The sound: It was late afternoon. I was in the
middle of conducting an interview, recording the conversation with a
small digital voice recorder. Rain falling outside, in droves. I could
hear water rushing down the street. The sound of water pouring from
the roof. Water dripping from here and there. Clinking and clattering
on the tin roof above. Inside, one light in the corner of the room
fought back the cold of the rain outside. I was talking with a mother
and her son amidst the incessant rain. The sound of the rainfall wasn’t
exactly overwhelming, just constant. In the moment, it all sounded
pretty nice.
The fury: When I finally checked the recording later
that night, the rain made it almost impossible to hear the
conversation. The voices of mother and son were swept up in an auditory
wrecking ball that sounded more like a tornado than raindrops. The
interview was still salvageable, but it was hardly a masterpiece of
ethnographic audio. Frustrating.
Read the rest on Savage Minds, here.
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