“The Last Quiet Places“, new podcast by On Being featuring Gordon Hempton.

Gordon Hempton says that silence is an endangered species. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise. The Earth, as he knows it, is a “solar-powered jukebox.” Quiet is a “think tank of the soul.” We take in the world through his ears.

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Fantastic project by Sound and Music.

Minute of Listening is a creative learning project through which Sound and Music hopes to enable every child in the country to gain access to a huge diversity of music and sound and, for sixty seconds each day, to focus on the richness and enjoyment of the act of listening.

Via musicofsound

will montgomery speaks about Heygate, sound and field recording with the London Consortium.

via winds measure

Bernie Krause has recently released a new book, called The Great Animal Orchestra. There’s also a fantastic lecture with the same name, given by him at California Academy of Sciences. Almost one hour of a fantastic presentation about sound and nature.

About the lecture:

Dr. Bernie Krause, creator of Wild Sanctuary, demonstrates that every living organism produces sound. This presentation focuses on the symbiotic ways in which the sounds of one organism affect and interrelate with other organisms, local and regional, within a given habitat.

Learn about unusual soundscapes and their relevance to preserving natural sounds worldwide. Biophony–the notion that all sounds in undisturbed natural habitats fit into unique niches–will be used to illustrate the ways in which animals taught humans to dance and sing.

Dr. Bernie Krause: The Great Animal Orchestra from California Academy of Sciences on FORA.tv

About the book:

Musician and naturalist Bernie Krause is one of the world’s leading experts in natural sound, and he’s spent his life discovering and recording nature’s rich chorus. Searching far beyond our modern world’s honking horns and buzzing machinery, he has sought out the truly wild places that remain, where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth.

Krause shares fascinating insight into how deeply animals rely on their aural habitat to survive and the damaging effects of extraneous noise on the delicate balance between predator and prey. But natural soundscapes aren’t vital only to the animal kingdom; Krause explores how the myriad voices and rhythms of the natural world formed a basis from which our own musical expression emerged.

From snapping shrimp, popping viruses, and the songs of humpback whales-whose voices, if unimpeded, could circle the earth in hours-to cracking glaciers, bubbling streams, and the roar of intense storms; from melody-singing birds to the organlike drone of wind blowing over reeds, the sounds Krause has experienced and describes are like no others. And from recording jaguars at night in the Amazon rain forest to encountering mountain gorillas in Africa’s Virunga Mountains, Krause offers an intense and intensely personal narrative of the planet’s deep and connected natural sounds and rhythm.

The Great Animal Orchestra is the story of one man’s pursuit of natural music in its purest form, and an impassioned case for the conservation of one of our most overlooked natural resources-the music of the wild.

More info/Buy: NY Times | Amazon | Hachette

How loud is a slithering snail and what’s the footfall of a centipede? Jem Stansfield takes an assortment of creepy crawlies and sound recordist Chris Watson to a very very quiet room to find out. Shhh!

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.

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Via Field Mic

Audio interview with Chris Watson talking about noise pollution and education.

There was a lot of interesting discussion during this interview about the nature of noise pollution and the considerable threat it poses to our quality of life. Worrying still, it appears that our noisy modern world is drowning out the natural soundscape and interfering with species of wildlife that rely on sound for communication.

What seems to be most alarming is that we’re largely ignoring this problem – our world certainly isn’t getting any quieter – and with more of us living in urbanised environments, noise pollution is fast becoming a significant health problem.

Via onthenatureofthings

Sound Recordist Dave Ruddick goes through his set-up and explains how he records surround sound in the field. This clip was shot at Tongass National Forest where Ruddick was handling sound for the film Fortress of the Bears.

Fortress of the Bears

Via Colin Hunter’s Audio Lounge

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.

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