『Soundwalk』のカバーアート

Soundwalk

Soundwalk

著者： Chad Crouch
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10月19日まで。※適用条件あり
Soundwalk combines roving field recordings with an original musical score. Each episode introduces you to a sound-rich environment, and embarks on an immersive listening journey.

chadcrouch.substack.comChad Crouch 個人的成功 自己啓発 音楽
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  • Panthertown Valley

    Panthertown Valley
    2026/10/01
    Panthertown Valley is a relatively small 6311-acre wilderness area in Nantahala National Forest in western North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a little bit off the beaten track, but far from obscure, as the old promoter’s trick of slapping the label “Yosemite of the East” seems to have piqued interest over the decades. The Yosemite comparison owes itself to the granite features of the mountains that surround the valley. Proto-Half Domes, I guess. These smooth outcrops are a far cry from El Capitan, but they do possess a distinct character. Unlike the tectonic uplift and glacial scouring that happened in Yosemite, these dome faces were the result of magma cooling deep underground before being exposed by millions of years of weathering. If there is any superlative aspect that can be drawn in the comparison, it is that the formation here is much, much older. The granite underlying Panthertown Valley, the Whiteside granitic pluton, was intruded into the earth’s crust approximately 466 million years ago. The granite forming the cliffs and domes of Yosemite Valley was formed just 105 to 85 million years ago. The popular Panthertown Valley Trail to Mac’s Gap Loop is one of the most memorable hikes I’ve ever taken, topographically speaking. Does anybody else catalog wilderness experiences this way—as perceptions of topography? The overwhelming impression this place gives is one of a basin. When you peer down into the valley and scan the horizon, you see what looks like a rim, almost circular in definition. Of course this is not the way hydrology works. Panthertown Creek does not go down a drain in the middle, but slips out through a fold in the hills. The creek does linger though, there in the center. Indeed, Panthertown Valley features a rare high-elevation mountain bog on its valley floor, a wetland ecosystem fed by groundwater seeping from the surrounding granite.While fall paints the trees in shades of yellow umber, Venetian red, cadmium orange and the grasses in Naples Yellow, I couldn’t help but wonder what colors spring brought to the valley floor, festooned as they are with Rosebay Rhododendron and rare Pinkshell Azalea, an endemic shrub native only to a few high-elevation pockets in western North Carolina. Here in the understory Carolina Chickadees and Golden-crowned Kinglets ranged in foraging flocks while Carolina Wrens buzzed as they hopped along the downed wood. The valley was very quiet, enhancing the perception of being acoustically sheltered in a basin—or “cove” as they say in Appalachia—insulated from the sounds that roads invariably bring. This allowed me to appreciate the manifold cricket sounds: they purred, cooed, buzzed and blinked on and off. It was so nice to hear crickets this way: not in a chorus but distributed across the patchy habitat, in conversation with each other. “Halloo over there,” I imagined them saying. I looked toward fuzzier electric piano voices with this in mind, placing them alongside breathy flutes, mirroring the breeze and the cricket textures. I kept it spartan, as is my way. There are moments, if you listen closely, where you really hear the space here: the collective fir trees played by the wind, the dull sound of footsteps on granite, the constellations of cricket hum. My pictures really don’t do it justice. This is not a place that is about one vista, or one waterfall. It’s about exploring its contours, and for me, listening deeply.I found myself pondering time. The long and lonely time that it took for these rocky slopes to become the Yosemite of the East. I tried to picture the solvent action of water in time-lapse carting off the hills. I pictured the forest lifting and falling like the subtle dilation of an animal’s belly, breathing. Along the trail, Schoolhouse Falls proved to be a popular destination. Here one can walk behind the falls. That splotch of red is one such person, taking a picture through the falling water. Somewhere I am a splotch of colored pixels in his digital photo album. The name “Schoolhouse” is literal. There was once a small schoolhouse nearby likely serving the settler and logging camp populations in the early 1900s. Likewise Panthertown Valley is said to have got its name from the abundant Eastern cougar population here. An 1898 Asheville Daily Citizen article eulogizing a hunter described the valley vividly: “Bear and deer were very numerous in those days, and almost every night lying around our camp fire, we could hear the panther’s shrill scream over in Panthertown.” Old Joe Dodgins, the article’s subject, reportedly calculated his bear kills year by year, summarizing, “I can’t tell exactly, but I can count up over 300 and think I have killed nearer 400.”Panthertown Valley became the domain of the Moltz Lumber Company beginning in 1916. Moltz then built a 16-mile railroad in the valley and a sawmill in the Lake Toxaway area. Hundreds of workers were hired to peel...
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    35 分
  • Durham Night Soundwalk

