Sounds

Coastal Etude

Sound Art Composition

Coastal Etude is a study of the seaside in summer. It comprises a wide variety of sound objects captured along the forest coastline. These have been manipulated using Musique Concrete techniques and organised to form the finished piece.

These include: Weather forecasts, the shipping forecast, seagulls, waves on the shore and bubbling over rocks, children having fun on the beach and engaged in crabbing, natural helicopters and rhythmically manipulated helicopter, percolating step-synth, wind in the rigging of small boats, manipulated glitch-rigging, kayak paddling and tonal wind.

A Woodland Morning

Soundscape Recording

Enjoy an early morning in New Forest woodland, immersed in the beautiful sounds of Spring birdsong. Twenty-three minutes of natural soundscape brought to your favourite armchair.

Where the Forest Meets the Sea

Ambient Music Composition

There are several places in the National Park where the forest reaches down to the sea, and the familiar forest of trees turns into a forest of masts. This composition was inspired by visiting one of those unique locations.

Slow Bees

Sound Art Composition

Take the sound of bees on flowering honeysuckle, and slow them down to a quarter of their normal speed, and suddenly we can enter a whole new and unusual soundworld. The bees sound just like little Spitfire propeller aircraft coming in to land on the flowers, and the birdsong takes on a strange tropical quality. Listen to my piece called “Busy Bees” to compare how the bees normally sound.

Busy Bees

Soundscape Composition

Soundscape piece. The sound of summer bees on yellow honeysuckle flowers in a New Forest village garden. For an interesting different perspective on this soundscape, take a listen to my “Slow Bees” piece, where you can enter into an unusual soundworld!

Under Summer Skies

Ambient Music Composition

Long, lazy summer days in The New Forest sometimes seem to go blissfully on and on. It’s nice to take a picnic out on into one of the many quiet places, and just sit and watch the world go by under blue skies. This piece is inspired by that natural simplicity.

Windy Rigging

Sound Art Composition

This composition is made from a recording of the sound of rigging wires on several small dinghies rattling against their metal masts in the wind. I’ve modified the pitches and turned the sounds into a musical piece using just those original sounds. The photograph shows Keyhaven, a beautiful sailing village within the New Forest National Park on the shores of The Solent. The landscape in the distance is the Isle of Wight. It’s very close from near here.

Munch

Soundscape Recording

This is actually one of our famous New Forest ponies recorded close-up, munching grass. Did you know that the ponies are often referred to as the architects of the forest, because by doing all this munching, they keep the grass looking short and mowed? Without them, much of the forest would soon become an impenetrable wilderness.

Wildflowers

Ambient Music Composition

This piece is inspired by the riot of colour in a wildflower meadow, where the flower heads were nodding in a gentle breeze, just like music listeners at a concert.

The Song of the Blackbird

Soundscape Recording

The song of the blackbird is beautiful, and provides us with some of best melodies of all the garden birds. The individual that I recorded here is a real virtuoso with a gift for improvisation too, producing a mellow flute-like song at a nice, leisurely pace from the apex of a New Forest village roof in late Spring. The song comprises soft, clear and liquid notes that, to me, sound very pleasant to listen to, especially as the phrases never seem to repeat exactly the same twice.