? What are they saying to each other? Everything is a story, and much of it happens when humans are not around. I want to know those stories, and I want to give them voice.
I’m definitely more drawn to natural environments than urban ones. The rhythmic cycle of natural sound I mentioned above is mesmerizing to me. Listening to songbirds slowly roost down and sleep while the denizens of the night wake up is about as close to a peaceful experience as I can imagine. Whether it’s the awakening insects and frogs of a neotropical jungle rainforest or the soft whisper of a sub-alpine meadow, the voices may differ, but the progression of the order is the same, like a symphonic movement arranged for different instruments. As the night progresses, the voices change again, with the more energetic singers falling away after using up their stores of energy. Some time after Solar midnight, when the sun is on the opposite of the Earth’s body, those patient enough to wait for the silence find their brief moments to come alive before morning twilight. By dawn break, those voices that were so captivating in their approach to rest the previous night burst forth with a re-invigorated energy that is a feast for listening ears. The days starts, and the cycle repeats.
Urban environments have a progression throughout the day based upon the movements of human productivity and work. They are filled with chaotic, disordered sound. Where songbirds and insects find moments to sing, our monstrous vehicles just stack their sounds on top of each other, creating a hash of noise that is jumbled, confusing, and unfocused. The constant whine of electrical machinery like air conditioning, blaring radios, transfer stations, and telephones fight against one another in a cacophony of frequencies that are not unlike slamming one’s arm down on a piano’s keys, mashing back-and-forth without thought. Many people develop a skill to tune it out, but ADHD folks like myself are particularly affected by it, facing actual physical weariness by the difficulty of NOT listening. Where the natural soundscape is a symphony where one can effortlessly pick out a single instrument and follow it through the movement, urban sound changes so randomly and forcefully that it requires serious effort to pick out and follow a sound through the ensuing chaos, and even more effort to listen beyond the sludge of anthropophony. Being constantly bombarded with new noises keeps the brain on high-alert, bouncing from sound-to-sound, creating stress and weariness. Disturbed “natural” soundscapes are similar. While they may not have the sounds of the urban environment, the sonic participants have had their natural rhythms and locations interrupted by human behavior, resulting in a jumble of disordered attempts at singing until such time as they’re able to sort themselves out. That may take hours, weeks, even years or decades depending on the level of disturbance. In the case of cut forests whose soils are allowed to dry up or wash away, the disturbance may never heal. When this happens naturally, the disturbance is mild and smoothly allows for recovery or development of a new rhythm. When it is at the hands of human interference, though, the effects are usually more drastic. We bring with us all the implements and buildings and crowds of modern society, replacing the natural systems, and the opportunity for recovery is lost. Sometimes a seeming recovery is had, but on closer listen you realize that none of what you hear should be there, that human terraforming over the past 75 years has changed a soundscape forever.
Now, I actually do enjoy recording urban environments, just not as much as the natural ones. Recording in the city, either in my lively local neighborhood or downtown in the hustle of the tourist districts, on floating docks of the Lake Union waterport, or in the BNSF intermodal train yard, has its own excitement and relaxing moments. As a wallflower, I get a kick out of sitting at an outdoor cafe, discreetly recording while people walk by. From the clatter of wheels on the exposed cobblestones to the multi-language conversations that flash by while I sip a coffee, there’s always something of interest. Recording trains in particular is something I relish. The thrum of such a powerful machine either idling or rushing by like a clattering dragon is nothing short of exciting.
Still, I find myself wandering back to the mountains, out to a beach, into a forest, or into headphones playing my recorded soundscapes of such places, just to catch a moment of peace.
What direction do you see your work going in the future? What are you looking forward to exploring next?
The future is wide open. I’m still in the process of transitioning into full-time field recording. Every so often a small game project will catch my attention, or I get the urge to just make something from sounds I’ve recorded, and I find my sound designer hat slipping back on. I suppose I’ll never stop, especially as I continue to establish myself as a sound artist, but as long as I can hear, field recording will be the center of my professional life.
I hope to have commercial libraries for sale one day. It’s a goal I keep setting for myself that keeps getting put off by more recording trips. It would be nice to have something to point people towards and say, “I’m already booked, but let’s see if you can get close to something you need at andymartinsound.com". That will never supersede my desire to provide clients with custom recordings, however, as the recording and exploring drives my interests outside.
As for exploration, I hope to spend more and more time away from my backyard in the PNW. Recent trips to neotropical cloud forests and rainforests and subtropical swamps have been exciting. I’m extremely fortunate to be rather unbothered by mosquitos (they rarely bite me, and I usually can’t feel them when they do), so places that might turn off some of my peers are often those I thrive in. So, y’know, if you know anyone wanting to hire a recordist for hot, humid, insect-filled locations, you have my contact info. Currently I’m trying to build up resources for extended neotropic zone (the largely forested area roughly covered by South and Middle America, up through the sub-tropical southland of North America) expeditions. The soundscape changes widely throughout the year, yet so much of what exists in libraries comes from a small narrow window of that represents the vacation and holiday time of working sound designers. Being free to choose my time, I’d like to widen that window to discover the richness of sound from throughout the year, wet season and dry season.
From time to time I mentor. By request I’ve been leading small groups of newer recordists into the field for a few days of inspirational listening and recording. The more I do this, the more I realize how much joy is to be found by opening the ears of those who have never had the chance to sit in a forest, a marsh, a meadow, a cave, or arid steppe, screaming or bugling elk, crying coyote, . Passing on the bug of exploration seems like a good use of my experience.
Outside of pure field recording, as I briefly mentioned, I’m still establishing myself as a sound artist. I’m not sure where that’s going to go, whether it involves installation works or downloadable experiences beyond simple SoundCloud streams, I’m not entirely certain as it’s a relatively new path for me. I mainly want to bring the natural stories I hear and am inspired by to a wider audience of non-professionals and professionals alike. Easy, right?
Happy listening!
Thanks Andy!
You can check out Andy’s website here or his Northwest soundscapes project, here
Some listening:
https://soundcloud.com/soundeziner
A little video:
