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

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 - 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