Prolific field recordist George Vlad was recently a guest on Earth.fm’s podcast Wind Is the Original Radio, which features conversations with the best nature listeners. Here, you can read an edited version of that audio interview.
George is a collector of sounds who focuses on nature and wildlife, but has also “recorded aircraft and firearms and explosions and people and music”. He has worked on high-profile projects such as Dune: Part Two and Mufasa: The Lion King, and has contributed his sound recordings to a wide variety of media, including documentaries and TV series, podcasts, and audiobooks.
Our conversation touched upon George’s personal connection with sound, field recording ethics, his mindshift about the place of human sounds in natural soundscapes, creativity, and even marketing advice and tips for beginner field recordists.
We are very grateful for his time and his many recordings that you can listen to on Earth.fm – both the website and app, which is free to download for iOS and Android.
How do you approach field recording?
I used to be very fastidious. I was always trying to get away from man-made sound and the tiniest of very distant car engines or aircraft would drive me nuts. But since then, I’ve become a bit more flexible and understanding. Obviously it’s impossible for nature to be as it was a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. We are moving forward, whether we like it or not. Progress happens, people need to travel, people need to use power tools… So my work nowadays focuses more on getting away from these things.
And, when I don’t have a choice, I like to record as much as possible. So if I need an hour of UK birdsong, for example, I’m probably going to record for a couple of weeks to get enough material, enough flexibility. In Scotland, for example, two or three years ago, I was able to record for half an hour without any disturbance, which is way more than I was able to record in the south, where I live.
If I look outside my window now, there’s probably six or seven aircrafts in the sky. So it’s not a good place for nature sound recording. But concentrations vary. Some people want to record that human element. It’s also a bit reductive to think about nature as separate from humans, right? Whether we like it or not, we do influence nature. I also noticed that some birds become a bit louder when there’s a disturbance in the environment, when there’s a distant engine sound, for example. That might be good for us, for our purposes as sound recordists. I’m not sure whether it’s good for the ecosystem or for the species’ survival in the long term.
But, with my recordings, I try to be as flexible as possible. So I’m recording soundscapes for at least one hour, maybe five days at a time, sometimes even longer. I also like to focus on species, because that’s material for telling stories and for using in various media. People like to engage with this stuff. People’s introduction to wildlife and to nature is usually the song of a bird. They might hear something in their backyard and they say, ‘Okay, let me find out what this birdsong is.’ And they look through a whole bunch of bird songs on YouTube or on the BTO [British Trust for Ornithology] website. And before you know it, they become hooked; they become birders and like to birdwatch.
Working with people with historic connections to a location opened my mind to a lot of things that I wouldn’t be aware of otherwise.
So, any way I can add purpose to my work, it’s very welcome. I don’t run away from man-made sounds anymore. I like to record people as well. When I was in Madagascar, I was waking up at 4 a.m., setting up some [recording] rings on the balcony of my little hut in a small village far away from anything. That was purely the sound of humans waking up, livestock, poultry… I like that sound – probably due to growing up in the countryside, where I learned to love and to live with nature rather than control it.
How has your definition of a good soundscape changed?
When I started out, I was mostly a sound designer working in the studio, before transitioning to doing field work maybe once a week. But I was looking at sound recordings as tools or assets that I could use in my day-to-day work, nothing else; I wasn’t considering the ecosystem or how sound can indicate the health of a habitat.
Slowly, though, I started to become more interested in how [sound in nature] works, and the species behind the dawn chorus, for example. As I dug deeper and learned more, I realized that nothing exists separately. And that to think about it in terms of usefulness is a bit reductive, a bit selfish.
So as I shifted my mindset to capturing the whole soundscape and the sound of the ecosystem, I realized that even if a sound recording is useless for sound design, there is beauty in it and we could listen to it and enjoy it like we would with music. And if you introduce the distant sounds of a village in there, for example, it’s more or less the same thing. I like hearing human voices; the human voice is a beautiful sound.
