『Soundwalk』のカバーアート

Soundwalk

Soundwalk

著者： Chad Crouch
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 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. It's a mindful, wordless, renewing retreat.

chadcrouch.substack.comChad Crouch 個人的成功 自己啓発 音楽
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  • Ponderosa Grove

    Ponderosa Grove
    2025/11/07
    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comOne thing I think you come to appreciate after some months or years of field recording, or intentional listening, is the variability of sound that conifers make when played by the wind.Where I live, I’m surrounded by conifers. Douglas-firs abound. They produce a sharp sound in the wind, occasionally what you might call a hiss. Just an hour to the east, beyond the crest of the Cascade Range, a more arid landscape plays host to ponderosa pine trees. The wind on their long, bundled needles is quite different. Because their needles are flexible and bundled together, they sway and brush against each other in waves, producing a softer sound. More of a shush. Words fail me here. You just have to listen.This recording captures the song of the pines as a backdrop for the birds that make this habitat their home.We hear Western Wood Pewee, Pine Siskin, American Goldfinch, Hairy Woodpecker, White-crowned sparrow, American Robin, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and California Quail—to name names—on a mild June evening near Glenwood, Washington. But what is it about ponderosa pine trees that they produce such a sonorous sound? According to field recordist Gordon Hempton, the pitch is a function of the length of the needle or blade of grass. “We can go back to the writings of John Muir, which — he turned me on to the fact that the tone, the pitch, of the wind is a function of the length of the needle or the blade of grass. So the shorter the needle on the pine, the higher the pitch; the longer, the lower the pitch.”-Gordon Hempton, recordistWhile that sounds plausible and is certainly memorable, it’s not the whole story. It’s not just about length; stiffness, density, bundling, and flexibility all matter too. All the complexity of the canopy structure goes into the sound. The turbulence of the wind moving between needles, branches and trunks, and the brushing of the needles against each other all plays a role. Take a guitar string; the string is fixed at both ends and vibrates at specific frequencies determined by its length, tension, and mass. Needles are only fixed at one end, so they’re more like tines than strings. The frequency of a guitar string follows clear mathematical relationships: a string twice as long vibrates at half the frequency (one octave lower), assuming same tension and thickness. The sound of pine needles comes primarily from aerodynamics: wind flowing around needles creates fluctuations in the air. Needles twice as long do not whisper an octave lower; rather, they produce a lower range of pitches due to the lower frequency of movements and resulting turbulence they create. A string can produce a clear frequency. A needle produces a spectrum of frequencies; a texture. What can be said about all the variety of needles, leaves, and blades of grass and the sounds they make in the wind? Has someone attempted to map them? If there is such an inventory, I did not find it, but I did find the following observations made nearly seven centuries ago in an interesting piece of nature writing. It’s observational, philosophical, and poetic all at once: Wind cannot create sound on its own: it sounds only in connection with things. It is unlike the ferocious clamor of thunder, which rumbles through the void. Since wind sounds only in connection with things, its sound depends on the thing: loud or soft, clear or vague, delightful or frightening—all are produced depending on the form of the thing. Though it may come into contact with earthen or rock pedestals in the shape of tortoises, sounds are not produced. If a valley is empty and immense, its sound is vigorous and fierce; when water gently flows, its sound is still turbulent and agitated—neither achieves a harmonious balance, and both cause man to feel fearful and frightened. Therefore, only plants and trees can produce suitable sounds.Among plants and trees, those with large leaves have a muffled sound; those with dry leaves have a sorrowful sound; those with frail leaves have a weak and unmelodic sound. For this reason, nothing is better suited to wind than the pine.Now, the pine as a species has a stiff trunk and curled branches, its leaves are thin, and its twigs are long. It is gnarled yet noble, unconstrained and overspreading, entangled and intricate. So when wind passes through it, it is neither obstructed nor agitated. Wind flows through smoothly with a natural sound. Listening to it can relieve anxiety and humiliation, wash away confusion and impurity, expand the spirit and lighten the heart, make one feel peaceful and contemplative, cause one to wander free and easy through the skies and travel along with the force of Creation. It is well suited to gentlemen who seek pleasure in mountains and forests, delighting in them and unable to abandon them.-Liu Chi, (1311–1375)Thanks for listening and reading. If you made it this far, consider tapping ‘...
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    4 分
  • Sleeping Animal

