Samples from album Wind and Water Ambiences. Natural soundscapes with main element of wind and water-related sounds - waves, river murmuring, rainshowers, trees in wind and so on...

Wind and Water Ambiences

Album in Bandcamp

Crisp morning and wet spring forest on the first of May 2021 in Alam-Pedja, Estonia.  Redwing sings high on the top of the tree. His song seems a little poorer or shorter than it usually is. Maybe he's a young bird and this is his first spring. Nevertheless, the whole piece of the forest is full of his song. Suddenly, two black woodpeckers arrive and take full attention. This is a section from a longer recording

Tascam Dr-100 MK III digital recorder
An Azden microphone pre-amplifier/mixer
Handmade phantom powered Primo Microphones with EM172 capsules. 24 bit 48kHz

Spring Forest with Redwing and Two Black Woodpeckers in Love

Now is the time to listen for drumming woodpeckers. In this recording I have mixed all woodpecker species that drum regularly in Sweden. Three drums each and in the following order: great spotted, lesser spotted, white-backed, three-toed, grey-headed and black. Green woodpecker almost never drums.

Recorded in Uppland 2022-2025.

Drumming of all Swedish woodpeckers

After a couple of hours drive from home and in the end on really bad gravel roads I was far into the fir tree forest of Uppland. It was a wonderful silence with only the modest sound from the wind and a few birds singing. Goldcrest, Song thrush, Chaffinch, Willow warbler and a Dunnock. The recording was done in May 2015.

Far Into The Forest

Dawn chorus in the redwoods of northern California.  Van Duesen Creek provides a quiet backdrop for Pacific wren, Osprey, and the haunting sounds of the Varied Thrush.  Recorded at Van Duesen County Park, California, on June 1, 2018.

Van Duesen Creek Dawn Chorus

190318 05:27 Dawn Chorus in Riparian Forest of Morava river

The clock is 6 am and the weather is beautiful. The recording begins 5 am and was 1 hour and 20 minutes long. This is a seven-minute cut from it. I recommend listening to it with headphones.

Early morning Soundscape from Alam​-​Pedja Nature Reserve, Estonia. May 22, 2019

The first calls of the Herring Gulls in early morning a little before sunrise on the small Luoteen Rayhat Reef. Nothing to cut, nothing to add, love it or hate it ;-

This is from an over-night recording on the reef. Very quiet one hour before sunrise, otherwise a distant ship and some early fishing boats. The gulls will leave the reefs within one or two weeks and arrive again in March.

www.baltic.fi

(AT4022 ab60 cm, MixPre3, nothing done in edit, 24/48, flac)

Jan Eerala Finland

Salute to the Sunrise - 6/8/2019 -  Rayhat Reef

[Experiment] Trying the Shure MV88 mic on a iPhone for field recording (nature).   Not that I would want to do this very often, but it could be useful when better mics/recorders are not available in a given moment.   The photo shows the location where this recording was made (holding the iPhone, standing about 5 feet from the grass in lower middle of photo).

[Setup] Shure MV88 on an iPhone 10 with foam windscreen. Settings on app:  mid-side mode, max compression, flat EQ,   The quality is not bad for what it is.

The Shure MV88 is *not* a sensitive mic and certainly not great for nature field recording.  The manual even says it was designed to record in very loud environments like concerts, so it would not be good for recording a quiet soundscape.   However, for loud environments it seems OK.   These cricket frogs were so loud that I wore the headphones for ear protection even when not recording.  Without ear protection the frog calls were painfully loud (to give an idea of the ambient sound levels being recorded).

BTW, on an iPhone X I was not able to find a way to monitor audio while recording.  Gain was set by watching the meter on the app.  On phones that have plug-in headphones, apparently there is a way to monitor audio while recording.

iPhone field recording using Shure MV88 mic (frogs in forest)

Preview of the audio recording of how a night in the woods turns into a morning, Original slow 52 minutes long progression is avalaible for listening here: https://andruskannel.bandcamp.com/track/forest-soundscape-from-night-to-morning
The recording was made on the morning of May 23, 2020 in the Alam-Pedja nature reserve in Estonia

Forest soundscape from night to morning

In these days we are very much exposed to noise created by ourselves. Noise pollution if you like.
We can seldom transport our selves from point A to B without making really serious noise. How do we even cut the grass, whip cream or brush our teeth without making noise from petrol- or electric driven tools? :) Well we don't.
Undoubtedly we are affected by noise pollution in a bad way. That's why i truly love to escape to places where the soundscape is untouched and consists of only pure nature sounds. They are not very easy to find though.
I make recordings only as memories of beautiful soundscapes. Mainly to listen to when i feel a need for relaxing for a while and going back in time and place.
Recorder is mostly Sound Devices 702 and an ORTF setup of large membran mics. The sound is presented in mpg-format but is recorded in 24-192 wave.


Far Into The Forest

Sound Memories