The Transverse Range separates California’s Central Valley from the Los Angeles basin. Every day, trucks pour over the Grapevine along I-5. 

But there are other routes into the mountains, sheltered from the noise of the freeway. One of these climbs the side of the canyon high above San Francisquito Creek. Hiking near the creek, one often comes across the crumbled remnants of a lower road.

This recording was taken along a section of dirt roads in Angeles National Forest. Maps label the area as Ruby Canyon. A quarter mile from the paved road, a little stream feeds into the creek. I found a sandbar and recorded this segment in a pause between the torrent of flights to and from the LAX and Burbank airports. There was a harsh wind in the canyon, but the stream is in a narrow side canyon sheltered from the strongest gusts.

Sony PCM-D100 with a pair of EM272 capsules - testing a budget version of the yoga block SASS array configuration (thanks to @acousticnature for a fantastic instructional post; I cut a lot of corners on materials and the design as written likely sounds much better, but I shall make improvements over time). Accidentally turned on the 20dB mic attenuation and high pass on the recorder; amplification and some additional low-end EQ applied in post.

Windy stream in Ruby Canyon

Dawn chorus in early spring at 3,000 feet in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, east of Sacramento.  Predominantly Cassin's finch with Red-breasted nuthatch, and wind in the background.

Sierra Foothills 220408

A very warm, still night in St Ives. Distant waves break on Porthmeor beach as bats feed and something creeps around the rooftops. 

This is, intentionally, a very quiet recording, so listen with headphones in a quiet place (perhaps in bed as you fall asleep, letting the waves infiltrate your dreams).

Nocturnal St Ives

Bit of a squandered opportunity this one. I walked with my partner one evening round the coastal path in St Ives to Man's Head. There was nobody else around and I so I wanted to record the atmosphere of the distant waves from up above the cliffs. Unfortunately the wind started picking up a bit and trying to pack light, I hadn't brought my bigger rig with better wind protection.

Despite the wind noise, this still makes a nice sound-memory/snapshot for me.

Man's Head

This recording commences not more than about half an hour after several days of heavy rain abated... During most of this recording, it is no longer raining, but rain water accumulated on eucalypt trees and grass trees continues to drip from boughs, branches and leaves for many hours... Wind conditions were mostly calm, but occasional breezes passed through the space. The recording location is three and a half kilometres from the southern coastline of the Fleurieu Peninsula, at an elevation of 280 metres: a coastline of cliffs and rocks. In the stillness of the night, the ocean's surging, and even occasional waves thumping upon rocks or against cliffs, can often be clearly heard.

This excerpt from a longer recording runs from 00:16:30 to 03:40:15. (The longer recording continues through First Light and Sunrise into Morning.) It was recorded with a pair of Sennheiser MKH 8020s in AB array with 62 cm spacing into a Sound Devices MixPre-6 II. This is the original recording, unedited and unprocessed, recorded at a preamp gain setting of 65 dB.

The environment within which, and the land upon which, this recording was recorded, has been, is now, and will always be, under the spiritual and physical custodianship of the indigenous Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna peoples, who understood so much more deeply and fully than our culture does today, that the land, the water, and the sky are not 'our property'; rather, we belong to them, we depend upon them, as a foetus in the womb depends upon its mother. The birth that humanity strives for is  not a physical, merely 'material', birth. But very few understand what this means. Even if we travel to other stars, in search of another 'virgin' planet to strip bare, rape, and exploit for meaningless and useless 'profit' and 'power' that serves no better purpose than a means to further increase equally meaningless and useless 'profit' and 'power', we will necessarily be enveloped in space craft, dressed in space suits, housed under airtight domes, that carry with them, within them, the original air and nutriments of our mother planet - as a reminder of our hubris, our ignorance, our arrogance, our stupidity, our greed, and ... our species and civilisational immaturity.

2022.08.14 Night Ambience. Coastal Eucalypt and Grass-Tree Forest. Late Winter.

I revisited this location, ten nights later, for a different vantage-point, nearer to the Eastern Banjo Frogs (cf. https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20220901-night-pastures-late-winterearly-spring). Soon after recording began, an Australian Magpie in a nearby gum tree uttered a quiet melodic warble, and then continued with a long series of telegraphic, punctuated vocalisations. Finally, closing with another melodic warble, it lapsed into silence again.

Recorded around 01:00.

Australian Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen, ssp either telonocua or tyrannica)
Eastern Banjo Frog (Limnodynastes dumerilii)
Common Eastern Froglet (Crinia signifera)
Spotted Marsh Frog (Limnodynastes tasmaniensis)

No processing.

2022.09.11 Night Pastures. Early Spring.

Recently, after a hiatus, I resumed a longer-term seasonal soundscape survey of this region, formerly a Conservation Park but recently redesignated a National Park. The change in name and status roughly coincided with the completion of upgrades to the Tapanappa Lookout area. I first referred to these upgrades over three years ago (in the description to this playlist: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/sets/deep-creek-conservation-park-soundscape-perspectives), and several times since then.

