A Spontaneous Start on Using Binaural Recording

* First of, for those of you who are not familiar with the term ‘binaural recording’: Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with the intent to create a 3-D stereo sound sensation for the listener of actually being in the room with the performers or instruments (copy-pasted from Wikipedia). Basically, recordings made with this method will give you a spatial sense of the sound that usual stereo recordings won’t.

Two weeks ago I started to play with binaural recordings, for a work-in-progress short audio piece with Out of the Blue for an online scratch night. I had known this technology for a while and even considered using it for IMAGINARIUM. But it didn’t seem essential for that piece so we didn’t go with it. At the beginning of this year I actually made plans to do some exploration and practice - I found a mentor and applied for funding and all that. But what happened in the past two weeks was rather spontaneous.

Just over a month ago, Harry came up with an idea of an audio story told purely with sound and not a single line/spoken word (we now call it a “sound mime”). It was clear that binaural sound would be the way to go. Being big fans of The Encounter ourselves and a company that wishes to push the boundaries, we all found it fascinating. But probably none of us had expected to work on it just yet. However, when an opportunity appears you’ve got to grab it. We saw Tramshed’s online scratch night open call and everything just started to roll. It’s a work-in-progress showing anyway, why not give it a go and see if this experimental concept works or not?

(The Encounter by Complicité)

I happened to have purchased a pair of Sennheiser Ambeo smart headset very recently, thanks to a sharing on Association of Sound Designers forum that there was a massive sale. You have to know, after getting to know the price of a Neumann binaural dummy head (it costs over 6 grand) and feeling defeated, £34 for a pair of easy-to-use-just-put-them-in-your-ears-and-plug-into-your-iphone binaural mics/headset is a no brainer. Even if they might not give the best performance compared to some more expensive gear, they’re suitable for someone like me who just wanted to give it a play (not to mention them as a headset ended up being a perfect match for this very project). My plan was to start doing some casual field recordings with them until I get the funding (fingers crossed), and then make my own dummy head while hiring the Neumann head and put them all in a studio to do some serious experiment and recordings.

(Neumann KU100 binaural dummy head which I can't afford, my Sennheiser headset, and an app called 'AVR PRO' which I use for high quality sound recording on my phone)

But, again, when an opportunity appears you’ve got to grab it, and that’s the best time to start. So often in the theatre sound world, because there’s endless stuff to learn, you just have to learn on the job.

So far the binaural recordings we’ve done are pretty straightforward. In order to allow the audience to be in the perspective of the protagonist and experience the sound journey that the protagonist is on, I, being the owner of the headset mics, had to also ‘act’ as the protagonist while the mics recorded everything that was set to happen around me and me doing stuff. There were a lot of ‘let’s record this sound this way and see how it sounds like’. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, and we just had to try other ways or other sounds. Some serious warm-up and acting were also involved. To get me (aka the protagonist) into a state of frustration and break down (spoiler alert), Harry led me through a series of rather brutal and exhausting exercise. It must be quite an image of me breathing intensely with tears in my eyes while trying to start the recording on my phone with trembling fingers and saying ‘break down scene, take 1’. Thank god that was a one-take.

The purpose of this R&D is to figure out if it is actually possible to navigate a clear story with only environmental sound and specific sound effects, and what kind of story can be told this way. It was important to find the balance between what actions/places sound like in real life and what people imagine them sound like. From the sharing we’ve done within the company, it was interesting to learn that for certain sounds people can immediately link them to certain activities and locations, which greatly helps with storytelling, while some sounds are more vague in this sense and may cause confusion; and people are particularly sensitive to (or say, disgusted by) some sounds. For example a close-up of soup-slurping became too intrusive and we had to take it out.

I sometimes get a bit nerdy with cool gear and get carried away by the excitement of using them, and that’s when the power of collaboration comes in and reminds me our actual goals. It’s surely fun to play with technology, but using it in theatre-making isn’t only about that. We want to explore how technology can serve the purpose of refreshing storytelling. Artists express their inner world with their creative means, and technology can be part of the tools and enriches the medium for expression. But the urge of adding in advanced tech should be carefully treated, or it might compromise or overshadow the core spirit that’s being delivered by the art work. This is something that I need to keep in mind while the exploration goes further. This short piece is just a start. Now that my tool box has been expanded, I’m excited to see how it can make a difference in my, and Out of the Blue's, future work.