I wasn’t really aware of it but, at one point, I was in the village I grew up in in Romania and found myself yearning for the sounds that I grew up with. Some of them are still there, but some are missing now. People don’t have cattle anymore; there’s not that small subsistence farm that I grew up with anymore. So the biodiversity, if you will, of a local farm is more limited now. So I was trying to find the perfect spot where I could hear cows mooing, roosters crowing, geese, people talking, maybe, a bell tolling in a distant church, and the whole symphony of nature on a May, June morning. And I couldn’t find that. It was very difficult, but then I realized, well, 10 years ago, I would have thought that was rubbish: ‘I don’t want to hear all these human sounds in my recordings.’ But now I’m actually looking for it. So that was probably the moment I recognized that my definition of a good soundscape is changing.
How do you think nature field recordists should approach making work in locations and cultures other than their own?
Working with people with historic connections to a location opened my mind to a lot of things that I wouldn’t be aware of otherwise. Talking to them can be beneficial to my work if I’m looking for a species that I wouldn’t find otherwise. And the mythology, legends, and stories that come with that species provides a lot more context.
Or you might wonder why a species is thriving even though it’s endangered elsewhere – maybe this village has a taboo about hunting or killing it. A lot of this is hidden below the surface; you have to ask questions, dig deep enough, and be open-minded about it.
In the field, a lot of people record in a very mindless way, disturbing the environment and maybe causing damage: breaking trees and chasing wildlife around. I may have done that when I was starting out. But I’ve learned to be more mindful, to be more careful.
I prefer working with drop rigs, with passive recording systems, because it’s easier for me: I can set it up, leave it there, and it’s not going to bother anyone. And, if you’re present and trying to record something, you’re mostly going to record a reaction to your presence. With a rig that’s been there for five days, wildlife just starts to ignore it.
I know this is a bit controversial; I’ve had very heated discussions with other recordists who say that setting up a rig and going back to have tea in your accommodation is rubbish; you’re cheating. Well, I don’t see it as cheating as much as being able to cover more distance and more locations and more species. And it’s just the way I’ve started to do things and it seems to be working for me. I’ve also done recording in person with a Telinga dish or with a shotgun microphone. So I’m not against that.
What about promoting work online?
Promoting your material, sometimes you have to think about what you’re doing and what you’re sharing. In Australia, there are locations that are sacred for the local Aboriginal people, and I chose not to even film them. For me to go there and take photos and put them online mindlessly would be awful, and I chose not to do it.
There’s a lot of stuff that you need to find out; you need to do your due diligence. It’s not about what you think is valid; it’s about what other people think is valid. It’s about being careful, being mindful, trying not to create tension and problems. This is just being a human. It’s just being a nice person, having common sense. It’s not just about sound recording.
Is it possible to have a comfortable expedition trip but still produce a recording of an important ecosystem which touches the people who hear it?
I have had extreme expeditions; for example, Sumatra and Gabon were tough. I got a bunch of diseases and it was painful and I had to come back and spend two months taking antibiotics and trying to get better – but that didn’t make the sound recordings better.
On the other hand, I have to spend time in a very nice lodge with air conditioning and amazing food and being driven around, because you can’t walk around in many places in Africa. That comes with the territory, I guess. Sometimes [sound recording is] lively and exciting. Sometimes it is painful. Sometimes you have to be in good shape to get to certain places. There’s no rule. You have both of these. And both are perfectly fine.
I don’t think making the experience all about yourself is a good idea in any situation. There may be people who are attracted to the extreme nature of some of the stuff that we do as sound recordists, but that’s just focusing on the wrong aspect. The soundscapes and the sounds recorded are more valuable than the effort you put in or the leeches that suck your blood or whatever.
What are you afraid of in the field?
I’m not afraid of many things in the field. I think I suffer from a parasite that cats can give you [Toxoplasma gondii] which makes you a bit fearless and more prone to getting into car accidents and things.
In Gabon we found a snake in the grass right next to the water bottles and I almost reached for it and then instead of going away I got my camera and was getting as close as possible so I could get a nice shot. And many situations like that.
