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Field recording · United Kingdom

Listening to football not happening at Steventon Green

Vale of White Horse, Oxfordshire, South East, England, United Kingdom

A 15-minute field recording by Paul Whitty made in Abingdon, United Kingdom on 2 May 2020, in the afternoon. Soundscape: streets & traffic.

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Listening to football not happening at Steventon Green
15:00CC BY-ND 3.0by Paul WhittyInternet Archive
15:00
Spectrogram of Listening to football not happening at Steventon Green
Spectrogram of the full recording (time left to right, frequency bottom to top), generated by the Internet Archive.

Tip: press play to see the sound's live frequency spectrum in blue over the waveform.

Recordist's notes

As the lockdown has changed our soundscapes I have begun to return to the locations of the recordings I made for my grassroots football project Get Rid! One of the categories of recording I made for these was 'football not happening' - the sound of parish council pitches and village recreation grounds sounding in the absence of football. The first recording I made was at Brightwell Recreation Ground having headed there to listen to Didcot Eagles playing in the North Berks League I found that the game had been postponed and I could only record the absence of football rather than its presence. The recordings I am now making on Saturday afternoons are a way of marking our changed soundscape and noting the similarities and differences. The drone of tyres on asphalt has gone, as has the majority of the air-traffic. There are fewer vibrations in the air. This recording was made using a Sound Devices 722 and an AT BP4025. I wasn't sure whether to upload a normalised version of the track but assuming listeners will use headphones I have gone for the straight bounce on this occasion as it seems more comparable with the original recording that I made. While I was recording this there was a family playing football, a few dog walkers and a rugby player doing sprint training.

Written by Paul Whitty on radio aporee ::: maps.

About the place

Abingdon is a town of about 38,676 people in England, United Kingdom. OttoAnna lists 21 field recordings from here.

Equipment mentioned: Sound Devices recorders and Audio-Technica microphones. Professional location recorders (702, 722, MixPre series) with very quiet preamps.

Recorded nearby

More by Paul Whitty

More streets & traffic recordings

Sources & credits