Artist Profile
to help reinforce the specific practice.
As time has progressed I have continued to work on natural history recordings but also now making a comeback to music - working on my own compositions and also working as a producer with other musicians and artists.
Andrew Fisher
NE Lincs, ENGLAND
Born in 1973 in London and at an early age moved north to Lincolnshire. I grew up in a house on the edge of the countryside with my parents and two sisters. As far as I can remember I frequently made trips into the fields and surrounding countryside exploring the fauna and flora, catching beetles and butterflies etc. When I was 5 years old my parents bought me a Greek tortoise and I was fascinated as I watched it shuffle around the garden. I also spent much time watching frogs and newts in the pond.
My other passion in life apart from Natural History is music. I attended college to study music and sound recording and my results allowed me to progress onto a sound recording degree at Leeds University. As the degree progressed I became more interested in outside field recording and I began to specialize in wildlife sound recording and studied this subject for my final piece of work at University.
This work entitled ‘An investigation into Wildlife Sound Recording’ brought me in contact with a number of wildlife sound recordists. I received an invitation from Jean-Claude Roche (a French wildlife sound recordist) asking me to work with him at his studio in France. I needed no persuasion and immediately got a flight to southern France where I initially worked for a month. I worked (using a mixture of analogue and digital equipment) on a number of recordings mainly of birdsong. The work mainly consisted of mixing and mastering onto various media. Later, I returned to France and helped Jean Roche transfer his sound library onto CD and this was the first necessary step in co-producing the present CD’s on Australia, Asia and North and South America.
After returning to England I upgraded my recording equipment and purchased a more powerful microphone and professional parabolic reflector. I recorded the dawn chorus on a number of occasions and frequently went out recording individual subjects such as particular species of birds, insects, amphibians and mammals. From here my recording techniques and quality of recordings have matured and over the past 5 years I have won a wildlife sound recording trophy and certificates from the Wildlife Sound Recoding Society, whom I am a member of (see the Links page). I am also a registered member of the Association of Wildlife Film Makers (see http://www.iawf.org.uk/members_details.aspx?membersid=1175).
Fieldwork has taken me from the deserts of Rajasthan to the sub-tropical fern forests of New Zealand. Using my collection of recordings from fieldtrips both in the UK and abroad I have produced soundguides as an aid to identify birds song and calls and also submitted recordings to the wildlife sounds collection at the British Library, London – allowing researchers and scientists access to recordings of specific species etc.
As well as natural history sound guides I have also worked with meditation teachers and therapists to produce guided spoken CD's (see CD's available). During the production of these works the subtle sounds of wildlife and natural history soundscapes have been carefully mixed and interwoven with the spoken instructions
Currently I am experimenting, working on music compositions and a second UK wildlife CD.
