What a Magical Time of Year!

What a magical time of the year. As we approach the winter solstice, here in the north, the morning sun is sluggish to appear, twilight extends into the day and when the sun does appear, it creeps slowly along the southern horizon peeking through bare tree branches. The light is a golden hue, the same that you see in the fashion photos. And it lasts almost all day, except for a few hours near noon. Here the effect lasts 20 days, centered on the solstice December 21st.

What a magical time of the year!

A thick powdery blanket snow that covers everything is full of glistening sun sparkles which adds to this mystical feeling. These pinpoints of sparkles are always changing, moving in random currents, as they lead the eye this way and that, they are always in focus because of their singularity, but never fixed in position. The sharp sunshine courses through the crusty crisp winter air conferring precisely detailed horizons. The blending blues of the winter sky, unparalleled in clarity and intensity, deepest at the zenith, extend to the horizon. The winter quiet is punctuated by Raven.

What a magical time of the year!

The extra long winter nights mark a time when the whole infinite universe opens up. The still, frosty air causes the stars to appear brighter and they seem closer with their delicate colors more apparent. The constant flow of constellations, and the occasional shooting star, emphasize the vast periods of night silence. The wolves signal their approval.

What a magical time of the year!

Ethereal sun dogs hover through the afternoon giving angelic rainbow wings to the golden sun. The crystalline snow mirrors the blues from the sky above in the long winter shadows, contrasting with the smooth shining brilliance of the sunlit snow. The evening sunsets last forever, as the snow reflects a rainbow of hues. Sunsets linger, and linger, as if even the sun realizes the daily visit has been short.

What a magical time of the year!

The real magic is here…
outside…
join us…

Winter recordings:
Some winter sounds at Nature Sounds.ca:
Boreal Winter Birds
Late Winter Wilderness
Windy Woodpecker


Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

Overcoming the Challenges of Winter Recording

The cold temperatures and deep snows of winter create unique challenges to recording nature sounds. Cold temperatures effect the operation of equipment. LED Readouts, energy of batteries, solid state memory response are all affected by temperature. The operator must be dressed for the weather. As well, movement through deep snow and setting up equipment on deep snow requires special considerations. The final results are worth the time and energy.

Advice to someone who has never done winter work in the country before…. Try it in small steps. Start with short outings and fine-tune your clothing first. The old adage of dressing in layers is true, which means when you buy your outer coat, allow room for layers of an extra shirt and sweater or a coat underneath. If you are buying a parka, buy a long one that goes down to mid thigh, has a hood lined with a soft insulating material, and has the outer pockets lined with a similar material. The fur trim (real or fake) that you often see on the edge of the hood is not just for looks. It functions as an extra wind break and helps to create an insulating dead-air space in front of the face. The fur around the top edge of winter boots provides a natural flexible seal (no pun intended) against the legs to keep snow from getting in the boots.

All this preparation by going outdoors is great for your recording activity. You can research likely recording spots by visiting different areas at different times of day. Birds tend to be more active at sunrise even in the winter. There tends to be a lull in human generated noise at noon hour. Dress not only for the weather but also for your activity level. Over dressing for your activity means you will sweat, and wet clothing in winter chills you quickly.

The winter temperatures have an effect on electronic memory and LED displays. Displays become very slow or unresponsive when they get chilled and memory becomes temperamental as well. I use hand warmers that hunters use to provide a heat source, and wrap the equipment in a towel for insulation. They are thin, compact, last 8 hours, and are the perfect size. Batteries lose their energy in the cold, so I use an external 12 volt power pack that has lots of reserve power.

The snow quickly gets deep here after winter starts. By deep I mean over the top of boots. Walking off any roads requires snowshoes, and snowmobiles are useful only on packed trails. A trail can be broken with the old style of snowshoes. I find that walking out and back on the snowshoes, waiting for it firm up overnight, and doing that again, produces a solid trail that you can walk on with normal boots. That is when I use a sled and malamute to move equipment in and out of the bush to record winter sounds. The sled stays at the recording location to hold the recording equipment and supplies. Since my goal is to have at least 1 hour and hopefully 2 hours of finished ambience, I record at least 3 to 4 hours in the natural setting. I leave the recording area so that the wildlife can relax without a human presence.