I don’t feel like I’m afraid of things that I should be. I have a deep respect for nature and wildlife, so I’m not going to bother a snake if it’s just going about its daily business. But I am afraid of losing my kit if it’s critical for my work, if I’m on a contract and have to record something very specific and there’s only one way to do that. If I lack my equipment or I’ve lost it or broken it, that is a big problem. So I usually bring a whole lot of spares.
What is one of your most memorable field recording experiences?
Maybe sleeping on the edge of an active volcano in Ethiopia without having taken any precautions.
I was traveling with a friend of mine and his dad, who’s a geologist. He said we should be fine to go to the edge of a volcano. But when we were there, I found out that he’s a geologist who works in oil and gas. So he knew nothing about volcanoes. And that volcano emits a lot of gasses. There’s a thick plume of smoke with silica particles suspended in it. And if you inhale those, it’s like inhaling bits of glass. It’s going to cut your lungs open inside. It’s very nasty stuff. Luckily we had head wraps we got from the local people which we used instead of breathing masks.
But witnessing that, being on the edge of a volcano, seeing lava spewing and hearing all that chaos, that really intense sound is something that you don’t forget very easily.
The name of your brand is Mindful Audio – how do you connect your field recording practice to mindfulness?
It took me probably a year or so to find out what I wanted to do with Mindful Audio, basically because I was already working as gamesounds.com, which I sometimes still use. But I felt like I was slowly transitioning from just working on games to working with sound and perceiving sound in a certain way and describing it and telling stories which revolved around my mindful audio.
When I was working too much, I broke down. I was burnt out. I didn’t enjoy what I was doing anymore. I was really exhausted. And that was a lack of mindfulness; I wasn’t listening to my own body and my own brain telling me to stop and go outside and take a breath of fresh air. That hammered home that mindfulness is where I’m aiming to be. Maybe I’m not there yet fully, but it’s not a waste of time. It’s pretty useful, pretty good in life.
Do you think your brand name plays an important role in landing contracts and gigs?
That’s a bit difficult to quantify. My biggest asset is my name, George Vlad. Mindful Audio came up a bit later in my career. But it is important to have a brand name, either your name or a company name. If you don’t, people are going to think, ‘Oh, this guy’s just an amateur. He’s not very well established.’
Marketing is a huge thing for creative people. I used to dread putting myself out there and asking for money from clients and things like that. So I would always get underpaid and people wouldn’t know about me. But very slowly I worked on that and realized it was coming from imposter syndrome and a whole bunch of things that I had to address.
One thing that helped was getting good photographs in the field. That has elevated my marketing game; I’ve put photos up that have attracted clients. People have said, ‘Oh, I saw that photo of you on a sand dune, can you do this sound recording for me?’ And then, you get a whole project from that because, like it or not, people tend to look at things rather than listen. So you have to grab some of their attention.
Marketing is telling a story. And, as humans, we always tell stories. So if you tell somebody, ‘I’m going to tell you a story,’ they’re going to open their ears and listen.
What is your relationship to sound?
It’s existential. From a young age, I could always hear things. I can hear things in my sleep. Sometimes I wake up because my cat is running up the stairs. I can hear a lot of things that my wife doesn’t care about. Sound is life for me, and I’m happy it’s that way.
Sound is always present. I can’t really close my ears to it or ignore it. And I don’t even want to, necessarily. As long as I get a good night’s sleep, I’m generally okay. I used to analyze everything and if I heard a species that didn’t belong [in a piece of sound design]: ‘Oh my God, they put a screaming piha [a South American perching songbird] in Africa. That’s the worst thing in the world.’ But I’ve managed to turn that off now. I can enjoy a film without necessarily listening out for things or hearing everything.
When I worked on Dune: Part Two, it was a huge project, moving very fast. And, maybe a month before release, I realized I wasn’t sure I was going to be credited or not. I organized an expedition to Algeria; I recorded most of the sounds that you hear, wind, in the film. But I was so anxious, I didn’t know, am I going to be credited or not? That meant a huge deal for me and it still does. That film was probably my favorite project so far.
