I spend a lot of time recording and listening to my field recordings before I know how to describe them.
A list of sounds is easy enough to make. Grass, insects, wind, a car passing on a road. Those details matter, but a list does not tell someone what happened during the recording, or why I stayed with that particular stretch of time. At the other extreme, it is easy to reach for words like immersive or atmospheric and leave the actual place behind.
I have started using three sentences to find a way between those approaches.
Note: I like using en and em dashes (alt+0150 and alt+0151 shortcuts on the keypad) while writing. This is not an indication that this was AI-generated. None of this was AI-generated.
The Basics of The Three-Sentence Method
The first sentence says what happens. It stays close to what the microphones captured: the grass moves, insects continue, a vehicle enters and leaves. I try to name a few sounds rather than everything I can identify. The point is to give the listener something real to listen for.
The second sentence describes how the space unfolds. A passing car can briefly pull the ear toward the edge of a field. When it fades, the quieter sounds nearby become apparent again. The microphones have not moved, but the listener’s sense of the place has. That change is often more interesting to me than the event on its own.
The third sentence says why I kept the recording. Sometimes it is a distinct sound or an unexpected moment. Often it is the time around an event: the stretch before it arrives, or what can be heard after it disappears. This sentence gives me a way to explain my choice without telling anyone what they should feel.
For one of my night recordings, the description might begin like this:
“Grass shifts close to the microphones while insects hold a steady line through the night. Cars pass at a distance, briefly changing the apparent size of the space. I kept the intervals between them, where the recording feels less like a collection of sounds than a place continuing in time.“
That is not an attempt to make the recording sound mysterious. It is a way of staying accountable to what is there while admitting that listening is also a choice. I chose where to place the microphones, when to leave them running, and which minutes to share. Those choices are part of the work even when I do very little to the audio afterward.
I use binaural recording techniques because I want to preserve something of my position inside an environment: what is near, what remains beyond reach, and how sounds move around a fixed point. But a description does not need to advertise the technique every time. It should help someone notice the relationships the technique was there to capture.
The three sentences are a starting point, not a rule about length. A track note might stop there. A longer description can follow the same thread into the weather, the season, the waiting, or the changes I noticed when I returned to a place.
What matters is that the writing begins with listening rather than with a claim about what the recording means.
I want these recordings to document places as they unfold, not to turn every ordinary sound into a symbol. Three sentences help me begin: what happened, how the space changed, and why I wanted to remember that time.
The Three-Sentence Field Recording Guide
A practical method for describing a recording without reducing it to a sound inventory or burying it under abstract language.
The core method
Write one sentence for each of three questions:
- What happens? This is all about the evidence. Identify the sounds and the events you can actually hear.
- How does the space unfold? This is the experience. Describe distance, movement, layers, changes in perspective, or the passage of time.
- Why did I keep this stretch of time? This is the intention. Explain what made this recording worth preserving, without telling the listener what they must feel.
The sentences need not be the same length, and they do not need to sound literary. Their jobs are different: evidence, experience, and intention.
Sentence 1, The Evidence: What happens?
Start with audible particulars. Name two or three sounds that matter to the recording and give at least one of them a verb. Avoid making a complete inventory.
- Instead of: “There are insects, grass, wind, and cars.”
- Try: “Wind moves through the tall grass while insects continue beneath the sound of a distant road.”
- Ask: Which sound establishes the recording? Which sound changes it? What is close enough to hear as texture, and what remains only a presence in the background?
If you cannot identify a source confidently, describe what you hear rather than guessing: “A low mechanical hum enters from the left,” not “A truck approaches,” unless you know it was a truck. Keep your field notes separate from what the audio itself reveals.
Sentence 2, The Experience: How does the space unfold?
This sentence moves beyond the list of sources.
- Listen for the relationships among the different and distinct sound sources:
- near and far;
- stationary and passing;
- continuous and intermittent;
- foreground and background.
- Notice what becomes audible when a louder event ends.
- Instead of: “It sounds spacious and immersive.”
- Try: “As each car passes, its sound briefly crosses the field and then falls away, leaving the insects and small movements in the grass more exposed.”
With a binaural recording, you can describe the experience of perspective without promising that everyone will hear exactly the same thing. “A vehicle travels across the background” is more useful than “perfect 3D audio.” If headphones make a meaningful difference, say so once in your release notes rather than repeating it in every poetic description.
Time matters as much as space. A fixed microphone position can reveal change without the listener or recorder moving: a sound arrives, settles, disappears, and leaves the place altered for a moment.
Sentence 3, The Intention: Why keep it?
State your reason for choosing this segment. It might be the timing of an interruption, an unusually quiet interval, a recurring pattern, or the tension between human and nonhuman sounds. This is the sentence in which your point of view becomes visible.
