ENG: Recording inside a bunker of the Civil War trenches "Los Pilones", in Rubielos de la Cérida. Walking through the trenches, feeling the wind whip around every corner, it is inevitable to remember what happened there and what, unfortunately, continues to happen in other conflicts today. Let this recording be a cry against all wars...

ESP: Grabación en el interior de un búnker perteneciente a las trincheras de la Guerra Civil “Los Pilones”, de Rubielos de la Cérida. Al recorrerlas a pie sintiendo el viento azotando cada rincón es inevitable rememorar lo que allí se vivió y lo que, desafortunadamente, seguirá viviéndose en otros conflictos en la actualidad. Sirva esta grabación como un grito en contra de todas las guerras…

Sound of the wind in the Civil War trenches of Rubielos de la Cérida

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.

Cold nights and warmer sunny days causes stress on thick lake ice. As the ice freezes and melts on a daily basis, periodic cracking and pinging sounds can be heard, sometimes quite dramatically. This track is edited from an all night recording made at a lake in south Estonia, a "greatest cracks" if you will, from more than 6 hours of material.

Cracking Lake Ice

Among others, nice duet with a robin and a black bird
Parmi d'autres, joli duo entre un rouge-gorge et un merle noir
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Protocole proposé par Jean-Louis Sicaud de l'association SONATURA : enregistrer à sa fenêtre entre 6h00 et 6h30 où que l'on soit. Ici l'enregistrement ne commence qu'à 6h30 car seuls les avions étaient réveillés à 6h00 ! ;-)
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Recorded with a Nagra LB and a couple of MKH 8040 ORTF

240314 · 6:30 am ·  At my window after dawn (Creuse, France)

Chorus of endemic treefrogs of Taiwan :
莫氏樹蛙 Rhacophorus moltrechti Boulenger, 1908.
台北樹蛙 Rhacophorus taipeianus Liang & Wang, 1978.

Recorded near Jiaping Camp, Yilan County, Taiwan.
13.04.2024 20:40
Sony PCM-D100 + Primo EM272

240413 treefrog chorus, Jiaping, Yilan, Taiwan

It was nice to hear the Common Poorwill calling at dusk, and cactus wrens, black-throated sparrows.  There is a lot of wind through the vegetation in this, and there were lots of grasses in the area.  I used the double mid-side system to record this.

Mojave Dusk Birdsong and Wind

Loriot d'Europe (Oriolus oriolus) - Eurasian G. Oriole Forêt Sénart Cris et chants shouts and songs

Fallow Deer

Quite a deep tone on this Nightjar but what was more unusual were the cute little contact calls between each phrase and at the end. I only usually hear these contact calls between individuals but till now I don't think I've managed to get a recording of a male doing it, till now. 

Should mention the Woodcock also, quite nice to have a few males in the background squabbling. 

Gear: Sound Devices MixPre 6 ii / Telinga Dish / Schoeps CCM 4 + Stereo Mk 2's

Gavin Vella

Nightjar Low Tone Cat Calls - MixPre - 7113

Prise de son réalisée lors de la formation « enregistrer le paysage » sous la direction de Marc Namblard du 29 avril au 3 mai 2024 à Hérisson avec Julie Auzou, Marine Coutelas, Luce Goutelle, Thibaud Guillemin, Jeanne Lacaille, Robin Mercier, Anne Montagard et Léa Roger.

La renarde

Sound Theater Archives: Silence the Tongues of Prophecy

If you have the Gravikords, Whirlies and Pyrophones CD/book set, introduced by Tom Waits and nicely produced by Ellipsis Arts, you've already heard the shortened version of this song. This  post is of the original, longer version of Silence the Tongues of Prophecy.

Always fascinated by synthetic speech, as soon as the tech became available (early 1980's) I began building human voice synthesizers. In this recording I use an instrument built around the vintage SP0256-AL2 IC. 

The instrument, in fact, uses two SP0256-AL2s to create a stereo human voice synthesizer. Originally named the "R.A.P." (pre-dates popular rap music and stood for Readily Available Phonemes), I've since re-named it after discovering its circuit-bent personality: the Subliminal Chant Generator.

In the text sheet accompanying the IC I noticed a statement something like, "The SP0256-AL2 needs the control of an external microprocessor to concatenate allophones into words." Immediately I thought, "nah." 

After all, address lines are only voltage levels. I wanted to build a machine with which I could activate allophones manually, by pressing keys on a keyboard, a modern version of the classic 1940's Bell Labs Voder talking machine. 

I did that, and with the addition of the final bending of the circuit (allowing bits to float) the vast realm of subliminal chant appeared.

Here, however, the Subliminal Chant Generator operates in its more overt personality, delivering allophones with clear certainty. The subliminal aspect of the voice synthesis is not presented in this recording but will be in an upcoming post of songs from "Voice of America," a cassette album from my old Sound Theater catalog.

Joining the  Subliminal Chant Generator in this post is one of my first incantors (I'd not yet written about the design, at the time of the recording they couldn't be heard elsewhere). 

That's all you need to know to understand what you'll hear. If you'd like to know more about the instrument, check-out my Facebook post of Dec. 2, 2015 for an up-dated excerpt from my EMI article, "The Subliminal Chant Generator."

Sound Theater Archives: Silence the Tongues of Prophecy

Percussionist. Improviser. Performer. Occasionally composer and field recordist. Co-founder of the ensemble]h[iatus. Co-founder and curator of Le Bruit de la Musique festival. Artistic adviser of Association Ryoanji Épicentre.

240314 · 6:30 am · At my window after dawn (Creuse, France)

Lê Quan Ninh

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