I went to watch the film in IMAX with my wife and from that anxiety, I could hear every little footstep and every little grain of sand falling and being blown by the wind. My wife asked me, ‘Okay, tell me when you hear your sounds.’ And I said, ‘That’s my sound, that’s my sound, that’s my sound.’ And then she said, ‘Okay, you can stop it now. I can understand.’
And at the end, I found that I was indeed credited and I was very happy. I almost cried, it was like a huge release.
What are your thoughts about conservation?
Conservation is huge for me. Even before doing field recording, I was always into preserving the environment. I think it goes back to growing up with my grandparents in the countryside. For them it was, ‘Since it’s subsistence agriculture, you have to deal with it.’ If there’s a drought, what are you going to do? If there’s a flood, how do you adapt to that? If you have a very tough, cold winter, how do you prepare for that?
It was never about earning more or maximizing returns or yields. It was about making enough so that they could feed the family and they would have a little bit extra, just in case something bad happened or something went wrong. More often than not, we were barely making it, but I never felt like it was a very precarious existence. It was normal.
When you come from that to a time of plenty, where everything’s available at every time of the year, you stop enjoying it as much. If there are pears available throughout the year, well, I don’t care about pears anymore. We used to have a pear tree in the backyard. It was only in fruit for two weeks a year. I would climb that tree and eat all those pears during those two weeks. But in the present time, everything’s always available, so nothing has any value anymore. We tend to use a lot of stuff that is overkill. Literally. Pesticides and chemical fertilizer. When I was growing up, everything was a very closed circle: you take the dung from the animals and you put it in the field and it helps grow your crops. There was space for nature and wildlife. If a buzzard stole a chick, whatever, that’s life; you’re not going to kill the buzzard.
It’s very different nowadays. I find that I’m like the old man yelling at clouds now. We are not taking care of Mother Earth and nature anymore. Around the village that I grew up in, you only see monoculture nowadays. And there’s fewer birds of prey because there’s nothing to prey on anymore. When you used to have different types of crops, it was sustaining a much more biodiverse wildlife and ecosystem. After I started sound recording, I realized how bad things are, because, in many locations where you expect to hear good soundscapes with a lot of different species, you only hear the two or three that can survive in those environments nowadays.
Whenever I meet someone who does work on the ground, like a two- or three-person operation, those are the people that I want to help. Because if I donate $1,000 or $500 or a hundred to WWF, it’s not going to make a huge difference. But for someone who works in the Carpathian mountains in Romania, they’re going to be able to buy a pair of new boots and maybe a camera trap or something like that.
… getting good photographs in the field. That has elevated my marketing game.
I also like to train people to do sound recording. I can only be in a certain place for a couple of weeks at a time, but someone who lives in the Carpathian mountains, for example, they’re always there. They can always do sound recording and keep an eye on the environment much better than I could ever hope to.
Other donations also help: cameras, sound recorders, microphones, binoculars, boots – whatever you can spare. Even an old phone can be used to keep in touch or to reuse the camera. You just need to make sure you’re donating to people who are doing work.
How would you like to see nature field recording develop?
Something I work towards is getting sound recordists compensated properly. Because, at the moment, if you pitch a project, a trip or an expedition, it’s almost impossible to get any support. You have to have worked on big projects like only a handful of people have.
Not everyone can afford to do that. There are very skilled people who would love to do this – maybe more skilled than someone who already does some of this work, but they might never get the chance to start. So I think field recording needs to become like photography: an established art form and discipline. We need more courses and more people teaching it. We need more companies to understand the value of good sound recordings and good sound in general. If we teach people about field recording, they will learn to listen as well.
How do you incorporate research and long work days into your life?
I read for about an hour before I go to bed. I find that I fall asleep much more easily that way. I used to look at my screens until I went to bed and I had horrible sleep. I’d be more exhausted in the morning.
I’m off to Papua New Guinea in a couple of months, so I’ve read my sixth or seventh book about it recently. It’s research, but it’s also pretty exciting. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it. Even if I work quite a lot – I don’t work 100 hours a week as I used to, I find that’s damaging – I always find the time to do a bit of reading.
What else are you reading at the moment? And what books would you recommend to a field recordist who’s starting out?
