When I meditate, I like to have something keep me accountable to the time I’m setting aside, be that a timer, beads, a walk. But I’ve grown a bit annoyed with timers actually, waiting for them to go off, dealing with cheesy alarm sounds. Then it occurred to me, why not use my field recorder as a meditative practice?

If you have a smartphone, chances are you have a voice memos app, which means you have a field recorder. What is field recording? Well, it’s simply recording the sounds of your environment. I hope you find it a fairly easy and accessible way to get into recording.

Find somewhere outdoors to sit, start your recorder, and enjoy the sounds around you. Field recording requires the artist to become quiet and pay attention. If it’s important to you that you spend a certain amount of time meditating, glance at the time-stamp on your recorder’s stopwatch to see how you’re doing. Then return to your enjoyment of the moment. When you’re done, you have a souvenir that you’ve created yourself, in collaboration with the world.