What follows here are selected samples of environmental sound. The samples, ranging from documentary field recordings to compositions that are based on field recordings, are associated with the names of the phonologists (i.e. those who did the recordings) and/or the composers or sound artists as well as links for further access through CDs or a website. For a contextual background, read this article:

About Ear to the Earth

Steven Feld

"From 1976-2000, I made several visits to live in the Bosavi rainforest region of Papua New Guinea. During the time of this work I developed the theoretical ideas of an anthropology of sound and of acoustemology, seeking out how local forest traditions of vocal song, oral poetry, and instrumental sound were both inspired by and creative responses to a specific sense of place and sound ecology of the rainforest. The centerpiece of this work was the mediating power of birds and bird sounds, since Bosavi people consider birds to be both ubiquitous acoustic presences and resounding ancestor spirits. But birds are not the only forest voice to connect sound, ecology, and cosmology in Bosavi. Water equally captivates local attention, inspiring and guiding practices of composing poetic song maps and creating an environmental accompaniment to song. Bosavi people analogize the time and space characteristics of water and voice. They say that voice is to body as water is to land; as water flows through and connects land, voice flows through and connects body ..."

Kaefo (Morning)

Song of Seyak (Hooded Butcherbird)

Steven Feld CDs

Bernie Krause

Bernie Krause coined the term 'biophony' to mean the sounds of nature (as against the sounds made by humans). The following recordings are a few of many on the CD that accompanies his book Wild Soundscapes, a fascinating, easy-to-read users' manual for field recording.

Amazon Jaguar

Alaska Biophony

Big Sur (California)

Yuba Pass Before Logging

Visit Bernie Krause's Wild Sanctuary website

Douglas Quin

These are excerpts from Douglas Quin's exquisite recordings at the Caratinga Biological Station in Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, made during a period of a few weeks in July, 1991.

Stream at dawn

Muriqui (Woolly Spider Monkey)

Yellow Toads at night

Douglas Quin CDs

David Lumsdaine

David Lumsdaine writes: "The Warrumbungle Range is a volcanic outcrop forming a spur of the Great Dividing Range reaching out into the plains of north central New South Wales ... This valley is the home of the Pied Butcherbirds which I recorded between the 15th and 17th of September, 1983 ..."

Pied Butcherbirds of Spirey Creek

David Lumsdaine CDs.

David Dunn

What we're hearing here are bark beetles inside the pinyon pine of the southwestern United States. David Dunn writes: "I first began to focus my attention on these trees and their principal invaders as the demise of the pinyons where I live in northern New Mexico became quite evident ... "

Pine beetles in trees

David Dunn's CDs

Hildegard Westerkamp

Hildegard Westerkamp wrote: "I compose with any sound that the environment offers to the microphone, just as a writer works with all the words that a language provides ... I like to use the microphone the way photographers often use the camera ..." The following sounds are from in and near Vancouver.

Talking Rain (excerpt)

Kit's Beach (excerpt)

Hildegard Westerkamp CDs

David Monacchi
Eco-Acoustic Compositions

"Listening is a creative process, and recording is, by its nature, an act of shaping the environment ... My intention is to offer the listener a new experience of nature ..." And Monacchi's experience ranges from simple fascination with the variety of shapes and sounds in water to indignation and anger at the destruction of habitat and extinction of species.

Here are some samples:

Stati d'Acqua (States of Water)

Echoes of a Sonic Habitat

Nightingale

Fading Away Whales

Fragments of Extinction

Buy this CD at CDeMusic