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Field recording · United Kingdom

Listening to the sound of football not happening at Checkendon Playing Field

South Oxfordshire, Oxfordshire, South East, England, United Kingdom

A 15-minute field recording by Paul Whitty made in Reading, United Kingdom on 24 May 2020, in the morning. Soundscape: streets & traffic.

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Listening to the sound of football not happening at Checkendon Playing Field
15:00CC BY-ND 3.0by Paul WhittyInternet Archive
15:00
Spectrogram of Listening to the sound of football not happening at Checkendon Playing Field
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. This recording, however, was made on a Sunday morning to coincide with the game time of the Upper Thames Vally Sunday League in which Checkendon play. The drone of tyres on asphalt has gone, as has the majority of the air-traffic. There are fewer vibrations in the air although there's a lot of lawnmowing. 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.

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

About the place

Reading is a city of about 318,014 people in England, United Kingdom. OttoAnna lists 153 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