    Sleeping Animal
    2025/10/30
    I hadn’t planned to write a post for Wren. In fact, just yesterday I was thinking about how I could skip even writing a Substack Note, which I had been mulling over. What to say? And then I found myself returning to the interesting thing I learned earlier in the week: how the Cherokee traditional calendar ended and started in the fall, and how that made intrinsic sense to me. A time of harvest and reflection. So, I’m feeling inclined to reflect because this is the last Sleeping Animal release from a slate of several this year. As a brief recap, Sleeping Animal came about as a solution for two of my concerns: first, I was swamping my own name with too many releases, and second, I’d long feared my preoccupation with incorporating environmental recordings was seen as little more than a gimmick. So Sleeping Animal became my repository for instrumental works, destined to succeed or fail on their own birdsong-less merits. Let’s turn the clock back to 1994. Having re-enrolled at the University of Oregon after a stint at community college, I was edged out of upper level fine arts courses that I needed for my degree. They were all full. The solution was Independent Study. I would pay the university for credits I needed with the minimum amount of instruction. No problem, I thought. I’d already done that in high school by completing an International Baccalaureate art portfolio, a boon to my college credit tally going in. I wanted to impress my professor/mentor, so I put a lot of hours into having what amounted to a full exhibit’s worth of paintings to show at our first meeting. The oil paintings were monochromatic—raw umber primarily—using a medium to essentially mimic a watercolor technique. The subject matter was figurative, featuring simple, almost abstracted backgrounds. So there I was, in the little-used art school room I’d been using for a studio, with all my paintings spread out, only weeks into the term. I imagined my mentor would be surprised. He might say something like, “Well you’ve been busy!”What happened was he entered the room, said almost nothing, ranged around with a pained expression on his face, seemingly finding nothing worth examining closely, asking few if any questions, and then proclaimied—in so many words—that the work was thin and cartoony. Those were the words I specifically remembered anyway, because they cut. They hurt. There was not the slightest scrap of praise offered for my work ethic. If anything, it seemed like the number of paintings was taken as an affront; evidence for their thin-ness. I did not mount much of a defense, and was relieved when I was again by myself in the quiet room. In the following weeks I painted over every one of them. Though hard to hear, it was true. The paintings were essentially drawings, rendered with paint. You could see the gesso brush strokes under the washier areas. In my second act of Independent Study I turned to landscapes and still life. A little bit Rothko, a little bit Morandi. A completely different path. Now, looking at the gallery of album art that has swiftly assembled for Sleeping Animal—all monochrome and seemingly in service of a neoclassical trope—how could I not be reminded of that formative season thirty years ago?Now, in the peak of fall with my body of work on display, for all to hear, I’m drawn back to that quiet classroom in my mind. What is the verdict?Well, I’ll be the first to say they all look and sound more or less the same. Having said that, it’s not a matter of if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. More like if you heard one and didn’t find it at all useful, you can skip the others. But, isn’t it like that for most artists?When I first imagined Sleeping Animal, I thought I would revisit a type of work I made that was built up with arpeggiated synthesizers. I also thought that I would leave an opening for vocals, at first just dipping my toe in those waters. Alas, I never came round to those programmed arpeggios. The vocal layers, however, are a unique attribute, mixed at a whisper. I wanted them to be felt more than heard. What I’m proud of is how naive, imperfect and unvarnished these works are. And, for this first act, I’m happy that I didn’t come out with arpeggiated synths blazing. The thing I prize most about them, as compositions, is how they breathe. They expand and contract. They are expressive not through dexterity or dynamics, but in their relationship to time.Now for act two! Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane. It only took me a few decades to be able to tell the story. Find Wren filed under Sleeping Animal today Oct. 30th, 2025 on all streaming services. I rely on word of mouth to find my audience, so if you find my music or my storytelling entertaining, useful or relatable, please do share it with someone. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ...
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    11 分
  • Saltzman Creek

