The Sounds of the festival site

[redmuz]

Hi everyone.

A bit over a year ago, I began a project to record the sounds of the Glastonbury festival site, from before and during the festival build, right up to time when we all arrive to enjoy the Festival itself. I was lucky enough to visit the site several times in the run up to the festival and make A LOT of recordings!

I thought some of you lot might like to hear these recordings too! The place sounds very different when there's not 180000 people happily milling about

I was interested in hearing what the fields where we gather nearly every year sound like when we're not there. Also, i was curious to hear the changes the land goes through in becoming the festival.

I chose particular places around the site to record and made recordings in the same spot on each visit. So, for example, if you'd like to know what PGC/West Holts/Pennards etc sounds like from April - festival time, you can hear it here.

I also put the recordings together by visit date, to give a sense of the sound of the site overall. (best with headphones)

The project was a bit of an experiment, so some tracks work better than others. I used ambient and contact mics when making recordings - the latter to try and capture what the land itself 'hears' - so that's why tracks are called 'ambient' and 'contact'. You can click on the arrow next to each track for more info about where/how the recordings were made.

I plan to use the recordings to make music from too, one of these days (it has been a hectic year!). If anyone else would be interested in doing this too, let me know.

Anyway, happy listening, hope you find some of it interesting.

See you in 2013!

(I'm hugely grateful for having had the opportunity to make these recordings and visit the site outside of festival time. It was an unforgettable experience. I hope everyone who helped make this project happen has received my hearty thanks by now but in case not, if you're on here, thank you SO much!)

Edited May 1, 2012 by redmuz

[Pinhead]

What a great project! When working I arrive on site about Monday lunchtime and the whole ambience is naturally very different. Sounds include constant hammering, drilling, sawing, the odd sound system test - static, bass etc., plant equipment engines (and many reversing beeps from everywhere), shouts between crew and caterers, conversations between arriving friends and a general air of expectancy. Really lovely atmosphere and just being reminded of it today makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

[redmuz]

Hey Pinhead, glad you like it! it was amazing watching and listening to the site come together - i was there for a few days in the week before the festival and could definitely feel the increase in activity and the sense of expectancy. observing the cooperation that goes into the build was magic...hats off to all you guys who make the festival happen - you do an astounding job!

Feel free to share the project around others who might be interested. Part of the motivation for me for doing it was very much to share in some way what the site is like outside festival time. Kind of give a voice to the land that hosts us all every year, let it tell its story a bit more, as we all love being there so much!

take it easy

RM

Edited May 1, 2012 by redmuz

[grumpyhack]

Sounds great fun and fascinating. It's harder to capture but I also love the smells (well some of the smells) of Glastonbury. Wood smoke drifting over in the evenings is one that I particularly like.

Smell is probably the most powerful memory evoker for me. Many, many years ago when I started as a junior reporter on a local paper I used to visit Sharpness Docks once a week and you could close your eyes and tell exactly where you were from the smells - the timber importing area, the grain silos or the area where scrap metal was collected and exported which had a really powerful smell of cutting fluid from turnings from lathes in engineering works.

[redmuz]

mental note to self to visit Sharpness Docks! they sound fantastic. bet they actually do sound fantastic too.

i know exactly what you mean about the evocative nature of smells. the woodsmoke at glastonbury is wonderful. the smell of the dust in a dry year is also a favourite of mine.

walk up to the back of the stone circle field, lay face down in the long grass, press your nose to the ground and fill your nostrils with the smell of the earth and the grass. it smells amazing (honestly....!). i highly recommend it

Edited May 1, 2012 by redmuz

[sonny]

What a lovely idea!

Alas my over-riding memory of last years Glastonbury is the sound of ballons being blown up and inhaled.

[grumpyhack]

We've done sounds and smells so are left with sights.

