Category: Ambient Music

Painted with Sound: Listen to the Forest sound installation at New Forest Heritage Centre in Lyndhurst

I’m delighted to be able to tell you that a gallery show featuring my sounds is about to begin in the heart of The New Forest at Lyndhurst, and you’re all invited…

Painted with Sound: Listen to the New Forest runs from 10th September to 2nd October at the New Forest Heritage Centre in Lyndhurst. Original soundscapes and ambient music combine with large cinematic projections for a mesmerising, immersive experience.

This time I’ve set my sound works to beautiful cinematic projections of forest scenes. The result has produced a genuinely immersive environment where visitors are actively encouraged to chill out on comfortable seating for as long as they like. Entry is free, (although the centre, which is a charitable trust do welcome donations) and the installation is open from 10am to 5pm seven days a week. I think you’ll find that it’s the New Forest as you’ve never heard it before. 
 
The wide-ranging forest soundscapes that are featured include natural environmental sounds, bubbling streams, the bustle of the villages, traditional forest activities, birdsong, peaceful ambient music and a whole lot more besides. It’s a complete compendium of the New Forest in sound. 
 
As many of you know, my working method revolves around recording all sorts of sonic fragments from within the forest, which I manipulate, layer and assemble into unique soundscape compositions and ambient musical pieces. I try to consider every noise from the forest as potential material for these compositions in the same way that every colour is potential material for a visual artist. Quite simply… it’s painting with sound… 
 

“In the New Forest, sound is often overlooked and goes unnoticed, but I believe that everyone’s forest experience can be improved and deepened by giving more attention to it. Now, thanks to the New Forest Heritage Centre, I’m able to show how varied, interesting and often beautiful the soundscape really is, bring it to centre stage and give everyone the unique chance to have fun enveloping themselves in forest soundscapes for the very first time.” 

From the Forest Radio Show: Episode 3

From the Forest Radio Show

I have become a presenter on One World Music Radio with a one-hour show called “From the Forest” which I’ve uploaded here for you. This is the third of a regular series of shows for the station.

From the Forest is a unique radio show that brings the wellness benefits of a forest direct to you wherever you are. The concept is simple; we wander together through England’s beautiful New Forest — the place I call home — accompanied by immersive, organic ambient music and soundscapes that I’ve created, inspired by each of the locations we visit. The show promotes mindfulness and the chance to connect with nature through sound. I look forward to welcoming you along.

One World Music Radio can be reached HERE. They have lots of shows covering many different genres for you to enjoy, and are the number one radio station in Europe for the genres covered.

Episode Two of my From the Forest series can be found on New Forest Sounds HERE

From the Forest Radio Show: Episode 2 Winter Focus

From the Forest Radio Show

I have become a presenter on One World Music Radio with a one-hour show called “From the Forest” which I’ve uploaded here for you. This is the second of a regular series of shows for the station. This episode celebrates winter in The New Forest.

From the Forest is a unique radio show that brings the wellness benefits of a forest direct to you wherever you are. The concept is simple; we wander together through England’s beautiful New Forest — the place I call home — accompanied by immersive, organic ambient music and soundscapes that I’ve created, inspired by each of the locations we visit. The show promotes mindfulness and the chance to connect with nature through sound. I look forward to welcoming you along.

One World Music Radio can be reached HERE. They have lots of shows covering many different genres for you to enjoy, and are the number one radio station in Europe for the genres covered.

Episode One of my From the Forest series can be found on New Forest Sounds HERE

In case you’re interested, I’ve produced an album called A Forest in Winter. It’s available from all the main digital retailers and streaming services. Here’s a link to it that gives you the choice of listening to it on a variety audio platforms: A Forest in Winter

The National Park Authority New Forest Awakening Festival 2022

I feel very honoured to have been invited to contribute a variety of sounds to the New Forest National Park Authority’s New Forest Awakening Festival for the second year running, and also to compose the festival’s theme tune.

Forest Awakening Theme

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 perfect 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. It became the track “Forest Awakening” and the theme for the festival…

Here’s a link to it as used in the festival

The festival is a response to the climate and nature emergencies in the New Forest and ran for the first time in 2021, when the messages about the climate and nature emergencies reached 815,000 people, with almost 70,000 people engaged with the online posts or events.

Saturday Beside the Stream

The second of my sound pieces from the festival is an ambient piece called “Saturday beside the Stream.” 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….

Here’s a link to it as used in the festival

Starry Skies

CPRE’s Hampshire Star Count took place during the festival. Starry skies are one of the most magical sights the countryside can offer. The trouble is, light pollution not only limits our views of these skies, but also disrupts wildlife’s natural patterns. Research shows that light pollution is now leaving fewer stars than ever visible to the naked eye, and so the CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England) asked for help to track how light levels are changing in Hampshire, and encouraged everyone to get together with family and friends between February and early March 2022 to help count the stars in the Orion constellation.

The New Forest Awakening Festival’s organisers used another of my ambient music pieces to promote this event. They said…. We thought we’d get you in the mood for stargazing with this beautiful ambient music composition called Starry Skies. Composer Dr. Clive Brooks of New Forest Sounds said: ‘We get some beautiful starry skies deep in The New Forest. I think there’s an awe-inspiring majesty to them, which I tried to capture with this composition.’