    Saltzman Creek
    2025/10/24
    Today’s environmental recording captures the sound of an area within Forest Park that few people gave much thought to, until a headline grabbed their attention 21 years ago.In 2004, a pair of off-trail endurance runners came across a father and daughter living in a dugout shelter in Portland’s 5200 acre Forest Park. They had been living there for four years.Upon discovery, police were dispatched for a wellness check. Eventually one officer helped the two resettle on a horse farm where the father, Frank, worked and they attended the local church. They left the farm after about a month, never to be heard from again. Their story inspired Peter Rock’s 2009 fictionalized novel My Abandonment, which was adapted into the acclaimed 2018 film Leave No Trace.When first discovered, Frank was 53 and Ruth was 12. Their makeshift home was constructed on the side of a steep hill, not far from where this recording was made. Inside the shelter were encyclopedias, a bible, toys, a doll, sleeping bags. Nearby was a planted vegetable garden and a water catchment structure.“But how could a 53 year old father with a 12 year old daughter survive in this thick, dense forest for four years?” asks a reporter as he bushwhacks down a brushy hillside in a 2004 segment for KATU news. “Well, police say Frank’s a smart guy, college-educated. He’s also an ex-marine who served two tours in Vietnam.”The reporter concludes, “So why would a father with no job, but a $400 a month disability check, hide in the forest? Those that saw them on their weekly walks out of the woods to church, the library and to buy food say it was a father’s fear society might separate him from the one he loves.” Amateur mystery detectives on Reddit wanted to know more. Based on the few details in the 2004 news stories, they placed the father, Frank Trecarten, in articles 20 years prior in 1984, describing a manhunt for a mountain man or “survivalist”, in Quebec and New Hampshire after allegations of desecrating an church altar and attempted arson. Then in 2005, log books for Appalachian Trail hikers signed by “Mountain Man” and “Miss Mountain Dew”—believed to be trail names for Frank and Ruth—were discovered. A photo corroborates the placement with the identifying note: Frank “Trefcarten”. Most recently, in 2013, the name Frank Treecarten reappears in articles outlining a flare gun shooting assault in Concord, New Hampshire, where it appears Frank was charged with two felonies and held on $8,000 bail. The verdict in the case is unknown.These details paint the story in a more acute light, potentially revealing a decades-long pattern of living on the fringes, possibly exacerbated by PTSD.I re-watched Leave No Trace and listened to the My Abandonment audiobook. Although the movie is adapted from the book, they diverge significantly, especially approaching their conclusions. The book is decidedly more tragic, while the movie hits a more optimistic note. The optimist in me wants the film to be closer to the truth. One can’t help but wonder about Ruth, who would be in her mid 30’s now, and Frank, now in his mid 70‘s. If amateur investigators are to be believed, Ruth is now married and living in Oregon. Another thing that I noticed and appreciated in the film was how sparse the score was. It was barely there. It inspired me to further pare down my own future scores, letting the soundscape “take solos”. Additionally, a lot of films get the wildlife sounds wrong, but this was better than most. Varied Thrush, and Northern Pygmy Owl stood out to my ear. I don’t remember hearing Pacific Wren though; a true soundmark of Forest Park. That late May morning I sat in the middle of the Maple Trail above Saltzman Creek. No one passed by. The trail had been closed for some time following bridge damage. Portions of steel decking were broken off and the railing remained squashed from the impact of a fallen tree. While there, I made an oil pastel drawing while soaking up the tranquil setting. I also made a half-hearted attempt to scout around looking some clue of a former habitation; a whisper trail, a depression. Then it occurred to me that I really didn’t know precisely where to look. That ridge or this ridge? It seemed pointless, really. Perhaps the reason that this story still looms so large in imaginations is because it makes us confront how estranged we truly are from the old ways: living light in the woods, not too far removed from hunting and gathering. We don’t really hear these kind of narratives in the USA anymore. We are aghast to discover that a father and daughter did so, undetected, for four years in a city nature park. It defied expectation. I wonder what this says about us; about the velocity and trajectory of civilization? I don’t have any conclusions of my own to offer. All I know is a young person, I spent nights discretely camped at a few dubious spots while cycling across the USA. You definitely sleep ...
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    26 分
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