- Instead of: “This magical recording transports the listener to another world.”
- Try: “I kept the minutes after the traffic faded because the quiet was not empty; it made the small, persistent sounds of the field easier to hear.”
Your reason does not need to claim that the event is rare or profound. “I wanted to hear how this place changed after sunset” is enough.
A Repeatable Listening Workflow
- Listen once, selectively, without writing. By “selectively,” I mean that you should note the first event that holds your attention and what happens after it. Resist the urge to identify every sound. This focuses attention.
- Listen again for structure. Find the beginning, a change, and the point at which the recording becomes something different or returns to where it started.
- Make a small evidence list. Write down no more than three audible sources, two spatial or temporal (time-focused) relationships, and one reason you chose this passage.
- Draft the three sentences. Give each sentence just one job. Do not try to make all three poetic.
- Check every claim against the audio. Can a listener hear what you named? Does “distant” really sound distant? Are you attributing a source or emotion that the recording cannot establish?
- Read it and cut. Remove repeated adjectives, technical claims that do not help the listener, and phrases that could describe any other recording. It should sound like you’re talking to your listener in a quiet yet profoundly honest way. You’re not trying to sell the recording to them. You’re giving your perception and meaning of it to them.
If the third sentence will not come, that is useful information. Listen again before reaching for an atmospheric adjective. What made you stop recording, save the file, or return to it later?
Four Useful Versions – Differing Contexts and Usages
Use the same three questions for different contexts. Change the amount of detail, not the underlying evidence.
Track Description
Three sentences are often enough. Let the recording carry the rest.
“Tall grass crackles in a light breeze while insects maintain a steady presence and vehicles pass beyond the field. Each pass briefly draws attention outward before the closer textures return. I kept this interval for the way the landscape continues around those interruptions.”
Blog Paragraph
Begin with the three sentences, then add a short paragraph about the choice you made: why you planted the microphones there, waited rather than followed a sound, or left an apparently ordinary event intact. Avoid converting every post into a gear report.
Field Notebook Entry
Write the three sentences first, then add factual metadata on separate lines: date and time, location or location code, weather, recorder and microphone setup, orientation, and any known sources. This keeps memory and measurement from silently blending into your public description.
Album or Series Note
Write three sentences about the series rather than each individual file: what kind of places and events recur, how their relationships change over time, and why you are returning to them.
A project can have a clear premise without forcing every track to represent the entire concept.
Description Without Overstatement
Use concrete verbs: shifts, recedes, crosses, gathers, persists, interrupts, thins, returns.
Use abstract words such as presence, memory, distance, attention only after the sound has earned them.
A helpful distinction:
- Evidence: “A low hum remains beneath the insects.”
- Experience: “The hum makes the field feel connected to activity beyond it.”
- Intention: “I left the hum in because it belongs to this place as I heard it.”
You can include all three. Just do not present an interpretation as if it were an unambiguous acoustic fact.
Avoid claims such as “untouched” or “exactly as it sounded” if you trimmed, restored, filtered, or mastered the recording. If the processing matters to the work, describe the aim plainly: “I reduced persistent noise while keeping the spatial relationships and quiet details intact.” A description does not need a full processing log.
A Blank Template
[Specific nearby sound] [does something] while [another sound or event] [continues, enters, or interrupts].
As [an event changes], [describe what happens to distance, movement, layers, or attention over time].
I kept this passage because [a concrete reason connected to the experience of listening].
Use the template to get unstuck, then rewrite until it sounds like you. You can also omit “I” in the final sentence: “The passage holds on the interval after each vehicle disappears.”
One Final Test
Remove the recording’s title and ask whether the three sentences could describe dozens of other files. If they could, replace one broad word with a particular sound, relationship, or moment. The goal is not to make every recording sound extraordinary. It is to say clearly what was extraordinary to your attention in this one.
Books on the Subject
Here is a list of books that can help with the naming and descriptions of field recordings:
For sentence 1: The Evidence
For sentence 2: The Experience
For sentence 3: The Intention
To sharpen all three sentences, read this one, and if you read only one, choose this one:
Michel Chion’s Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise helps sharpen the observations behind the three-sentence description.
What happens: Distinguish the source from its audible qualities—describe not only “rain,” but its patter, density, rhythm, and resonance.
How the space unfolds: Attend to how sounds develop over time and relate to their perceived causes, giving you more precise language for continuity, interruption, emergence, and fading.
Why it matters: Ground your reflection in what you actually hear, while distinguishing sonic qualities from the meanings you associate with them. Chion supports that distinction; the significance remains your interpretation.
The book does not prescribe this three-sentence formula. It helps you notice and name the details that make the formula specific rather than generic.