Nightmares of tawny owls

This recording is one of my personal highlight of 2022. I was lying in the tent and was pulled out of a deep sleep at half past four in the morning by a noise. Until I realized that it is a single squirrel that causes such a noise directly over my tent, it took a while. 
It was even throwing sticks down!
I quietly got up to set up my sound equipment and then start recording.

2022 Cranemaps Fieldrecordings Finland Squirrel

Normalised to -1.00 dB. No other processing, no editing.

(Alternative version: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20230319-night-pasture-with-sheep-and-freight-train-early-autumn)

2023.03.19 Night with Sheep and Freight Train

Culkein Drumbeg is a remote village on the north west coast of Scotland (about 2 km north west of Drumbeg). This recording was made with a Sony PCM D-100 placed inside an old fisherman's hut while the wind swirled around outside.

Fisherman's shed

Crossing over the narrow mouth of Loch Roe, a rickety and narrow road bridge sings lovely harmonics as the prevailing westerly wind passes across it.
2x MKH8040 (ORTF) + MixPre 3 ii

Singing bridge

Less than one minute excerpt out of an hour of bat recording at Zuidlaardermeer near Groningen in the Netherlands. Replayed at 0.14 times the original speed. You hear crickets, they are the rhythm section, geese that sound like elephants or lions and on top of that noctule bats hunting above the mics.
Tascam DR100 MkIII @192kHz 24bit
Self built ultrasonic mics in ORTF
No editing in post except for the speed change.
uploaded as 16 bit 48kHz FLAC

Zuidlaardermeer - 2023/07/28 - from a bat perspective

Recommendations for meditative, reflective deep listening: good quality headphones; quiet place or time; no sense of time pressure.

Recorded on the land of the Danggali people.

2023.08.05 Reverberant Bleating. Dry Creek. Night. Late Winter.

Large groups of Jackdaws and Rooks sleep in the trees in the city of Leer. Unfortunately, most people don't want them to and therefore they will chase them away.
I made a lightweight rig, AB 60 cm, and followed the crows through the city. You can hear them fly away at 4,5 min and being chased through hand clapping at ca. 9 minutes. In the end they calm down as it gets dark.

230822_0293, 24 bit, 48 kHz WAV recording
No editing in post.
Uploaded as 16 bit FLAC

Rooks & Jackdaws - 2023/08/22 - in the city of Leer

September is an excellent month for listening to owls. The local pair of Ural Owls had an active night and uttered most of their reportoire between 1 AM and 4 AM as can be heard in this droprig recording. Nåsten, Uppsala. September 18, 2023.

A potpourri of Ural Owl calls

Five years in the making, David Rothenberg’s Nightingales in Berlin project includes a book, a film, many live concerts, and this double CD, including a 20 page color booklet of stills from the film and music not available in any form online. Here’s what Rothenberg says about the project:
“I used to make interspecies music largely on my own, seeing myself as some kind of individual explorer seeking out musical ideas with creatures we can’t even talk to. But in recent years I’ve decided that the point of musical contact with another species is to convince other people to join me. Over five years, from 2014 through 2019, I invited the best and most adventurous musicians I know to connect in musical collaboration—humans with nightingales, in Berlin and Helsinki.
The nightingales have helped me find the perfect sound. By assembling just the right group of kindred spirits, together we dream of a way that humans and nature might live closer together. Our species is warming the planet beyond recognition, and this could mean the end of our reign over this place. Yet there are still these moments during which humans can touch nature through sound happening all around us, as we make music along with the nightingales of Helsinki and Berlin. The paths to animal music sit right before us.
I love to listen to different musicians respond to the song of the nightingale for the very first time. I have played with these birds for several years now, and sometimes I wonder why I keep trying to make music with musicians with whom I cannot speak, who live as birds—such different lives than people who may join the band. Some human critics think it’s all delusion, that I intrude upon the birds’ ancient world of perfect sound and struggle, but whenever I bring a new musician along to play with nightingales, I realize why I began this process in the first place. We all feel such joy and hope when music can carry meaning from one species to another. The planet becomes a more harmonious place.”

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More Information: http://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=17051
Order here: http://shop.gruenrekorder.de/?full#Gruen_189

Nightingale Cities | David Rothenberg

In springtime, every other Finn is making firewood. Here a  fisherman is using a splitter machine in Makholma Harbor.  The birds are accompanying. Couldn't resist recording ;-

Updating www.rupuranta.net

(MKH8020 ab60cm, MixPre3, 32>24/48, flac)

Jan Eerala Finland

Making Firewood - 5/5/2020 - Makholma Harbor

Ploughing aural fields in remote North.

Field recordist, bird watcher and a digitized former darkroom rat living in little Makholma village on the West Coast of Finland by the Baltic Sea - 61N 21E

These recordings are done in AB stereo with omnidirectional microphones. With this technique everything in the field will be equally meaningful, even the silence behind the microphones. That's why you should use headphones!

My recordings are merely like a process than individual tracks, and should be considered in the context of my blog-alike site:  www.baltic.fi

For better quality, the tracks are downloadable as 24 bit flac. For commercial use, please take contact.

You will find my videowork here: https://vimeo.com/holotna/videos 

And pics from the places of recordings: https://holotna.pic.fi/kuvat/


Tekijä on Makholman kalarannan liepeillä majaansa pitävä digitalisoitunut pimiörotta. Intohimona linnut, meri ja vanhat puupurret.

Making Firewood - 5/5/2020 - Makholma Harbor

Jan Eerala

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