Some winter sounds at Nature Sounds.ca:
Boreal Winter Birds
Late Winter Wilderness
Windy Woodpecker
Raven Winds His Clock

The activity of winter recording provide a number of interesting challenges that need to be overcome. The results are wonderful and unique recordings with very clean sounds.


Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

The Relaxing Silence in the Woods

Nature for the most part is pretty quiet. The exceptions to this rule are large events: storms, migrating birds, floods, earthquakes, and eruptions. But for the most part, mother earth is a quiet gentle place. Someone once wrote to me that it was the silence between the sounds that was the most healing, which is an interesting thought, because we tend to automatically focus on the events we hear, and that reflex causes us skip over giving our attention to the silences.

My most quiet memory goes back to when I was outside walking in a wooded valley. It was winter. Snow was falling. Nighttime. No breezes just calm. Big fluffy flakes were floating down and covering everything. There was no sound. I stopped and listened... Except for falling snow and me, nothing moved. It was so quiet I could hear my heart beating. I could hear the blood circulating in my ears! I started to walk slowly, almost daintily, so as not to change the feeling, the environment. The Silence in the Woods. It was a wonderful night just like reading a Robert Frost poem. It really is something you cannot capture or record, bottle, or box and sell, because if you had a completely silent room lined with several inches of fluffy white stuff - then you would almost have it.

However complete silence is not automatically the most relaxing situation. Finding complete silence is so rare, that it seems to be more of a “special event”. That is, it becomes something to experience, explore and note. I guess having more elements of familiarity is a requirement of deeper relaxation. The more peaceful sounds have some tangible sound or sounds for the mind to focus on. Silence does play a role, by creating spaces between the sounds, and thus creating a very slow tempo. One sound comes to mind that is created by a large lake on a very calm day. A large body of water always has a slight undulation to its surface, even on a perfectly calm day. That slow undulation creates a swishing and sizzle as it caresses a sandy beach. Add some heat, and sunshine… and that is the scene where I recorded Whispering Waves. A free sample and more information is here.

Another relaxing sound is bird songs. There are many different birdcalls ranging from single chirps and peeps to never-ending long soliloquies. I am thinking of the type of call that has a pure musical quality that engages, and then is separated by rhythmic periods of silence. I went deep in the northern woods far away from human habitation to record such a sound. The sound is a beautiful musical trill that is repeated about ten seconds apart. It is part of a recording called Boreal Forest Birds. More information and a free audio sample is here.

Having regular periods of silence creates tempos. And slow tempos have been shown in experiments to create physical relaxation responses. The heart beats slower and breathing and respiration slows. The beauty of nature sounds is that there is variability in nature that creates Rhythmic Randomness. It is this quality that potentially creates deeper relaxation, and it is why nature sounds are especially effective. For more information about rhythmic randomness, please see Friday October 16, 2009 in this blog.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

Winter Nature Sounds Recordings

Winter does have its challenges when recording, however the audio conditions that are present in winter are unique. When fresh powder covers everything, the effective sound absorbent of soft snow creates a wonderful intimate audio environment. The audio quality that one can achieve in this environment is worth the extra work and precautions required when working in the cold and snow.

A woodsman once commented to me in autumn that he guessed that my recording activities would stop now. “No more sounds now until spring” were his words. I mentioned that there are always sounds to record. Breezes continue to blow, water continues to run. And although winter time sees reduced overall animal activity, it provides excellent unparalled opportunity to record certain animals, many weather and water sounds. When he heard that, he smiled. We were both thinking of the same things. The winter sounds of silence.

Winter here is ideal for recording wind sounds. When there is snow cover, the lack of rustling and blowing leaves yields a clean sound of wind through sparce bare deciduous branches which is contrasted with the sounds of denser evergreen boughs with little birdsong to distract. The sound of wind through a stand of pine is really unique and enchanting. Early one winter before the deep snows fell, I recorded breezes through a stand. The thick deep lush covering of mosses on the forest floor substitute for powder snow in this recording: Link to Wind in Pines Sounds.

The audio environment after a deep snowfall if there is little wind is incomparable to any other. Deep snow sits on every branch. Sounds are clear, but travel far. There is a feeling of everything being immediate and close. These conditions are excellent for recording winter birds. As winter progresses birds tend to flock in small groups in the search for new food sources. In some winters they will flock into areas they do not usually visit, thus new recording opportunities can arise unexpectedly in the middle of winter. Link to the Sounds of Boreal Winter Birds.

