Field Multi-Microphone Recordings in the Archive of the Kyiv Laboratory of Ethnomusicology (1983-2024)

Multitrack recordings of song folklore are extremely relevant, as they provide important information for analyzing chants and their performance reconstruction. The funds of the Problematic Research Laboratory of Ethnomusicology in The Ukrainian National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music (UNTAM) have accumulated a considerable array of multitrack audio recordings over the past fifty years. Information about these materials has not received proper coverage within the ethnomusic community. The purpose of the article is to form the digital collection of multitrack recordings of song folklore (including digitized analog recordings) stored in the funds of the Kyiv Laboratory of Ethnomusicology. The source base consists of the recordings made by UNTAM staff and former students from 1980 to 2024. The main research methods are: historical approach, source research, interviews with the staff of the Laboratory of Ethnomusicology (the participants of the expeditionary trips), and direct observation during the fieldwork. The first stage in the forming of the multitrack audio recording collection of the Kyiv Laboratory of Ethnomusicology covers the period of analog cassette recording (1980-2005). These materials are extremely valuable as it was relatively easy to gather a singing group in a village back then. Moreover, the main informants were singers born before the Second World War or even before the First World War (in the 1910s and 1930s). They include various methods of recording folk polyphony: using several voice recorders, the moving microphone method, etc. The second stage, when the main array of multitrack audio recordings was accumulated, relates to the emergence of digital equipment and an economically affordable multi-microphone headset designed by the author (since 2009). More than 60 sessions conducted by the author partly or fully include the method of field multitrack recording with different microphones. The information about each expedition involving multitrack recording is presented in three tables at the end of the article (analog, transitional, and digital recordings).