Skip to main content

Wow, check this out. Talk about an awesome gig! http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/28/6071399/scientists-are-recording-the-sound-of-the-whole-planet

"When you look at arrangements of sound, working with musicians helps you to think about the orchestration of an ecosystem," he explains.

As he sat in jungles and deserts around the world, Krause noticed that the sounds he heard could be surprisingly orderly. Different species seemed to occupy their own place in the sonic spectrum. Insects in Borneo might stridulate loudly at a middle frequency, alternating so as not to drown each other out. Birds rise above it by calling at a higher pitch, and birds with shorter calls fit in-between the calls of birds with longer ones. Frogs puncture the droning insect noise with short, loud bursts, and mammals take the bottom frequencies.

Krause called his idea the acoustic niche hypothesis, and it had a corollary. If organisms evolved to share the acoustic spectrum, maybe disruptions from pollution, development, invasive species, and other threats would result in gaps in the arrangement of sounds. In 1989, Krause found what he believes is evidence of such audible damage. The year before, he had taken a recording of a forest in the Sierra Nevadas. He returned after it had been selectively logged and found the soundscape almost silent.

Comments

DonnyThompson Fri, 03/06/2015 - 05:53

LOL... I'm laughing only because of where you put this - "Remote recording"... and the gig is recording the entire world. It's the ultimate remote recording gig. Sorry... just struck me as funny.

This is very cool, though. The fact alone that we have the technology to do this is in itself mind-boggling.

Although, I can't help but wonder what happens when it comes time to mix ...

"Okay, let's assign all the bat calls to subgroup #53,245, and add a little EQ up around 120khz ..."
"Compression?"
"Nah. Let's let them breathe."
" Oh man, we really need a lo-pass on those earthquakes..."

"Which track is that?"
"Uhm...hold on, let me check... okay, here it is...Track #13o,289."
"Gotcha."

;)