In this bolg, I will show you the proces of field recording and online surveys and results.
Three categories of Acoustic Ecology
First of all, there are threee categories of acoustic ecology presented by Krause, who mentioned in previous bolg post.
Geophony: non-biological sounds like wind in the trees, water in a stream, waves at the ocean shore, and Earth movement can be heard in any given habitat.
Biophony: It is the collective sound produced by all organisms in a particular environment at the same time and in the same location.
Anthrophony: It is all the sound that humans produce. Some of it is controlled, such as in music or theatre, but the majority is erratic and imprecise, which some of us refer to as noise.
The final project will be healing music including these three categories of sounds. Before explaning the process, most soundscape works are made by recording and observing for a long time. However, my project is limited in recording and observing for a long time, so I only apply the priniple of acoustic ecology. Nevertheless, the purpose of my ultimate project is to encourage audiences to participate in the perception of how natural sounds affect themselves and to preserve the natural ound environment.
The online survey and result
The online survey was conducted from Google Forms, with a total of 58 people reponding. THe online survey was conducted to examine people's expectations and perceptions of nature and their preferences. It includes 10 questions and it was conducted for three days from 3rd APril to 6th April. You can find the questions and result in the PDF files.
According to the survey, most of the reasons people seek out nature were related to psychological aspects, for example, relaxed feelings and reduced stress. What is clear from the investigate is that the sounds of geophony and biophony in particular provide people with clam and comfort. However, the sad reality is that the sounds of nature are losrt or buried by machine noise. Many answered that the sound people expect from natural is an unprocessed real sound. As the natural ecology is disturbed by human intervention, the sounds we hear around us are chaning little by little.
Peak District: Field Recording
First of all, the location for field recording was set to Peak District. The Peak District is an upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennies. Mostly, in Derbyshire but it extends into Cheshire, Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yourkshire and South Yorkshire. Among them, the place I went to was located in Grindleford. The place where I chose this plcae is because there are all three categories of sounds of grophony, bilophony, and anthrophony and I can record many different sounds of nature.
There are many ways to record a sound, but amont them, I would like to introduce the Soundwalk. This method is simple and easy to access, so anyone can do it, so I recommend you try it later.
The soundscape is an integral aspect of the experience of any place. It is a combination experience that auditory and visual. Moreover, it is the method of combination how people interacts with the immediate. The act of mindfully hearing, observing, and occasionally recording a location's soundscape is the 'soundwalk'. Shafer suggested soundwalk as a way to focus on soundscape. This focused in the importance of practising listening in order to comprehend the sound environment and suggested the soundwalk approach as a listening pracice technique. As a result, the original soundwalk's main emphasis was on educating people to rediscover hearing and appreciate their environment's acoustics. Following initial studies, numerous researchers began using the soundwals methodology as a tool for analysing soundscapes in a variety of ways. In other words, this is an activity where you don't talk, take a walk for a set amount of time, and focus on the sounds you can hear in the place. It is not necessary to use expert equipment, you can use your own phone.
I did also recording based in the soundwalk however, in order to record clear and detailed sounds, I recorded it by searching for objects to record. I could record various sounds such as the sound of the wind, the rustling of leaves, the sound of ducks, and the sound of streams etc. What was regrettable was that it was difficult to find many organisms sound vecaouse there were many prople on the kinking course.
As we can know, most instruments generate complex timbre. According to Krause, each one produces a number of 'overtones' that define the instrument's particular sound and contribute to how we perceive its timbre. Natural soundscapes also have their own timbre. In other words, the largest to smallest all alive organisms and every place which is located on Earth have their own acoustic signature. For example, Krause said that sound tends to be more confined in hilly habitats but, a flat, open, dry terrain, causes the sound to disperse more quickly and appear to vanish. In fact, there were many dry timbre sounds in the Peak District area. However, sounds in places like forests with many trees tended to be wet rather than other areas. It was interesting that the acoustic signatures vary depending on the place and conditions.
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