The latest challenge from my friends' "Muse and Method" group was to create something based on the idea of "Cycles". It had me thinking of how clawhammer banjo playing is so reliant on repeated patterns--cycles, if you will. I've fooled around in the past with multitracked and interlocking banjo patterns (Steve Reich's worst nightmare?)and thought I would revisit the idea here.

This track consists of five five-stringed banjos playing in five-four time. The picture is Charles Demuth's "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold".

An older, looser, maybe more fun version of this experiment, from 2012, is here: https://hanklebury.bandcamp.com/track/the-dream-of-rain

5x5x5

Guilvinec Market

Enigmatic Grille

The weather looked really good, so in the early evening I went up to the mountains to Rosehane graveyard to record.  I planned to park at the graveyard then walk through the forest so to be a bit nearer the sheep. 
 Set up the equipment and made a few recordings, when another jet flew over I decided to move even closer to the sheep, turns out they were in a field opposite the forest, made another recording.  The weather forecast was really good, however it did not calm down as expected.  For a time around dusk the jets stopped for awhile, this recording is part of the last recording made.  MixPre3 and Lewitt 440's.  
Recording 4057.

Atmosphere & Sheep (4) - 14 June '23 - 10.22pm - Near Rosahane

Just a minor nocturnal winter interlude... I've had my eye on this grand old dead gum tree for quite a while. The trunk is sturdy, though resonantly porous and completely hollow, and the upper part of the tree broke off many years ago, so it's open at the top, like a giant didjeridu. It has a small opening at the base, roomy enough to set up a small binaural rig inside. On this clear full moon night, the weather forecast predicted very strong winds and wind gusts, so it seemed like a good chance to hear the wind playing the giant didjeridu. Unfortunately, the winds were not quite as strong, that night, as predicted and hoped for, and as required for what might perhaps be a more dramatic and interesting acoustic result. Even so, the tree did produce persistent low frequency rumbling tones, as well as oddly filtering the sounds of the wind in the surrounding trees, and the singing of the magpies, outside of its trunk. (The background hiss is the wind in the leaves of gum trees, as heard from inside the hollow tree.)

Here, in this track, rather than the internal sounds of the tree in the wind, I've focused on something else (recorded while the binaural rig was still inside the tree): it turned out that the hollow tree was home to a small furry resident, who returned just before first light. In the original recording, the process of homecoming took about 25 cautious minutes. I first pruned that down to 18 minutes, and then still further to the 7 minutes and 50 seconds of this track. Finally, the homecomer climbed up the outside of the tree, all the way to the open top, and then back down inside it. Half an hour later, a second homecomer returned to the hollow tree, and entered it in the same way. But, by that time, humanity was afoot - or rather, awheel and awing - and, due to the background noise, I omitted the second homecoming episode. Unprocessed recording (96/32 > 48/24).

2023.06.04 Minor Nocturnal Interlude. Wind with Hollow Tree, and a Homecomer. Winter.

Dans les forêts de montagne le soir venu, résonne le chant du Merle à plastron (Turdus torquatus).
As evening falls in mountain forests, the song of the Ring Ouzel (Turdus torquatus) echoes.

© Ph.V. 2023

Merle à plastron

This is one of my favorite places in the area where I record my Northern Europe ambiences. A rather small, almost square swamp with sparse pine and birch trees, in the middle of a forest. The place has fantastic acoustics with a beautiful distinct echo and diffuse tail due to the sparse trees. During my first of the 2 expeditions this spring I recorded a lot of crystally transparent night and early morning ambiences in this place, I had a chance even to catch the trumpeting flight calls of a swan flying over right above the swamp and then a chorus of swan calls forming an otherworldly drone, reminding a chorus of mermaids. 
Working now on converting all these treasures into publishable libraries. Here’s an example of an early morning 4 AM 4th of May recording with woodpeckers’ drumming communication and a cuckoo in this natural concert hall. In the second half some large bird makes some gentle snorting or moaning sounds CLOSEUP to the right side and then flies by with swishy wings flapping. Recorded with Nevaton MC50 Quad into Sound Devices MixPre 10 II, mixed to stereo for this example.
There were freezing temperatures at nights at this time, but this swamp, covered with fresh evergreen moss, emits a fantastic flower-like fragrance all year around. Also, I suddenly remembered for myself that the cover photo for our first library “Northern Europe Forest Meadow Ambiences. Summer” was taken right here in July of 2018.
All rights reserved. Copyright Dmitry Chernov, LARX Audio.
If you want to use this recording in your productions/creations, please contact us through the contact form at our website https://larxaudio.com

Forest Swamp May 4th  04 AM Woodpecker Cuckoo ST

Lupines, Bumble Bees And Birds 230617

Night Listening means sitting, through the night, in a chosen location, as still and quiet as possible, often for many hours, absorbed in purely listening, while recording. This is an excerpt from a recent Night Listening. It involves three Brushtail Possums, and one Red Fox. The responses of the Possums to the barking of the Fox are very interesting. (Don't start with the volume raised to more than 50 to 60 per cent: some of the fox barks are quite close and loud.)

Recorded on the land of the Kaurna people.

2023.12.28 Night Listening. Night Forest. Red Fox and Brushtail Possums. Early Summer.

January 20, 2020.  Monday morning in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA.  Recorded with old cheap mini-omni mics in my back garden.  Noisy crows with additional sounds of wind chimes, water drips and distant traffic.

Crows in back garden with wind chimes and city noise

Mainly nature field recordings from the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Some recordings are done in northern Italy, near Lago Maggiore, mostly in Val Veddasca.

Crows in back garden with wind chimes and city noise

dismalhiker

Related tracks