DESCRIPTION:
A Day in the Park

This piece is a soundscape composition study of Aylesbury 2010. It was made using sounds recorded in three green spaces in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire:

The Vale Park, Quarrendon River Side Walk and Bedgrove.

The piece is made from several recording sessions done over a week in June 2010:

• Bedgrove Park from 4 -- 8.30 am

• Vale Park and Canal from 1.30 -- 5 pm

• Quarrendon River side walk from 5 -- Midnight and Dawn


The piece opens with the sound of a dawn chorus.

Gradually another sound recorded at about 5.20am at the spinney in Bedgrove park mixes in introducing a more woodland soundscape. In this section, you can hear a woodpecker call and peck on a tree we were standing near.
You can also hear morning raindrops falling on leaves around us, bird song and the sound of the wind in the trees.

Next you can hear the sound of the brook at the spinney slowly introduced.
The sound of the brook comes closer and closer and then merges with the recording from a hydrophone in the water and trickles down a small waterfall into a pool of water.

After this the sound of the brook is equalized away using a high pass filter until only high frequencies can be heard. To focus on the tiny, quiet sounds of the water.
As this happens another clicking sound can be heard, this sound was recorded using a hydrophone underwater, in a still brook at Berryfields. At this point you can also hear a few stones being dropped into the water.

The sound of the brook and underwater clicking fade away and are merged with the underwater sounds of ducks in the canal. Closely followed by the microphone recording above the water. In this section you can hear Ducks, a swan hissing, and a moorhen.


The next section was recorded in Quarrendon, Riverside walk in the evening.

This time the change of locations is made with underwater recordings. The hydra phone recording of the canal gradually takes over again and is equalized away. At the same time the sound of a a creature recorded underwater in a stream, in Quarrendon merges with it.

The next sound is that of Quarrendon river side walk in the evening between 6 -- 8 pm where a man can be heard walking his dog and crickets and the sunset chorus and lighter traffic. Fading into a later ambience recording at about 8 -- 9pm .

In Quarrendon riverside walk we used a Bat detector to record sounds of bats using echolocation.

The sound of the evening ambience is gradually faded away and then back in again to focus on the bat sounds.

Some of the panning is enhanced to show movement of the bats but most of the panning you can hear is as it was on the recording. The two different types of bats we recorded are Common Pipistrelles and Noctules.

The night time ambient sound is reintroduced and then returns to the dawn chorus and early morning traffic.


"Conscious listening and conscious awareness of our role as soundmakers is an inseperable part of acoustic ecology, as it deepens our understanding of relationships between living beings and the soundscape." Hildegarde Westerkamp
http://ciufo.org/classes/ae_sp15/reading