The Power of Place
Photo taken at Kingsbridge College during my March trip in the UK
It was in David Byrne’s book “How Music Works” I learnt that birds in the city change their song to be audible among the sounds of cars, factories and other human noise. But we are no different. It is not coincidence or lack of skill that made the Gregorian chants sound the way they do. It was the length of the reverb in cathedrals that made composers write music that would sound good in that space. Slow and without key changes.
Music is profoundly shaped by place. Over the past few years, I have started to use this when producing and recording. A recording studio is a strange environment. It is a room with unusual acoustics, no daylight most of the time, all sorts of technology around you, and no people… Except for the engineer or producer, behind a glass. Often there’s extra added pressure because it’s an expensive room, and perhaps big artists have recorded there before. It could be part of a big studio complex so when you open the door there’s other people in the hallways busy with their productions. What kind of shape does all of that give a process? And the result?
Artists learn to ignore the surroundings of a studio. They can rely on their skills and their imagination. This comes at a cost however, and doesn’t always work. There’s other ways to do it, by making use of the power of place. The acoustics of a location, the reverence one might have for it, can be used as an advantage. On the most extreme end of that spectrum I recently made a recording inside a grave-mound in Denmark. I recorded Inger Johanne Tromborg Syverud, a shamanic practitioner. She sang a song for the element of earth, in surrounded by huge rocks and sand all around her. That environment, and what it meant to hear, inspired her performance in a way we could never have predicted.
Producer Reyn Ouwehand owns a studio built in a church. The huge size of the room, makes it easier for singers to sing loud, to project further away. That is very unnatural to try and do in a tiny room staring at a wall covered with acoustic panels. With one half of the headphones off, the natural reverb of the room is beautiful to sing with. The close proximity of the microphone, eliminates most of the reverb on the vocal recording. If you want to capture it anyway, simply add microphones further away.
On another occasion, I recorded singer-songwriter Miriam Moczko in De Kurk, the queer café owned by her wife, with some of her friends as an audience. But I’ve also started using my living room as a recording room. The sheer fact that it’s a daily life-situation, and I’m in the room with the performer as opposed to on the other side of a window, changes things.
Shaza Manla playing Qanûn at Trypoul
Last week I was at Trypoul, a big recording facility in the south of the Netherlands. Recording for a project with Martin Fondse and Lucas Dols, both experienced musicians. For them, a studio far away from their busy lives in Amsterdam, carried the right power. The owners of the studio, Dirk and Ineke, and in particular their warm hospitality, were the perfect fit for the project with many guest musicians with immigration backgrounds.
I once laughed at a young folk band, recording their first album in a forest. But I will not laugh anymore now. I get it. And it can do wonders for the music, the process, the creativity and inspiration.
