Field recording with the Tascam GT-R1

Field recording of found sounds is a rather crucial aspect of the sort of sound design that interests me. Diving deep enough into this area, one will inevitably wish to experiment with contact microphones. Contact microphones are unlike ‘normal’ microphones in that they don’t really respond to air vibrations. But they are quite good at picking up the vibrations of solids (or, in the case of sealed hydrophones, liquids) that they’re attached to. This is a lot of fun, but there’s one problem – due to an impedance mismatch, they aren’t going to sound very good when connected to a normal microphone input. Compare this matched recording with this recording from a standard mic input.

The typical solution will be to go through a DI box or dedicated preamp. For a portable, minimal setup, this is far from ideal. I figured at some point, someone would have had to have come up with a portable recorder designed with sound design in mind, and containing inputs suitable for a range of microphones. I came up empty-handed. Then it occurred to me, this is really the same problem that guitar pickups have – they need a high impedance (Hi-Z) input for proper frequency range reproduction. Perhaps a portable recorder for guitarists exists. It does, and let me just say that the Tascam GT-R1 makes an awesome little field recorder.