And then there are some sounds that are only heard in winter. The sounds of ice and the sounds of freezing rain are two that come to mind. Also, wolves seem to howl more in the winter. I suppose we hear them more because they are moving over a larger territory for food in the winter. In winter, it is the periods of silence between the sounds of activity that are peaceful, healing, and meditative. Link to the sounds of Late Winter Wilderness at dawn.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

Peaceful Cricket Sounds

There are many people who are using the sounds of crickets, (that is, real recordings of cricket chirps and not just sound effects) for relaxation, sleeping, meditation, and for masking other noises.

There is something primordial about the sounds of crickets. The sounds of crickets embody that quiet, peaceful feeling of a warm and cozy, safe and secure night. They speak of farmland, countryside, the grass beside the sidewalk, and those little oases of green in the urban environment. And because crickets chirp only when its warm, they speak of summer, summer vacations, camping, and those recreational things we do when we “get-away” from it all.

Certainly part of the relaxing effect of cricket sounds can be due to the associations we have made in the past with crickets. Those chances we get to relax outside near crickets, usually coincide with visits with family or friends, or with recreational travel, and with the warmer seasons. Over time, subconsciously, we make that association of cricket sounds with relaxation.

I wonder if that association goes deeper. I wonder if perhaps the sound of crickets is programmed genetically to be relaxing. After all, if the scientists are correct, humans originated living in the grasslands, where crickets are ubiquitous. It would make sense then to believe that the sounds of crickets would make us feel “at home”. I am sure that our ancestors of the grasslands also used crickets as early warning systems at night. Crickets are very aware of their surroundings and stop chirping when they sense movement nearby.

It is one of those things you notice when you try to record them. They are very territorial, so they don’t change position very much, but just when you think you are reaching a good close spot to record them from… they stop chirping, and you have to wait and be motionless for a while until they start up again. Perhaps hearing that silence in the ancient past is responsible for the feeling we get sometimes when it feels “too quiet” to be comfortable. The constant cricket chirping through the night becomes a reassuring sound that everything is unchanged and that nothing unseen is moving nearby.

Aside from any past subconscious associations, genetic or environmental, cricket sounds are good for focusing the mind’s attention away from the cares of the world. Their steady slow to medium tempo is easy to focus on, but not at a speed that is overly energetic. Their soft high frequency chirps are much less intrusive then lower sounds would be.

And their rhythm isn’t perfect. That is a good thing! The natural variability in their rhythm creates an easier and gentler focus for the attention. The rhythmic randomness inherent in their chirps creates playful juxtapositions when listening to a group of crickets singing together. A machine just cannot duplicate that natural quality of randomness. It is also why short looped recordings don’t work either. Looping short recordings lose the natural rhythmic randomness. For an introduction to the concept of rhythmic randomness, refer to the October 16th 2009 post of this blog.

Here is a link to a page where you can compare different cricket and insect sounds.

Crickets Calming CD

In early 2005 Nature Sounds.ca released a CD called Crickets Calming. The Crickets Calming CD by Nature Sounds.ca features five cricket tracks that are designed to be long enough to be played looped for those wishing to have a constant background ambience without fading in and out. (Beware of another CD called “Crickets Calming” that was released on Amazon.com in 2009 by the “Nature Sounds Series”. It is not the same CD!)

I worked on producing the tracks for the Crickets Calming CD in the winter of 2004/2005. It was an interesting experience to be immersed in the sounds of crickets constantly for an entire month and a half in the middle of winter. Living in Canada, which is a country known for its long cold winters and short winter days, I found that working with the cricket sounds made the winter feel much shorter. Subjectively, there was less evidence in my life of seasonal moods, cabin fever, SAD, or whatever label one wants to use, by the end of that winter. I have to say that those crickets really worked for me. Link to more information about the Crickets Calming CD.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

Natural White Noise

So much has been written about white noise and how it can be used, that for some people it has taken on a magical aura. Actually, it is just simply random noise, and it sounds like that SHHHH sound that you hear when you tune an AM radio set to an empty channel. (If you use a TV or FM radio set, make sure the noise squelch on the set is off, or it will seem magical – there won’t be any noise!) What makes white noise useful is its ability to mask other environmental noise and also mask the noise of tinnitus. The purpose of this article is to explain why noise recorded from nature is easier to listen to and better for you, than machine generated white noise.

