Hearing ‘The Sounds of Extinction’ through Bernie Krause’s field recordings
Before soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause began his endeavours in field recording, he was a key member of the synthesizer and Hollywood scene, scoring soundtracks for 135 films, including Apocalypse Now. Today, Krause is a pioneer in the bioacoustic field, and has travelled extensively since 1968 to record astounding soundscapes from shifting Arctic glaciers to the rare mountain gorillas in Rwanda. His vast archive holds 5,000 hours of recordings from 2,000 habitats, including 15,000 species. His recordings reveal the ‘inconvenient truth’ as 50% of the habitat has become silent.
In a Wild Sanctuary (1970) was Krause’s first album that embraced the theme of ‘ecology’, composed with Moog synthesizers, with his musical collaborator Paul Beaver, whom he shared similar creative synergy. For the album, he needed to record sounds in nature. This was the crucial moment where he discovered how stunningly stereo headphones can capture every single detail of sound, which human ears cannot hear alone. It was then that Krause discovered his true calling.
“The natural world’s collective voice represents the oldest and most beautiful music on the planet”.
Krause began to develop his distinctive hypothesis on the sound of nature and defined three types of natural soundscapes: Geophony, the non biological sound of a habitat, such as wind, waves and thunder. Biophony, the sound generated from organisms, and Anthrophony, which is the sound that humans create, ranging from theatre to noise. In the early 80s, during a field recording trip in Kenya, he had a revelation that the animals together sounded like an orchestra ensemble. When he returned from his trip, he examined the recordings through a spectrogram — a visual representation of the frequency spectrum. In doing so, he observed ‘musical structures’ and ‘musical scores’ from the sounds of nature. He heard that every wildlife creature, from a microscopic scale all the way through to large scale has its own sonic role; mammals are animal soloists, and insects create a frequency of amplitude modulation.
Many of us are not aware that soundscapes offer information. Throughout decades of careful and active listening, Krause has attempted to decipher messages from nature. For instance, quickly absorbed ‘dry’ sounds without reverberation indicate low humidity. He discovered that through biophonies one can evaluate and monitor the diversity, density and healthiness of certain habitats and animal stress levels. Anthrophony — human generated sounds, such as noises from jet engines or cruise ships engines heard from the ocean, can affect the entire biophony. The below figures show 12 second sound clips of how flying jets can affect the vocalisation of birds, frogs and insects in the Amazon.
Left: Prior to Jet Fly By Right: During Jet Fly By
In 1988, selective logging was introduced to an old growth forest in Lincoln Meadow in the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges in California. Selective logging is the removal of only certain tree species from a forest Krause was given permission to record the sounds before and after (hear sound clips below). The logging company claimed that cutting down a few trees while leaving the rest intact and unharmed is far different from forest clearance, and would not bring about a detrimental environmental impact. On the contrary, there are some species of tree, in particular pines, firs and redwoods, that do not regenerate well after selective cutting. This means that the composition of a forest overall may change after selective logging. Since then Krause has returned and recorded the soundscape 15 times in the past decade. Sadly, the sounds have never returned to the way they were before. Through our eyes the forest seems untouched, however, what we hear tells us an alarming and different story. It disheartens Krause to see the way people experience sound, and he urges us to be quiet and listen. He has said “a picture is worth a thousand words, and sound is worth a thousand pictures.”
Before Selective Logging 1988
After Selective Logging 1989
In the age of the Anthropocene, the nature orchestra is “out of tune”. As Krause accumulates recordings, he can hear ‘sonic loss’ of biophonies, which is not only an indication of losing a species, but the disappearance of the whole habitat. 50 years ago, it took Krause 10 hours to record 1 hour of sound, today however it takes 1,000 hours to record the same volume of recordings as you have to get far away from human noises.
Climate change is occuring on a national and global scale. In 2017, Krause’s house was burned down at 2:30am by Northern Californian wildfires, and although his digital recordings were backed up, he lost 50 years of precious analogue recordings, journal writings, and a lifetime of musical equipment. Nevertheless, 83 year old Krause has never lost his enthusiasm for recording, and continues to go out into the wild and record to this day. He says natural sounds are the basis of our culture and music.
Further Listening
Let's listen to a short sound track of The Rhythms of Africa, a recording of wild animals with a blend of world music. In another album on Krause’s website, Antarctica, by sound artist Douglas Quin, the mysterious sounds of creaking glaciers, leopard seals and penguins, recorded in the coldest region of the world, almost sounds like avant garde electronic music that lifts, expands and inspires our imagination.
Photo Credit:
Tim Chapman, © 2021 Wild Sanctuary. All Rights Reserved.
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