1 | Thoreau.

Put Walden down, now. You haven’t ‘just discovered’ how Thoreau was, like, totally ahead of R. Murray Schafer. That pond is teeming with hydrophones at this stage.

2 | Contact microphones and melting ice, or the go-to first timer experiment the moment the kit is unboxed.

3 | The pensive, looking-in-the-distance-while-monitoring biog shot. This one’s fairly unavoidable. We’ve all been there.

4 | Soundmaps. As apps and GPS make the collection of a ginormous amount of mediocre-to-atrocious quality sounds possible from all conceivable sources including your granny’s Nokia, this really isn’t worth pursuing any further. Moving on.

5 | Tweeting exclusively about your ‘Upcoming Releases’ on that label (what was it again…oh, right. The one set up by you.) Zero likes.

6 | Bells. In the wise words of professional recording Gandalf Mikael Fernstrom: ‘Every sound student has his Quasimodo moment’. Let it not be you.

7 | DPA microphones on a wire coat hanger. No matter how casually you wave this about, we all know this was never your idea.