Why is it called “White”?

In theory white noise is random energy across the range of our hearing. White noise, in theory, has similar audio properties when compared to white light and its visual properties. White light is just random energy across our range of vision. But – and this is a real big “but” - only in theory. In reality, white noise doesn’t sound the way one would think it should. This is because our sense of hearing divides our hearing spectrum into equal intervals called octaves. Each octave represents a doubling of frequency and what this means is that the highest octave of our hearing will contain half of all the frequencies we hear. A random noise such as “white noise” therefore sounds like a high “shhhhhh” because half of its energy is present in the very highest octave of our hearing. And that top octave is the only about 12% of our hearing range when measured in octaves. This is why masking environmental noise in the mid or low range of our hearing with white noise is difficult. Examples of natural white noise.

Pink Noise to the Rescue

Well, this information about white noise is not new, and there is a better solution which does sound about equal across our entire listening range. It is called pink noise. Pink noise has more energy in the lower end of the frequency spectrum so that we hear the same amount of bass and midrange sounds as we do high sounds. It is called “pink” because if you did the same thing with light, you would see pink light. Pink noise is a better solution to mask unwanted environmental noise, and low rumbles.Examples of natural pink noise.

Noise Sources

Noise is real easy to create with electronics. In fact, a major design problem in audio electronics - if not the most important consideration - is to try and minimize the presence of noise. I have tried using machine-generated noise in the past. (of course, not in my nature sounds!) However, nothing beats or compares to the quality and relaxing effect of sounds found in nature. That is why I spend a lot of time and money to go out and record natural noise. It is simply worth it! For constant sources of random noise, nothing beats running water. Waterfalls tend to be a perfect constant source for pink noise, and streams and rivers usually yield a better white noise. Shore waves can be used as a source of either type of noise, with a stronger rhythmic element.

Rhythmic Randomness

A sound recorded from nature has a depth, clarity, and an inherent playfulness that is not present in artificial noise. Whether we notice it or not as we listen to it doesn’t seem to matter because with nature sounds, the feeling of comfort is happening at the sensory level, and not with the intellect directly. Our senses evolved and were created to be comfortable with natural stimuli, and this means that we are naturally more comfortable listening to natural sounds than to artificial ones. The difference is the presence of rhythmic randomness in nature. For more information about rhythmic randomness, please see Friday October 16, 2009 in this blog.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
Nature Sounds Downloads
Nature Sounds CDs
Nature Sounds Videos

Rhythmic Randomness and Relaxation

Rhythmic Randomness is a concept that I have outlined earlier in this blog, which defines the characteristics of nature sounds and their beneficial effect. This entry is how the presence of rhythmic randomness plays a role in relaxation. The presence of rhythmic randomness in our hearing and sight is most beneficial for relaxation and health.

As a music student years ago, I started taking a course in electronic music, where I was introduced to sound synthesis. Every week, we booked studio time to work with the synthesizer on our own and I developed a habit to begin my studio time with programming the synthesizer to produce about 5 minutes “ocean waves”. It started out as a very simple algorithm and every week it got a little more complex.

Right from the beginning, I found listening to these “waves” helped me relax, regroup, and get the creative juices flowing, but only for short period of time. The novelty would wear thin within minutes and I would want to “enhance” the sound more. These refinements ended up creating more randomness in parts of the resultant sound, which gave the sound more life and reality.

The rhythm part was easy to achieve with the machine. But the rhythm was accurate down to the millisecond, which is not the most relaxing or comforting sound because it always has that hard, relentless, “mechanical” feel to it. The more I tried randomizing certain parameters of the sound generator, the more relaxing and realistic the final result became. Unconsciously, I was trying to develop a sound with the correct amount of rhythmic randomness in it. It was a goal that I never fully realized using machines. Even back then, I ended up recording real sounds to get the exact effects I wanted.

And I never lost my attraction to the sounds of waves. (What a primordial sound!) Over the last several years I have searched out some wonderful recording locations and created wave and beach downloads, each with its distinctive and different character. The natural variability, combined with the slow rhythm in the natural sound recording of waves is both pleasing and comforting to the senses.