Here’s a link to it as used in the festival

The New Forest is a very special place. More than 50% of the area is of international importance for nature, and some sites have the highest possible conservation status. It has the largest area of lowland heath in Western Europe, shaped by the free-roaming animals owned by commoners. Commoning is the traditional system of land management with rights attached to properties allowing people to turn ponies, cattle, sheep and pigs onto the open Forest.

The rare heathland and wetland habitats in the New Forest are havens for wildlife, some of which are declining in other parts of the UK. Ground-nesting birds such as the curlew, Dartford warbler and mystical nightjar can all be found in the New Forest. All six species of the UK’s native reptiles live here too, as well as 63% of Britain’s 24,000 types of insects, 75% of all dragonfly species and over 2,700 types of fungi.

The climate emergency is putting these fragile landscapes and habitats under threat, with hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters changing nature’s balance in the future. The global crisis for nature is mainly due to land management practices, pollution and urban expansion. It is being worsened by a changing climate that is driving changes in the numbers and distribution of our wildlife species.

Land in the National Park is essential to mitigate climate change; sequestering and storing carbon, supporting wildlife, providing clean water and preventing flooding. Let’s take care of it together.

From the Forest Radio Show: Episode 1

From the Forest Radio Show

I have recently become a presenter on One World Music Radio, presenting a one-hour show called “From the Forest” which I’ve uploaded here for you. This is the first of regular series of shows for the station.

From the Forest is a unique radio show that brings the wellness benefits of a forest direct to you wherever you are. The concept is simple; we wander together through England’s beautiful New Forest — the place I call home — accompanied by immersive, organic ambient music and soundscapes that I’ve created, inspired by each of the locations we visit. The show promotes mindfulness and the chance to connect with nature through sound. I look forward to welcoming you along.

One World Music Radio can be reached HERE. They have lots of shows covering many different genres for you to enjoy, and are the number one radio station in Europe for the genres covered.

Purify

Ambient Music Composition

This composition contains an important message about the benefit of trees in this era of climate change. Did you know that trees purify the air, trapping dust and absorbing pollutants? Each individual tree removes up to 1.7 kilos every year and provides shade from solar radiation. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, and the carbon that they store in their wood helps slow the rate of global warming. They reduce wind speeds and cool the air as they lose moisture and reflect heat upwards from their leaves. It’s estimated that trees can reduce the temperature in a city by up to 7°C.

Trees host vast microhabitats too. When young, they offer habitation and food to large communities of birds, insects, lichen and fungi. When ancient, their trunks also provide the hollow cover needed by species such as bats, beetles, tawny owls and woodpeckers. One mature oak can be home to as many as 500 different species.

Around the world we’re being encouraged to plant trees. The more that we plant, the better it will be for the environment and us. In the United Kingdom, The Woodland Trust are making it easy and low cost to do just that. Here’s a link to their online shop.

Please kindly pass this post on to your circle of friends through social media and elsewhere, so that we can try to reach out to as many people as possible, explain to them the wonderful benefits of our trees, and perhaps even encourage them to plant one of their own.

After Midnight – Dark Ambient Atmospheric Music Mix

Ambient Music Mix

St. Barbe, an art gallery and museum in Lymington, on the edge of the forest, asked me to compose and produce a soundtrack to accompany an art exhibition that they were running. It was called Unsettling Landscapes – The Art of the Eerie. Amongst the artworks, there were many paintings of strange eerie trees and dark woodlands. My task was to use these paintings as inspiration for the creation of an hour-long atmospheric, dark music mix. So here it is for you to enjoy. If you’ve ever felt that The New Forest was a bit scary in the deep woodlands, then you’ll get the vibe of this piece straight away. Although it’s unsettling, I think the music is somehow quite immersive and involving at the same time.

It’s best listened to on headphones late in the evening or beyond!

A Forest in Winter – Ambient Album

In case you might be interested, I thought I’d let you know that there’s an album of my ambient music out on general release, and inspired by the beautiful New Forest in winter; the frosty mornings, the mists rising gently above the moors in early morning with the soft wintery sun trying its best to break through and so much more. It’s quite a magical landscape at times.

The album contains some of the pieces that I’ve edited, renamed and used here and there across the New Forest Sounds website. It brings together 12 tracks and aims to offer a gentle natural vibe. Perhaps you may find it nice background music whilst you’re engaged in other things around the house? It’s made to be unobtrusive and to simply add an enjoyable ambient, forest-inspired audio tint to your world, wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing.

The Album Cover

Anyway, it’s available to stream in all the usual places such as Spotify, Apple Music, Google play and so on. Here’s a link to many of the places that you can find it:

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/clivebrooks/juF

Setting Sail

Ambient Music Composition

On any sunny, summer afternoon, the two tiny sailing clubs at Keyhaven — The New Forest’s coastal hamlet on the Solent — are filled with people launching their dinghies and floating off for a spin around the sheltered waters. There’s a uniquely tranquil ambience about the little place on days like this. I’ve tried to capture this feel in the composition, which features a combination of natural sounds from Keyhaven along with the music itself.

Gently Falling Leaves

Ambient Music Composition

Imagine yourself deep in one of The New Forest’s beautiful ancient woodlands under majestic old oak and beech trees. It’s a perfectly still Autumn afternoon, and all around you, leaves are gently and silently falling to create a thick, golden carpet on the forest floor.

Here’s 14 minutes of relaxing ambient bliss from New Forest Sounds.