Sounds of the Night, new audio book by The Brititsh Library.

Eerie screams, quiet snufflings, and snippets of song are just some of the wildlife sounds that can be heard after dark. While some animals turn in for the night, others are getting ready to begin their ‘day’ and for some species, such as the Red Fox, Badger, Tawny Owl and Nightjar, the period from dusk to dawn signifies the peak of their activity. This CD features a selection of Britain’s most vocal nocturnal animals and provides information on the best time to hear them. Use it to identify those mysterious sounds that can often be heard resonating through the night air.

Fantastic article at NYtimes featuring sounds from Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

Read & Listen

Via Field Mic

Interesting post at Sounds Like Noise talking about the preternatural experience of field recording.

Preternatural: that which appears outside or beyond the natural; exceeding what is regular.

Industrialisation often seems in opposition to the act of deep listening, nonetheless the production of affordable microphones and audio software has granted us an appreciation of the [sonic] world that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. With these tools we are able to surpass the limitations of the human ear and move towards preternatural possibilities.

In both urban and rural areas our listening experience may be compromised by an over-abundance of sound events. Breaking through the sonic mass in order to hear more subtle sounds is quite challenging. With the aid of field recording equipment this problem can be overcome, enhancing our listening experience and sense of location. Carefully placed microphones amplify peripheral sounds into a central position within the soundscape; what was previously unnoticed now commands an audience.

Read/Listen

Composer Cheryl E Leonard, who you may remember from the great interview Nathan had with her here at Sonic Terrain, has published a very interesting post about the sounds she captured at Yosemite’s frozen lake, including some ambiences and also internal sounds from the lake, recorded with hydrophones.

Read and listen at Music from the Ice.

Via silent listening

field recording, in all its forms, has been through incredible creative growth in the last few decades & yet its essential power to engage us in the act & art of listening remains inextricably linked to its subtle simplicity, its ability to make us listen ever more closely to the world in which we move by making us stop for a time….

for the past few years I have been lucky to be part of the location sound recording courses at Wildeye in Norfolk, UK – tutoring alongside Chris Watson & Wildeye founder, Piers Warren. These weekend courses always offer a chance for people with different interests and approaches to come together to explore ways to re-engage with the act of listening and new potentials for the art & craft of field recording. This edition of ‘a quiet position‘ features recordings made by just a handful of the people who’ve been students on the courses in recent years, alongside a couple by myself
- jez riley french

Listen/Download

In two months Alan Lomax’s field recording archive will be available to stream in its entirety for free. Currently all 15,000 recordings can be heard as 45 second snippets here, but from March will be available in full. Files also include session and recording notes, full lists of performers, locations, and dates.

The project is run by the Global Jukebox label, part of the Association for Cultural Equity, who deal with the digitisation of Lomax’s archive. Global Jukebox also curate compilations for release digitally and in physical format (including on LP through Mississippi Records).

Via The Wire

New episode from the Nature Series 5 by BBC Radio 4.

Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson travels to India, to capture the sounds of the forest and the spine tingling roar of a Bengal Tiger.

Chris is leading a team of wildlife sound recordists on this quest. They travel to Corbett National Park which was established in 1936 as Asia’s first National Park. It stretches over some 1300 sq km. in the foothills of the Himalayas in the state of Uttarakhand.

The park is named after the legendary hunter, naturalist and author Edward James Corbett, better known as ‘Jim Corbett’. Author of ‘Man-Eaters of Kumaon’, Corbett spent many years killing tigers and leopards before concern about their future and that of their habitat, led him to playing a key role in establishing the National Park.

Today the Park is home to a rich and diverse range of wildlife including over 100 Bengal tigers. To help them, the team have several local guides; who are not only skilled in the art of tracking tigers; knowing what signs to look for; like scats on the ground, scratch marks on the trees, and perhaps most importantly, knowing how to listen to the forest and use the alarm calls of other animals such as the peacocks and samba deer to help track the tigers. It might sound easy enough but as Chris and the team discover, it’s far more difficult than it sounds.

In their search for tigers, they play a game of ‘Grandmother’s footsteps’ with a pair of elephants, encounter crocodiles in a river, are puzzled by something that sounds like rain but isn’t, and record the unusual barks of Hanaman Langurs in the forest. As for recording the roar of a tiger, they need skill, patience and, a bit of good luck.

Listen

Next episode: Painting with Sound

Spanish sound artists Edu Comelles and Juanjo Palacios have launched LEA Editions, a new project of the Audiotalaia and Audition Records family.

LEA Editions is a catalogue of online releases available through La Escucha Atenta Blog (born from the hand of Juanjo Palacios). This catalogue of phonographic productions rises as a sound complement to the divulgation labour done by La Escucha Atenta. Also, LEA Editions aims to present in a digital format works based on field recordings and soundscapism.

LEA Editions pretends to be a sound mirror for the projects being presented on La Escucha Atenta. Also we seek to offer a platform of diffusion and production of field recording works by emergent artists.

This phonographic catalogue it is coordinated and curated by Juanjo Palacios and Edu Comelles. Also this project is tided to a joint of various digital projects such as Audiotalaia, Audition Records, and obviously La Escucha Atenta Blog.

LEA Editions

First: a BIG thank you to all the contributors, this wouldn’t have been possible without the sounds!

Considering these sounds were recorded at the end of the year and the result is a mash up of these sounds, I think it would be best to make these the Sounds of December.

How did this work?

The Max/MSP patch works by playing random files in a random sequence and from random points within the files. If left by itself it can play these files back in this random order to create a never-ending soundscape. Although, there are a few controls to help design the way it sounds:

• Play length of each file (Eg.: If it’s set at 4000ms, it would play back a sound for 4000ms and then crossfade into the next sound)
• Fade length – crossfade length (from 0ms to 1ms less than the play length)
• Speed/pitch: Vari-speed playback control
• Reverse
• Random type: Urn (random without repeats), Drunk (Randomised but ‘drunken’), Random (random with unpredictable repeats), Counter (sequential playback)

The outputs were connected to a channel strip type interface, from which the signal was sent (parallel) to a reverb and delay plugin.

What you hear below are sounds that were contributed (thank you again!) and then generated and ‘performed’ using the above mentioned controls with a MIDI controller. I recorded a few takes and this was the one I preferred the most. I’ve also included a screengrab of the patch at work, for the curious.

Have a great sounding year ahead!

Thanks to:
Eckhard Kuchenbecker
Echo Collective
Hrishikesh Dani
Chris Nealy
Angel Perez Grandi
Jaydea Lopez
Ana Roman
Péter Terner
Anna Papaioannou

Year End Sonic-Mash on Soundcloud

Year End Sonic-Mash on Vimeo.

While preparing in Lisbon the work Penumbra, commissioned by Serralves Foundation, and that sadly became the lost great album of Grzinich and Raposo, one sunny and windy afternoon we climbed the metal stairs to the roof and prepared a small set-up of piezos and wires. this is a short and quick video edit.