In an effort to consciously bind the process of the work’s making to its inspiration, walking, I taped a contact mic to my shoe and walked my familiar footpath. What drew me to this idea was the rhythm and momentum it could provide; knowing the actual recordings would be abrasively unlistenable, using it as an impulse for sidechain compression affecting another aspect of the composition appealed to me. An invisible, unpredictable motion through the work. Hollowed out, yet the key driving force within it. This way, I could thread a walk through the work, hang it from its footfalls, tie it directly to its thematic and literal stimulus.
I used a Zoom F3 for ergonomic reasons, with the simple contact mic we made in our first year so I wouldn’t damage the higher quality JrF contact mic I own. Taped simply to the heel, knowing that I tend to stomp unconsciously when I walk, I thought would be the most effective place to record clear, transient-heavy steps instead of staticky, consistent tones. I tested it by walking around the garden first, examining its responses to varying surfaces, testing its durability. Surprisingly, grassy, hard-packed earth seemed to be the loudest, rather than stone or tarmac. Because I could only record one ‘leg’ at a time, I decided to record a left foot pass and then transfer the contact to the other shoe, recording a right foot pass. How, and whether, they would align was a total mystery at this stage.
I then walked the path, taking a series of recordings approximately five minutes each; a left and a right. Holding the Zoom, wire trailing around my legs, made me think of an insulin pump. Carrying necessary equipment with you everywhere, its perceived burdensomeness. I felt grateful to be able to walk uninhibited, and also more comfortable than I expected. As my gait started stiff and tentative, unwilling to let the input clip and distort, I eventually settled into my normal walking gait and pace. Representing it wholly honestly, I thought. However, as I glanced at the readout on the screen, it became apparent that my right side recordings were consistently louder than my left. I tried changing the mic’s placement, walking with more emphasis on my left, but nothing notably changed. I suspected at the time this was because I must heavily favour my right side, walking somewhat lopsided, years of bad posture bearing its weight. I still place credence in this observation, I physiologically learned about the nature of my own walking in this project, understanding sound art’s potential for useful knowledge production. I also think the mic was simply dying.
Bringing these recordings into Logic, I realised the initial idea inspiring me to try this: Panning the left foot left and the right foot right, the aural simulation of walking started to take shape. It sounded familiar, but would require extensive editing to make it usable. I wasn’t concerned about the peaking or clipping, as they would ultimately be muted to serve the sidechain compression, but the stereo balance badly favoured the right, reflecting my steps. Presented with the ethical compositional challenge of leaving the recordings untouched as the truest reflection of my walked condition, or ‘fixing’ the imbalance because it made for uncomfortable listening. Walking (haha) this line between audio professionalism and field recording ethics as detailed by Mark Peter Wright is a continual struggle. I settled on duplicating the right channel footsteps and shifting them to the left channel, ensuring that it was impossible to tell that they were repeating. If much of the rest of the composition was going to rest on the transients these recorded provided, it needed to be balanced.