Sounds

Dawn from a Window in May

Soundscape Recording.

Wednesday morning, 6.30am in the middle of May, and it’s dawned still and clear on the outskirts of this New Forest village. The early sun is rising up through the oak and beech trees, casting long, dappled shadows on the dew-covered lawn. Outside this open window, birds are singing enthusiastically greeting the advancing dawn.

Now and again a car hisses by on a nearby, quiet forest road, sounding like an ocean wave running up the shoreline and then fading away. Up above, sharing the blue sky with the sun, airliners hurry along at 30,000 feet or so, leaving fluffy, white vapour trails and adding their distant, rumbling voices to the soundscape. Listen for a while…

Flat Calm at Keyhaven

Ambient Music Composition.

This quiet, gentle music composition tries to capture the ambience of a smooth, glassy morning at The New Forest’s tiny sailing hamlet of Keyhaven on the Solent.

Keyhaven has wonderful views of historic Hurst Castle and the distant Isle of Wight. There are two sailing clubs and a small pub. It’s quiet, peaceful and beautiful.

The village is part of the larger Keyhaven Nature Reserve, which spans almost 500 acres of land. With mudflats and salt marshes, the reserve is popular with a multitude of wildlife.

Soundwalk Along Ober Water

Soundwalk. Along a New forest stream called Ober Water.

Join me for a walk in The New Forest along a woodland stream called the Ober Water near the village of Brockenhurst. We’ll meet a dog splashing the stream, hear the bubbling water as it makes its way through the forest, crunch through some autumn leaves, encounter a wild forest pony coming to drink, be enveloped by the sound of birdsong, and perhaps even hear a woodpecker.

By the way, I recorded this soundwalk using a special production method, which will give you the feeling of really being immersed in the landscape and surrounded by the woodland and the stream, just like you’re really there – as long as you listen on headphones (the surround sound effect doesn’t work on speakers). For the technically-minded, it’s a recording technique known as ‘binaural’.

Saturday Beside the Stream

Ambient Music composition

Imagine relaxing with a favourite book, or taking a picnic beside one of The New Forest’s mesmerising and beautiful meandering streams. If you can’t be there in person, then perhaps this may serve as the next best thing. Absolutely designed to be dreamy. Drift away….

Forest Awakening

Ambient Music Composition

I woke up one morning listening to the dawn chorus, and the thought struck me that it would be interesting if I could try to ‘conduct’ an orchestra of forest birds and animals, and have them sing or sound in perfectly in rhythm, and by the wonders of recording technology I’ve managed to do that within this composition, which aims to create an almost classical, English pastoral feel and evokes The New Forest waking up first thing in the morning.

Dusk Rider

Ambient Music Composition

A composition inspired by the sight of horseriders taking a very late evening ride across The New Forest. I’ve tried to incorporate the sounds of their hooves moving by to create rhythmic interest in the piece, and attempted to use the sound of a hunting owl to form one of the principal melody lines.