Category: Soundscapes

Avon Sunset – for BBC Countryfile

Soundscape Composition

This is the sound piece that I composed and produced for BBC One’s Countryfile Television programme when I was featured on the show on Easter Sunday 2026. I captured the raw field recordings during filming sessions with the crew and presenter Matt Baker in The Avon Valley on the edge of The New Forest. See my previous post for more detailed notes about the shoot. But for now, just press play and…

Imagine yourself at dusk in woodland with a forest stream rippling through the trees. Then wandering out into a wide, open water meadow, just as the sun sets, deep and golden in a clear springtime sky with lapwings calling through the gathering dusk.

This soundscape composition contains a number of different field recordings together with gentle ambient sounds that the landscape suggested to me.

You’ll hear woodland birdsong and the sound of a stream recorded from just above the surface and also from below with a hydrophone. The deep bass sounds within the stream are created by slowing the underwater recordings down several octaves.

The landscape suggested a soft Rhodes piano which I used to sonically describe the delicate woodland atmosphere.

Gradually we move out of the trees towards open water meadows into the sunset. As we go, you’ll notice a change in the ambience which is heralded by the rhythmic sounds of a wire fence and the closing of a metal gate.

A smooth Moog synth melody enters, reminiscent of the distant sounds of lapwings calling across the water meadow.

Finally, a soft, nylon string guitar drifts in amongst the soundscape with a restrained tune that subtly duets with the calls of the lapwings as the piece fades away into the sunset.

If you like this composition, then do have a good old root around this site. You’ll find lots of pieces of my music and soundscapes in a similar style, with most produced to offer you some peace and relaxation from our increasingly busy world.

Always best on headphones – your personal sonic escape! Thanks for stopping by.

Incidentally, if you’d like to see the broadcast then you can find it on BBC iPlayer by following this link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002ttfl

It starts at around 36 minutes into the programme!

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

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 of Masts

Soundscape Recording

On a windy day, the forest of masts at Lymington yacht marina create their own mournful musical composition, as the breeze blows the metal rigging wires against the aluminium masts on dozens of moored yachts. At times, the wind itself also joins in to add its own, almost voice-like, drone to the proceedings.

The New Forest Tape Collage

Sound Art Composition

For this Sound Art composition, I’ve reverted to long-lost analogue tape recorder techniques, and realised the work entirely on my old Ferrograph 7 reel to reel tape machine; a lovingly restored British recorder from way back in 1968 that was originally owned by the military (see photo above).

This piece is a magnetic tape sound collage… which is just like a visual art collage, but made with sound. You’ll hear lots of different sounds from all over The New Forest, juxtaposed and combined with each other in unexpected ways and brought together to form a snapshot of the landscape and its people in just four and a half minutes. See how many of them your can recognise. Here’s a bit more information on the concept and history of the tape collage in case you’re interested…

While artists have been layering images and incorporating autonomous elements into their work since the advent of paper, collage truly emerged as a medium in its own right in the early years of the 20th century with the Cubist experiments of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The duo coined the term “collage” (from the French verb “coller,” meaning “to glue” or “to stick”) to describe works composed from pasted pieces of colored paper, newsprint, and fabric, considered at the time to be an audacious intermingling of high and low culture. It revolutionized modern art. 

The collage concept was later applied to sound; in 1948 two French composers, Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, and their associates at Radiodiffusion et Télévision Française in Paris began to produce tape collages (analogous to collages in the visual arts), which they called musique concrète. All the materials they processed on tape were recorded sounds—sound effects, musical fragments, vocalizings, and other sounds and noises produced by man, his environment, and his artifacts. Such sounds were considered “concrete,” hence the term musique concrète.

Springtime Selection

Springtime Selection is the first of an occasional, carefully-curated, themed collection from my New Forest Sounds archive. This instalment takes you deep into the forest in Springtime, one of the most sonically interesting of all the seasons.

In Spring, with the bedroom window half-open, I wake up to the beautiful balm of the early dawn chorus of birdsong… and now, you can too!

If you have some quiet time, settle down with a pair of headphones for 20 minutes and enjoy immersing yourself in this soundscape…

Brockenhurst Dawn Chorus

Springtime in The New Forest woodlands is something quite magical, because the general birdsong chorus is often punctuated by soloists like the cuckoo, and percussionists like the woodpecker. Come with me and have a listen…

Springtime

Lastly, I’ve got a piece of my Springtime Sound Art for you. What would it sound like if our New Forest woodpeckers all got together and created a musical arrangement? Well, listen below to find out! This composition uses the manipulated sound of a woodpecker in the woods and features slowed down sounds, delay and a variety of note pitches. I’ve called it “The Woodpecker Variations”.

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed my little Springtime Collection. Look out for more curated selections from the archive in the future.

The Woodpecker Variations

Rider

Soundscape Recording

This beautiful and iconic forest sound comes from a lone horse and rider accompanied by her dog, passing slowly by early on one deliciously clear and still morning at Aldridge Hill near Brockenhurst, deep in The New Forest.

Crows in the Coppice

Soundscape Recording

Crows starting to nest in Springtime, in the trees of The Coppice at the edge of Whitefield Moor in The New Forest.