Part 2

What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

MR -  I love to record in older houses with wooden floor boards and taller ceilings. There is a coziness and warmth to the sound in these types of places. The Musicians Hut at Bundanon where Deep Valley was recorded is a space with these features.

CW – The general aesthetics of a space are probably more important to me than the sonic qualities. But there are specific aspects to many spaces I can take great pleasure in exploring if given the chance.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

MR – Yes, the recording process is very similar to sculpture. It involves addition and subtraction of material to create a new form. Sound is certainly a material, but the output is more ephemeral than a physical object and more impacted by what is going on around it by way of background noise or acoustic effects from the room or surroundings.

Modern digital recording has added a visual element too, we can analyse sound to the nth degree and cut, filter and process it endless ways whilst hearing and seeing the results in real time.

CW – Yes. I think in part this is due to my interests in the textural properties of sound. Beyond and musical notes and melodies, there are qualities to sound that are definitely worked with in the same approach I assume a sculpture would as well.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?  

MR – People who live in noisy man-made environments must be unhappy compared to those who live more in nature and there is a large body of research that shows this is the case. Societies that allow more green space and conservation areas will have human populations that have space for contemplation and reconnection to nature and family which can only be a positive thing.

CW – I have little doubt that noise pollution can impact the health and wellbeing of individuals and the community more generally. We also all live in an increasingly noisy world. Exposure to persistent, loud or high frequency sounds has been shown to adversely impact people’s physical and mental health.

As an environmental scientist, I’m also very interested in the impact to the local ecosystem of this noise. There are numerous studies that demonstrate that the intrusion of “human-made” sound into the local environment impacts the biological systems that drive the local ecosystem. Bird and frogs, that rely on sound for various behavioral aspects of their lifecycle, can be disrupted. There is even evidence that evolution is driving changes in their biology to navigate these disturbances.

This not only applies to wildlife around our wetlands and woodlands but also the ocean. The impact of noise pollution in our oceans, especially shipping, has been shown to disrupt whales and other sea life adversely. Physical and chemical pollutants of our aquatic ecosystems may be a focus but sound pollution shouldn’t be ignored either.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?  

MR –  Each year I am moved by the wall of sound consisting of a vast array of frogs when the winter weather arrives and the dry creeks fill up with rain. The soundscape gets really loud but each species occupies a unique frequency range to ensure that it doesn’t get drowned up by the others. I feel in awe of nature when I hear this.

I am constantly amazed by the sounds that hydrophones capture underwater. It's an alien world of clicks, pops and fixes that can range from high frequency rhythmic pulses to spacious bass tones. There is an unexpected element to hydrophones, it feels like you are never 100% sure of what you will capture.

CW – Some of my earliest experiences in environmental research were associated with amphibian surveillance and it was a wonderful introduction to bioacoustics monitoring. The use of sound as a way to survey local wetlands for frog species, without the need to catch, capture, or kill specimens, was something I became greatly interested in.

There are many field guides to assist identification of frogs based on their calls and this methodology has now been adapted to use with smartphones to assist citizen science projects. I’m grateful for this early experience opening more opportunities to explore the sounds of our local environment.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

MR – I am sure that animals communicate with each other through sound. Humans can't claim that we have higher intelligence and only we can communicate with other species. You can witness this any day when observing birds – they communicate across species with calls that indicate danger.

I recently saw this when a large Eagle was soaring above a group of ducks, kingfishers and wrens on the edge of a bushland. The smaller birds were making a lot of noise and moving quicky back into the shelter of the forest before I had even spotted the eagle.

At the same time, I am convinced there is playful and creative aspect to how species communicate between each other. Maybe its a mechanism to ensure harmony, share common ideas and to learn from one another? Perhaps human should spend some more time observing this phenomenon?

CW – There is no question sound plays a critical role in the biology or many animals, from finding a mate to finding food and from navigating to escaping a predator. Sound has such as complex role to play in the ecology of our local wildlife, whether it is on land, the sky, or in the water.

While most people are familiar with bird calls and whale songs, there is so much more going on that escapes our attention. The high frequency calls of bats to catch insects or the wingbeat frequencies of insects that assist mating, it’s a fascinating area of research and I often wish I had more time to take a more academic approach to the recordings I make and incorporate into my musical work.

Could sound ever provide a pathway to interspecies communication? Maybe, I’m just not quite sure they’d be anything nice to say about people!

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

MR – Not very well. I have lost some hearing in the higher frequencies in one ear. I am now more conscious of protecting my hearing and should really invest in proper ear plugs.

On top of this, I had one instance of Tinnitus last year due to loud exposure in an industrial factory without hearing protection and after 2 solid days of ringing in the ears was relieved when it finally dissipated.  As an artist that works with sound, its scared me!

CW – While being an environmental scientist has taught me to be health conscious in many respects (especially sun protection), I haven’t good very smart in protection of my hearing.

As I get older, it is clear there are some issues for me developing but that probably reflects many decades of music listening and experiencing many loud live performances without adequate protection.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

MR – If there is no silence, there is no sound. Both states are complimentary to each other.

Silence is so important to my well being and creative pursuits. I grew up in a quiet country and when I moved to the city in my 30s I struggled to deal with the noise, whether that was not being able to sleep due to the sound of the nearby port or not being able to find a suitable quiet place to record and create new works.

When I escaped the city for a holiday, I was amazed at how much the silence and space was missing from my life. At first this was confronting, a remember lying in a dark room with the doors open to the forest and not being able deal with the quiet. After a few days, the space took hold and I had an outpouring of creativity which kick started my return to creating new music.

CW – Silence is so difficult to find. But when there are moments or places of silence, it can provide a moment or two of calm. But I also think that calm can come from a noisy environment too, it probably is most dependent on the type of noise.

There have been many moments spent in wetlands or woodlands with deafening insect sounds or along a coastline battered by wind and waves. These two moments are far from silent but still provide calm on a level akin to silence for me.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

MR –There are certainly people that are visual, others that more aural and those that are tactile or more switched on by smell and taste. Our senses vary from person to person, and they can change over time or as we train ourselves to prioritise one sense over another.

In the modern world we are bombarded with visual cues and enticements that are designed to attract and ultimately distract our attention away from what we are doing in a particular moment. As a person who is immersed in sound, switching off vision, closing one’s eyes and just listening has a profound effect on my thinking and creativity.

I am sure that others would also see a positive effect from slowing down to listen more, particularly to nature all around us.

CW – For many of us, our visual senses are all important. But not everyone. For many different reasons, many also take note of or are reliant on sound. The world may be a better place it everyone stopped to notice both the small visual and sonic qualities of the world around us.

Despite our preoccupation with looks, there is as much visual pollution on the planet as there is noise pollution. There is little doubt a quieter world would be a better place to live, at least for those of us that seek out stillness and calm!