On an Island
I spent last week vacationing on Ocracoke, an island in North Carolina‘s Outer Banks. Ocracoke is many miles from the mainland and can be reached only by air or by sea. The National Park Service administers most of the island as part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but a small village near the south end has been occupied for nearly 300 years. Ocracoke is best known for its picturesque lighthouse, in operation since 1823, and for the pirate Blackbeard, who lived and even threw parties there and was beheaded there in 1718.
Armed with a Korg MR-1 recorder, I was struck by the variety of island sounds and how they differ from the city sounds I‘m accustomed to. I naturally anticipated the roar of the Atlantic Ocean, but the west side of the island faces Pamlico Sound, a body of water whose sounds range from gentle lapping to turbulent sloshing, depending on the weather. Ocracoke‘s birds sound quite distinct from the birds around my home in Charlotte, with lots of seagulls, ducks, and other aquatic birds, as well as red-winged blackbirds and many species I couldn‘t identify.
Ocracoke has a thriving tourist trade, and an assortment of windchimes was on display on the front porch of a shop called the Island Ragpicker. I positioned a stereo mic between the metal bells and bamboo chimes and captured not only their ringing and clacking, but also the “Wooo!” of exuberant college girls on break as they drove past the shop. Almost everywhere I went, the constant breeze made itself an issue while recording, and I often had to use my hat as a windscreen.
Over a dozen families have lived on the island for many generations, and some lifelong residents speak with an unusual brogue I‘d never encountered, pronouncing “high tide” as “hoi toid,” for example. I recorded Jimmy, owner of the local garage, and Della, who ran a small crafts shop behind her home, telling stories of how the island had changed since the days when locals depended on rain as their main source of drinking water. Though I‘m not sure just what I‘ll do with my collection of field recordings, it captures Ocracoke aurally in much the same way that photographs do visually; however, I‘m sure they‘ll take much longer to edit.
June 11th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Sounds like fun. Hope we get to hear the recordings at some point. Were you using the MR1’s included little mic? I’m not suprised some additional wind protection was required. I’d be curious to hear what you got.
Note that there are several web resources devoted to nature sounds and general field recording:
http://www.naturesounds.org/
and that group’s email list (of which I am the moderator):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nature_sounds_society/
and the phonography yahoo group:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/phonography/
and finally, the nature recordists list, a very active group, also on yahoo:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/naturerecordists/
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