This recording captures a group of goats feeding on hay in a large barn at the Ferme Des Cevennes. 

Recorded 07.08.2025
Zoom F3 + 2 x DPA 4060s

Goats Feeding - Florac, Cevennes, France

Just after dawn, this recording captures farmlife as day begins, with a cockerel calling intermittently and a group of sparrows calling from a nearby tree.

Recorded 08.08.2025
Zoom F3 + 2 x DPA 4060s

Dawn On The Farm - Florac, Cevennes, France

This soundscape was recorded from the top of a magnificant treehouse built in an ancient Chesnut tree in the forest surrounding the Ferme des Cevennes. We hear gentle summer birdsong as well as one of the farm donkeys calling out and resonating beautifully through the valley. We also hear a woodpecker pecking against a nearby tree.

Recorded 08.08.2025
Zoom F3 + 2 x DPA 4060s

Dawn In The Treehouse - Florac, Cevennes, France

Each year, on the first Sunday after August 15th towns and villages across Spain, Italy and southern France (Provence) celebrate la Fête de Saint Roch over four days. Saint Roch was born between 1346-1350 in Montpellier and devoted his life to caring for the sick. 

This recording captures the street procession in the village of Rognonas. Along with traditional music and dancing (Arlésiennes), a cart decorated with local fruits and vegetables is pulled through the streets by fifty richly harnessed horses.

Recorded 17.08.2025
Zoom F3 + 2 x DPA 4060s

Street Procession (Fête de Saint Roch) - Rognonas, France

Recorded during the festivities of la fête de Saint Roch in Rognonas (Bouches-du-Rhone), this recording captures traditional Provencal music as a group of Arlésiennes performed Provencal dances.

Recorded 17.08.2025
Zoom F3 + 2 x DPA 4060s

Traditional Provencal Music (Fête de Saint Roch) - Rognonas, France

One Island - Many Visions; Royal Society of Sculptors  and Portland Sculpture & Quarry Trust, Drill Hall Gallery, Portland

The Soundscape
A single visual representation of the location – the call of a wren – is captured as a sonogram and transferred to glass. The accompanying soundscape, uses the same location and source – the bird call representing transience in a place that is rooted in geological time, reflecting changes to the Anthropocene.  

Frozen in time, the wren sonogram allows us to explore the sound ‘out of time’, whilst the soundscape distorts our sense of time as it unfolds. Making use of sounds that may have been present in the quarry throughout history, we hear echoes of the past entwining human and naturally occurring phenomena. 

The Sculpture
Early Morning Wren combines textures cast from Tout Quarry rocks with an image derived from a recording at dawn in the quarry. The sound is rendered as a spectrogram etched inside the glass, reflecting the ancient permanence of the rocks and the fleeting nature of lives lived there. The work is a collaboration with sound artist Rob Godman, with whom the recording was made.



Early Morning Wren - collaboration with glassmaker Colin Reid

The music of The Tin Forest forms the connection between imagination and the real world; between the Tin Forest and the real forest that grows around it. There are two ‘sets’ of sounds - metallic and non-metallic, and throughout the show, these two groups represent the two worlds, sometimes separately and something together.
https://www.staplefordgranary.org.uk/cultural-blog/the-making-of-the-tin-forest 

Tin Forest Moon Rise

The music of The Tin Forest forms the connection between imagination and the real world; between the Tin Forest and the real forest that grows around it. There are two ‘sets’ of sounds - metallic and non-metallic, and throughout the show, these two groups represent the two worlds, sometimes separately and something together.
https://www.staplefordgranary.org.uk/cultural-blog/the-making-of-the-tin-forest


Tin Forest Metallic Bird Song with Owl

Tin Forest Gentle Forest Bird Song

The enchanting soundscape of Christmas Eve in Bavaria, captured at St Ulrich church in Burgberg Im Allgäu. Church bells ring out to announce the imminent debut of the Christmas Eve service, offering a genuine glimpse into the seasonal atmosphere of a Bavarian village.

Bells Of Christmas Eve - Burgberg Im Allgäu, Oberallgäu, Bavaria, Germany

The clarity of sound within Greek or Roman theatres (without any form of enhancement) will be impressive to any visitor. The seats arranged in curved rows around the circular orchestra form large horizontal reflecting surfaces. The paths of sound waves travel from the source (the actor or singer) to each of the listeners in a direct path (i.e. without obstruction or reflection). Vitruvius, however, claimed further enhancements could be made.

In theatres, also, are copper vases and these are placed in chambers under the rows of seats in accordance with mathematical reckoning. The Greeks call them Echeia. The differences of the sounds which arise are combined into musical symphonies...
... it becomes fuller, and reaches the audience with a richer and sweeter note. 

Vitruvius, on Architecture, Book I, – on training of architects, Loeb

Over the past ten years, many of my compositions have been inspired by the notion of resonance in physical and artificial spaces.  Without ‘space’ (physical, virtual, psychological), music cannot exist.  My paper ‘THE ENIGMA OF VITRUVIAN RESONATING VASES AND THE RELEVANCE OF THE CONCEPT FOR TODAY’ has been published widely (including the ICMC 2009, Belfast) and is available from various sites online.  Rob has been requested to write an 8000 word chapter detailing the use of Echeia for 'A Companion to the Reception of Vitruvius'. This project is under contract with Brill and is being co-edited by Prof. Rowland and Dr Sinclair Bell. Publication is due for December 2020.

I’m still not sure if the echeia principle could have worked... (but I want it to!)

Drone3

Rob Godman

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