Made By Humans

Made By Humans: 

I do these things myself: 

  • I go on recording expeditions to record the sounds of the natural world
  • I recorded all sounds sold on thomasrexbeverly.com. They are real sounds recorded in the natural world
  • All photos and video on thomasrexbeverly.com are real and were shot in the natural world. I shoot the footage myself, or I have a human assistant. 
  • I do all my own audio, photo, and video editing. You are paying for my taste and curation as an artist.
  • I do all the writing for my website, blog posts, and social media. I don’t generate writing or do editing with an LLM. 
  • I do not use AI tools to create voiceover that sounds like me. All dialogue recorded on my videos and podcasts is my voice.
  • I do not use AI generated photos, videos, or audio anywhere in my art. 

I use AI tools in these ways: 

This not an exhaustive list (and I am updating it often), but here are a few examples of how I use AI tools:

  • I often use LLMs as a replacement for Google Search
  • My current favorite usage of LLMs is to I run deep research queries to find human experts or books to read on a topic I'd like to research. Then I buy the book or offer to pay the human experts to teach me for a lesson. For example, having a 60 minute video call with a humpback whale researcher (that has 30 years of field experience) is a much better, high-level source of knowledge than having the LLM itself teach me about humpback whales. 
  • I use BirdNET from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for identification of birds in my drop-rig recordings. 
  • I use the Merlin Bird ID iPhone app to do live identification of birds in the field. 
  • I use the iNaturalist iPhone app to do live identification of plants in the field.
  • I use LLMs to proof Soundminer metadata. I do this at the end of my sound library workflow to look for inconsistencies and errors, like an advanced spell check. However, I don’t use the LLM to write the metadata. 
  • I use LLMs for legal contract drafting and proofing

Ways I Avoid Technology to Reconnect to the Natural World: 

  • I often leave my iPhone at home when I go outside
  • I do not have email on my iPhone
  • I do not have social media on my iPhone
  • I despise all forms of vertical, short-form video. The format has no taste, and it is junk food for the mind. I avoid all forms. 
  • I do not have LLMs apps (like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, or Claude) on my iPhone. This creates friction so that I you don’t turn to the AI constantly. If I think of an idea I want to research, I write it in a paper notebook that I keep in my pocket at all times. Then I do the research on my laptop the next day. This friction of keeping the LLM off my phone is very important so I don’t become a fucking parrot of the AI in my pocket.
  • I do not check LLMs, social media, or email on recording expeditions.
  • I love reading paper books
  • I love listening to 2+ hour long-form podcasts
  • I love hiking and listening to audiobooks
  • I fight the influence of algorithms (recommending shit to me) anywhere in my digital life. Instead I seek out human experts that are the best in their field, and talk to them. 

Field Recording Mastering Rules:

I believe in preserving nature sounds so I work tirelessly to discover locations where true natural soundscapes can still be heard. Since I work to preserve endangered natural soundscapes, I want the listener to hear the sounds as if they were present themselves. A "natural soundscape" is a pristine soundscape devoid of all human-generated sound. 

  • Rule 1: Field recordings including any human-generated sounds (i.e. planes, cars, and distant generators) must be thrown out. These sounds cannot be removed in Izotope's RX.
  • Rule 2: Excision of human-generated sounds from long recordings and subsequent crossfading is not allowed. If a section is removed, then the sounds must be edited as two shorter clips.
  • Rule 3: Sounds made by the field recordist can be removed such as handling noise, stomach gurgles, clothing sounds, etc. Also, sounds made by minor gear malfunctions may be removed in RX.
  • Rule 4: De-plosive, Spectral Repair, and Dynamic EQ (with a low shelf filter) can be used to reduce low wind energy in RX.
  • Rule 5: Limited use of high and low shelf filters is acceptable to reduce noise floor hiss, but never when sounds are present in those frequencies.
  • Rule 6: Noise reduction is never allowed.
  • Rule 7: RX Ambience Match is never allowed. I do not filter out low frequency noise pollution and then fill in the space with the unnatural sound created by Ambience Match. 
  • Rule 8: Mark recordings as “natural soundscapes”, or list what was removed in the Soundminer “notes” metadata field.
  • Rule 9: I do all my soundscape editing in RX, metadata in Soundminer, and use Reaper when I need a DAW. 

These rules are my opinions and are not meant to be universal to all field recordists. I am just striving for clarity in how I master my field recordings.

Libraries Where I Broke the Rules: 

  • I follow my Field Recording Mastering Rules as much as possible, but occasionally I break them.
  • If a human-generated sound was removed from a clip, it is marked in the Soundminer "notes" metadata field as "Removed noise pollution".
  • For example, I might break my rules when I can easily remove a distant generator from an otherwise amazing clip of a glacier calving (using Izotope's RX software).
  • That said, if a recording has had a human-generated sound removed, I think it is imperative not to portray it as natural soundscape. That sound can still be beautiful, but it is not as rare.