This recording was made quite late on a weekday morning, some time after 09:00. I had gone to retrieve an unattended rig that I'd left overnight near a small creek at the bottom of a valley, and was carrying the rig back up the zig-zagging trail that climbs the side of the last hill on the route, stopping now and then to record bird calls. Here, I was about three quarters of the way up the hill, recording call-and-answer songs of some Grey Shrike-thrushes. A vehicle can be heard approaching near the top of a hill: it must have been a small bus delivering a group of walkers at Tapanappa Lookout, who soon after began descending the walking trail just above me. Access to buses is part of the new upgrade facilities.  There are some positives and some negatives associated with these upgrades. In any case, the content of this serendipitous recording is significant to me, because it quite naturally and vividly instantiates some of the issues involved.

Unprocessed recording. Recording location elevation approx. 160 metres, distance from nearest point of Southern Ocean coastline approx. 1 kilometre (the low frequency rumble to the right).

2022.09.01 Near Tapanappa Lookout. First Day Of Spring. Deep Creek NP.

NOTE: This is a binaural soundscape ... please listen using headphones! Otherwise, you may not appreciate the magic.

I always strive to keep my ears well-tuned, in order to perceive uplifting soundscapes that might easily escape notice, but sometimes I am not quite up to the task. Such was the case in late July of 2018.

I met up with two recording friends at one of my favorite wild areas … Shindagin Hollow in upstate New York, near where I live. We were very glad to see one another and immediately began chatting about this and that as we hooked up our recording equipment (they with parabolic reflectors and me with my binaural soundscape microphone). Then we dispersed, heading into the forest in different directions, each hoping to capture something of value.

It was then that I paused for a moment just to take in the scene … a foggy misty morning following a rainy night … the deep forest of hemlocks and hardwoods … drip from leaves in all directions … and subtle bird songs. I took a long slow breath and began to amble down the trail. At that moment, a wood thrush caught my attention, singing in the distance though quite clear. I stopped and listened more attentively … another was sounding off from even farther away, and a very faint one as well, unless I was just imagining it. And did I just hear a hermit thrush, buried in the mix?

Oh my, I almost did not notice … there, right next to the road, a lone ground cricket trilling prominently from the gravel. How could I have missed such an obvious sound? And then I detected a barred owl, hooting way off in the distance. And a mourning dove, just audible, cooing softly time and again.

Suddenly, I shook myself awake, finally aware of the miracle before me! The magic I was hoping to find somewhere down the trail was actually right next to me, fully and elegantly expressed! I did not need to walk down the trail in search of anything because nature was already showering me with an exalted mix, an elixir so pure and powerful that it thrilled my entire being, but only after I became fully receptive to it. Had I kept walking, I would have missed it entirely. Thank you wood thrush for breaking the spell of my self absorption, for unplugging my ears and inviting me into the here and now!

So finally I jumped into action … I quickly set up my soundscape mic, hit record, and prayed that nothing would interrupt this amazing concert so freely given. How careful we must be to keep our minds calm and quiet and our senses free of interference, so that we do not miss the extraordinary beauty that nature showers upon us, sometimes subtly, and often when we least expect it to arrive.

© Lang Elliott, Music of Nature. All Rights Reserved.

Thrush Dripscape

These recordings were made with deep respect in the country of the Ngarrindjeri peoples.

With respect, with sadness, with hope. Everything here has changed; except for the sound of the ocean. Where the waters meet, is where the sounds merge. The sound of the ocean, permeating all, remains the same.

Unprocessed excerpts from original recordings. (Listening with good quality headphones - preferably open-backed - with a flat frequency response is recommended.)

An Afterword: I am deeply pleased and honoured that the original recordings from which this piece was composed have found a perfect home in Megan Spencer's important and heartfelt podcast, 'Bringing His Spirit Home: Private Arthur Thomas Walker, Ngarrindjeri ANZAC', as immersive field recordings made in, and expressing the natural spirit of, Arthur Thomas Walker's home country. This educational podcast is one of four produced by Megan, commissioned by the Virtual War Memorial Australia, and can be heard here: https://vwma.org.au/education/bringing-his-spirit-home-private-arthur-thomas-walker-ngarrindjeri-anzac.

Some of my earlier Kurangk/Coorong recordings have also been happily woven into Megan's related podcast, 'Walking in Two Worlds: The WW1 Story of Ngarrindjeri ANZACs Cryril & Rufus Rigney', which can be heard here: https://vwma.org.au/education/podcast--walking-in-two-worlds--the-ww1-story-of-ngarrindjeri-anzacs-cyril-rufus-rigney.

@Bandcamp

2022.10.09 From the Mouth of Murrundi to Goolwa Beach. Kumerangk, Kurangk. Night to Dawn. Spring.

Unedited and unprocessed original recording.
Recorded on land of the Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri peoples.

2021.10.31 Dawn at Tapanappa Creek. Spring.

Werbeliner See bei Leipzig, 23.10.2022, 07:15 Uhr.

www.bemtevi.de

Morning At The Lake, October 2022

Just a dabbler in field recording. I enjoy any excuse to go out and sit quietly in natural surroundings. All the better if it produces a record that can be enjoyed again and again.

Before Sept 2022 - Southern California
After Sept 2022 - western Washington

Windy stream in Ruby Canyon

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