I’m reading about Bruce Beeler, a researcher and ornithologist who moved to Papua New Guinea in 1975 for a year to work with the US-based Smithsonian Institute. He discovered some species of bird of paradise and did a lot of good research and kept going back for decades. He wrote a few very nice books, with pictures of the birds. I like to read about his day-to-day work in the forest, how he got adjusted to the huge cultural differences between the Western world and Papua New Guinea.
For field recordists, there’s a focus on reading books about field recording. There’s 15 or 20 books, maybe, but then you want more and there’s nothing else. But there are all these adjacent skills that make my work easier and better. For example, reading about driving off-road, four-by-four driving. If you go into an African country, you are inevitably going to run out of road at some point, so you have to be flexible.
Another good skill to have: climbing trees. As a kid, I used to climb trees to eat pears and cherries and things and those skills have transferred to field recording very easily; I often climb trees to set up microphone rigs.
And: photography. Some sound recordists say that, since we are such a visual culture, we should focus just on the sound. But that’s ignoring half of the story. Photography has helped my sound-recording practice. Spending time in the field listening, but also trying to find a good shot, composing the frame. And then you also think, well, how am I composing a sound recording frame? Does that work? What does it include? What is likely to change over time? Because obviously sound takes more time than a picture to take – it’s more akin to video. Any kind of creative arts, there’s good material out there about presenting your work. How do you present your work?
A lot of people who find out about sound recording go out and flood SoundCloud with their recordings, whether they are worth sharing or not. This is a part of creative arts practice: you can make art, but is all art worthy of sharing with other people? Are you getting any better? How do you measure this stuff?
What do you think makes a recording worth sharing?
You have to think about the story you’re telling. Everything that I do has to have a meaning and a story. Even if it’s about recording, there has to be something behind it. And if I’m doing the same thing over and over, I want to notice some progression.
And since my work requires a lot of funding, I think in terms of building a portfolio. Some people are looking for that one hero shot or hero sound recording that they’re going to share and is going to change their lives: everyone’s going to come to them and pay them to do crazy things. That might work for photographers; if you get that one-in-a-million shot of a whale eating a scuba diver or something, that might go viral. But, with sound recordings, there’s not much chance of that happening.
You have to build a very consistent, very thorough, and very good quality portfolio. Then, when people google your name when you apply for a project, if they can find various things that sound good, that have a story behind them, that they enjoy listening to, they’re much more likely to support you.
A lot of the trips that I’ve been on wouldn’t have happened without companies and brands supporting me. And then I built on that slowly. And then I ended up working with Hollywood studios and game studios and big tech and whatever.
How do you manage working these big contracts without losing your independent creative vibe?
When I was working on Dune, I was given a list of things to deliver. But I got a lot more than that and they were extremely happy because whenever something didn’t fit, they would look through my folder and find something that fit better. So you deliver exactly what you’re hired for and then, on top of that, you over-deliver.
It can be a slippery slope to overwork regularly; people might tend to give you more work. But when you’re working on something like Dune or The Lion King, you have to do the best you can. And that has to be top. There’s no excuse. But it also relies on your experience; if you’ve done it a lot, you know what to expect, what the most efficient way of doing things is.
How can people who appreciate your work best support you?
I’m on YouTube; that’s where I post the most these days. Instagram and LinkedIn, as well; LinkedIn has been good for me over the years – I’ve found a lot of potential clients and good connections on there. I’m on Patreon, too. That’s a good way to engage with me. Or, on my website you can email me directly. But please don’t email me about problems with your recorder, that’s what the manufacturer is going to solve for you!
Direct support is fine; you can buy me a coffee… But if people want to support me, I want people to listen to my work. I think that’s the best outcome that I can hope for.
Any more advice or tips for recordists?
Go out and record. We need more recordings. But not everything you record is worth putting out there. So go get really good sound recordings and put them out there and share them with people. I think that’s what we need to do as a society.
🎧 Listen to George Vlad’s recordings on Earth.fm
🖋️ Read George Vlad’s articles on the Earth.fm blog
All photos courtesy of George Vlad
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