Listening Earth Blog

When Sarah and I first began Listening Earth in 1993, I had no training or guidance in how to go about recording nature sounds. I simply turned the recorder on when something interesting caught my ear; a particular species calling, or a pleasing harmony in the sounds around me. As soon as the subject of my recording stopped, or I thought I had enough material, I would switch off and go in search of something else. The result was a great number of short recordings, few more than about 5 minutes long.

I found myself reflecting on this recently, during a 4-hour recording session in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. After several days of poor weather - windy, cloudy and squally - the sun was finally shining and the birds were out and about, vocal and active on that spring morning. My microphones were set up overlooking a densely wooded and sheltered valley, with tall eucalypt trees reaching skyward past the sandstone escarpments that hemmed the valley. Lyrebirds padded around on the forest floor, and golden whistlers, rose robins, currawongs, black cockatoos, thornbills, crimson rosellas, plus a diversity of honeyeaters all contributed to the birdsong. A breeze still occasionally ruffled the canopy of the trees, and every now and then flocks of wandering silvereyes would fly through, twittering on the wing.

I had set up my equipment in the darkness before dawn, and the recorder had been running continually since. Fortunately I’d planned ahead and chosen a comfortable place to sit quietly, where the first rays of the sun would catch me and warm my back.

I found myself reflecting on how I was now recording uninterrupted ‘long takes’, whereas years before I would only switch on for the ‘highlight moments’. Certainly those highlight recordings could be fantastic. Our early albums are composed of them; such as the dingoes or pied butcherbirds on ‘Spirit of the Outback’, the sooty owls or golden whistler duet on ‘Tall Forest’, or the opening soundscape on ‘A Walk in the Rainforest’. Each of those albums I listen to now with great affection.

I realised that recording those highlights is akin to taking photographs; an attempt to capture the special moment. But of course nature’s sounds form a continuum throughout the day, and I have come to appreciate the slow pace of that symphony. Like a classical symphony, things happen and develop over longer periods of time, and to fully absorb them you have to sit and listen. But even the longest classical symphony is still limited to our human attention spans, while nature’s symphony is shaped by the rhythms of daylight hours and temperature variations, by the flow of weather and, on a broader scale, the seasons themselves.

To capture this slowly evolving music of nature, suddenly even a whole hour’s album program seems like a ridiculous limitation! But I guess I’ll have to accept that as a limitation of my art.

So I have chosen the ‘highlight hour’ of that morning in the Blue Mountains for our album ‘In a Sheltered Valley’. You will hear lyrebirds scratching around near the microphones and singing, successive waves of silvereyes flying through the valley, and many birds coming and going on their rounds. Relax into it, it is quite meditative. And if you can listen with your back to the sun, that would be perfect!

Listen to a sound sample of the album.

‘In a Sheltered Valley’ is available exclusively as a digital download from our Listening Earth website

Tags: Australia, bird sounds, birdsong, Blue Mountains National Park, meditation music, natural sounds, nature CD, nature download, nature music, nature sounds, sounds of nature