This is a perfect example of how rhythmic randomness manifests in real nature sounds. Because of this presence, natural sounds are better than artificial sounds for relaxation, meditation and sleep.

Here is a link to compare different shore sounds on the Nature Sounds.ca website.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
www.youtube.com/NatureSoundsCa

Rhythmic Randomness – Large Scale and Small Scale

Some examples of Rhythmic Randomness:

The Seasons:

The concept of Rhythmic Randomness can be applied to weather to gain a better understanding of it. If you live at mid latitudes, you experience yearly seasons and in any particular month you know basically what kind of weather to expect because of the yearly rhythm. For example, I have a good idea of what the temperature in July will be like, even though I am writing this in October. However, the weather for any particular day, such as a daily high temperature, the amount of precipitation, will it be cloudy or clear, is unpredictable even a month in advance because there are so many factors that come into play, that there is a high degree of randomness. Even the temperatures and rainfall in any particular July can differ by quite a bit and can still be considered “normal” if not “average”. In the case of weather, the closer you look at the details, as in daily details, the more random the situation gets from one year to the next.

Crystals:

If you look at a crystalline structure, the effect is the opposite. If you look at the over all crystalline structure, the outer shape will often appear somewhat haphazard and random. As you examine closer more details of the structure, there is less randomness and the rhythm or repetition of the precise structure becomes more evident, and you can see precise geometry dictating the structure. It is the outer shape of the three dimensional edges of the crystal where more randomness is observed.

Water Wave Sounds:

Waves have a very regular rhythm. However, there is a degree of randomness in their timing that adds another dimension. There is also randomness in their height and shape that changes not only how they appear, but also how they sound. These subtle differences, the randomness, serve to engage that part of the mind that processes the senses.Compare different Wave Sounds at Nature Sounds.ca.

How Rhythmic Randomness Effects Us:

If that randomness is taken out, and the sound of water waves is changed to be exactly equally timed, and with the occurrence of each wave sounding the same as the wave before it, then the result becomes quite tedious to listen to. One can listen to such a recording for only a short length of time before it starts to become dull, even irritating. It will be fatiguing rather than refreshing. The difference between the two sounds is the presence of rhythmic randomness. That is why machine generated white noise, or using loops to generate white noise, is ultimately not as soothing and calming as naturally recorded white noise, or in other words, as sounds recorded from nature.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca
www.youtube.com/NatureSoundsCa

Rhythmic Randomness - Introduction

When you look at where we have originated, as a species, humans have evolved (or have been created - if you prefer that wording) to function within the natural environment. Therefore, it seems only natural to assume that we perform better when we have a natural environment around us, and that we will feel most relaxed in certain types of natural environment. As the world becomes more industrialized, and more and more people live within a human-made environment isolated from nature, questions about the qualities or properties of natural phenomena that has this beneficial effect on us become more relevant and important. What is it that makes nature relaxing, refreshing, and otherwise beneficial to our well-being?

Rhythmic randomness. Rhythmic randomness postulates that all natural phenomena exhibits an inherent variability and repetitiveness within its structure. The variability aspect suggests that there is a uniqueness to each and every instant, event, and entity. The repetitive characteristic suggests that all natural phenomena have cyclical aspects to their form, structure or reoccurrence.

For example, in the image of a forest the vertical lines of the tree trunks form a visual rhythm. However, there is a natural randomness in tree placement, that is, the trees are not equal distance apart. So the visual effect is of a natural rhythm but with an element of variability within that rhythm. This is what I call rhythmic randomness. Also there is a variance in tree thickness and straightness, creating more randomness in the visual rhythm.

Another example is the latest recording from Nature Sounds.ca. Creek Relaxation features the rapid flow of water over a creek bed, which creates a sound of random
splashes. The random tones and pitches of the splashes are caused by the creek bed
which is composed of randomly sized rocks. The constant volume of water combines with the unchanging rock positions to create the rhythmic aspect of the sound. The sound has a high degree of totally random aspects to it, yet has enough repetition in it so that it sounds exactly the same from beginning to end. Creek Relaxation page.

Our senses are optimized to deal with these types of complex stimuli. The repetitive nature of the sound is reassuring and relaxing, while the randomness creates the interest and holds the attention.

Karl Hamilton BFA
Nature Sounds.ca
www.naturesounds.ca