    Durham Night Soundwalk
    2026/09/18

    Last year, around this time, I travelled to Durham, NC for a record label conference. The city reminded me of Eugene, OR, where I went to school for a short time. Both are university towns. Durham has a bigger population, and is just one node of a much larger urban area, but the downtown cores are similarly compact, pedestrian-friendly, and relatively quiet.

    My mission at the conference was to figure out how to grow my business and innovate my way toward prosperity. A tall order. Given that my business model is hyper-niche—capturing environmental recordings and creating instrumental musical suites—I was sifting ideas and prospects, feeling good about taking time to reflect and plan.

    As I walked to an evening event downtown, I was taken in by the sound of crickets in a sparsely filled surface parking lot. We have crickets in Oregon, of course, but perhaps not as many in our cities. The sound was both familiar and novel. I had my Sennheiser binaural headset in my pocket, and decided to capture the moment. From there I took a meandering walk into the heart of the city. This is one of my first urban soundwalks in the US—something that had long occurred to me to do, but never seemed particularly promising, aesthetically or commercially.

    But, as I was feeling the sensory excitement that comes with being in a new place, I reasoned it was high time to experiment. I let my ears lead the way.

    There are urban sounds throughout the recording, but they largely seem confined to the auditory horizon. The near field sound of the city is so quiet it could almost read as pastoral. As I padded into the downtown blocks, a fountain in the plaza of the Durham Convention Center beckoned me toward it. The shimmering sound put me in a kind of audio trance. I just stood there for several minutes—long enough to become self-conscious—figuring passersby might take me for a tweaker staring at the ground. I took a photo of the sidewalk to memorialize the moment.

    I felt a peace wash over me there, surrounded by people, cars, trains, energy, life. It was all very ordinary, but as I stood listening, I began to sense the extraordinary qualities of it too. I know that might sound hokey, but it’s true. I tried to convey that feeling in the score. Maybe it will translate, listening to it? That’s the hope, anyways.

    Once again, thanks for reading along and listening. Durham Night Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services September 18, 2026.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe
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    28 分
  • Burnt Lake

    Burnt Lake
    2026/09/04

    What is the hike up to Burnt Lake without the greyed spectral snags of ancient old growth, killed, but not entirely destroyed, by fire? Would it be like walking through a graveyard with no gravestones?

    The stand of trees along the trail is uniform, almost homogenous. A mix of hemlock and Douglas-fir.

    Scattered among these conifer poles are columns, smoothed and greyed, sometimes hollowed out. They can measure four times as large in diameter.

    These are the markers of the great fire that gave Burnt Lake its name.

    The forest fire of 1904 started from a homesteader burning slash near what is now Rhododendron, on Aug 25th of that year. Dense smoke engulfed the slopes, reportedly blanketing Government Camp so heavily that visibility dropped to under half a mile. Another fire in 1906 burned off what the first one didn’t consume.

    On my way up I stopped at locations that struck my interest, both visually and sonically. Due to technical difficulties with my ancient iPad, however, I only made three sketches on this outing. The first was where a spring rivulet meandered with the trail:

    When I arrived at the lake, the mountain was obscured by clouds.

    The clouds were moving; shredding, scattering, opening, closing. The effect was tantalizing, revealing glimpses of Mount Hood, a looming sentinel across the valley at 11,250 ft tall.

    Burnt Lake is a glacial tern. As alpine glaciers expanded from the crest of Zigzag Mountain in the Pleistocene, ice carved out a steep-walled cirque amphitheater beneath East Zigzag Mountain. The lake basin is scooped directly out of volcanic rock. Morainal deposits impound the water, allowing snowmelt and spring water to pool into the basin.

    The clouds brought rain; short bursts of precipitation playing the placid lake surface and leafy margins like a chorus of little drums. I sat on a log absorbing it all, sketching the scene on my iPad. While my second attempt adorns the cover at the top, my first quick study looked like this:

    Thanks for reading along and listening. Burnt Lake is available on all music streaming services Sept 4, 2026.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe
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    27 分
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