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
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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
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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
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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