One of my most dispiriting sights when I used to have a blue and orange tent was to wake up bathed in glorious colour thinking we had a beautiful day in prospect only to unzip the door to discover a grey and overcast sky.

[Cooter]

well done to all your hard work but any sounds from a wet rainy festival doesn't quite give the general vibe. Dunno, maybe it's just me

[redmuz]

fair enough Cooter, each festival is different and the weather plays its part in that of course. i guess the recordings can only be a snapshot of what 2011 was like, before and during the festival. it would be interesting to see how it differs in other years too.

Sonny - those blinkin' balloons!! Kings meadow was one of the places i was recording. the rest of the time i was quite firm in taking a 'documentary' approach and just recording sounds as they were, no retakes or trying to capture particular stuff but i particularly wanted to record 'stone circle at night' for radio broadcast. it took aaages to get just 20 seconds of the place without balloon whooshes! was fun though. i love it up there at night.

Grumpy, i know what you mean about the misleading brightness inside a tent in the morning! mind you, i prefer that to being boiled alive before 9am. there's nothing like a blue sky and green grass to lounge on amongst all the beauty of the place though eh?

looking forward to a glorious 2013 bathed in sunshine!

thanks for listening everyone

Edited May 3, 2012 by redmuz

[grumpyhack]

I've just remembered another sound from Glasto. We used to camp up at the top of the hill in the Big Ground - just across from the 24 hour cafe. Behind the cafe were a set of generators for some of the lighting and we used to go to sleep with the gentle throb of the generators in the background.

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

It's the sound of my friends talking and laughing which I appreciate most at Glastonbury.

[JoeyT]

Me and my friends camp in Top Webbs Ash every year and the sound of electricity throbbing through the power lines above is something which I very much associate with 'home'

[AnnaGrant]

I like the feeling of lying in your tent in the morning, in your own little world, and hearing the noises of the massive settlement around you-the voices, feet on walkways, distant music.

On my very first morning at Glastonbury I remember being woken up by the sound of 'Jackson, Jackson' as our neighbours tried to find their child who had decided to go on a walkabout. (He was found.)

Re: woodsmoke-we used to come back from G absolutely impregnated with woodsmoke, tent, clothes, everything, when we went in the 90s, but last year we came back 'clean' of woodsmoke. I assume there are many fewer fires now.

[Mark E. Spliff]

Having just spent a few hours Youtubing, I've decided that the sounds which are most likely to evoke memories of Glastonbury are related to the wind - flags and tents flapping, music and crowd noise from distant stages wafting in and out, that kind of thing. Also, love it or hate it, the sounds of balloons being filled is an inescapable part of the festival soundscape now. Voices are obviously important, but at the same time it would be distracting to keep hearing the same person saying the same thing frequently on a loop.

I guess your project was trying to achive something a bit different to just capturing some nostalgia-inducing sounds from the festival. However, it might be nice to have an extra layer of the above sounds which could be overlaid on your project, so you can hear how your underlying ambient sounds fit into the in-your-face sounds of the festival.

Edited May 6, 2012 by Mark E. Spliff

[redmuz]

Shameless bump as we're now in what would have been festival weekend.

Reminisce with the sounds of last year! Eavesdrop on what the fields sounded like before we arrived!

(see first post)

this was my favourite single recording wot i made...

happy summer one and all

Muz

[Mr.Tickle]

I love the way that no matter what time of day or night the sounds you hear from within the tent never dissipate.

There's no 4am quiet lull, you can wake up in your tent and have absolutely no idea what time it is, disorientating but somehow fun.

[sisterofmercy]

What a great idea

I love the sounds of random groups of friends talking over campfire when I'm trying to sleep. Overhearing their conversations and their private jokes and just enjoying the fest, it's nice. If I were more sociable I'd go up to them and join in over a beer or 2, but I'm not, so I settle for listening to them and just revelling in the peace.

[mott the hoople]

My 'sound of Glastonbury' is the banging of the long drop toilet doors.