Field recording in Finlande

Philippe Ollivier en prise de son en Finlande

I took advantage of this five-week stay on the shores of Lake Ahilammentie, in Somero, Finland, to collect sounds taken in the forest, on the shores of the lake, under the lake… Some of these sounds have been used for the soundtrack of the show Slap! and will also be present in a forthcoming discographic edition gathering my musical and sound works realized here, in Finland.

Here I give you some very short extracts.


As I arrived in April and the lake was still frozen, I was able to put the hydrophones on the ice and to captureHydrophones dans la glace du lac
sounds that cannot be heard by the human ear.

Below, you can hear the sound captured by hydrophones placed on snow that melts in the sun…


Big surprise when the lake had just thawed and I was putting my hydrophones in it for the first time, to hear this amazing concert of amphibians which turned out to be frogs…


Deux_Cygnes_chanteurs sur le lac

The Singing Swans in full improvisation with a crow. The reverberation is the one produced by the lake and the trees that surround it. A rather exceptional sound environment. And an equally amazing concert!


The mysterious flight recorded by chance by my microphone arranged in sound trap. I discovered this sound by listening again to the recording. I didn’t know what it was, my Finnish friends told me that it was a Telkkä, a kind of water bird whose wings make this very particular sound.


And then there are these amazing things, I was walking in the forest, I had the hydrophones, but not the headphone, I put the hydrophones under water without really knowing what I was going to pick up and especially without being able to interact since, without headphone, I could not monitor anything… It is while returning to the cottage that I discovered this nice underwater cricket. To tell the truth, I have no idea what it is.


Les arbres frotteursAnd then sometimes you’re crawling through the branches because from a distance you think you’ve spotted an animal  and when you are close to the sound source, you realize that it is two trees that are constantly rubbing against each other in the wind…

2 Comments

  1. Kristina Kuusisto

    Eh ouii!! Un ambiance sonore tout à fait familier pour moi! Comme j’y étais tout en coup…. !!

    • admin-p-ollivier

      Merci Kristina pour ce commentaire qui me fait plaisir. Effectivement, les acoustiques naturelles et les sons de la faune finlandaise sont à ce point particuliers, qu’ils semblent immédiatement reconnaissables. Tu es née sur une terre magnifique !

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