Here’s an interesting 40 second recording… I was driving around Malibu and got pretty high up in the mountains, hoping to record a short piece of quiet and a few singing birds. It was difficult finding an isolate place with no cars going by every twenty seconds. I kept hearing distracting sounds, until I finally pulled off somewhere to the side to capture the sound. The original recording was very low in volume, and for a better effect, I had to amplify it quiet a bit. The final result is a dense spectrum of sound that I haven’t actually heard during the process…

First, there’s the overhead flying plane. Then there is the almost deafening chatter of birds, all trying to sing on top of each other. The metallic clicking is the hot engine of my car, cooling off… you know that sound. Is that a rooster far in the distance? Is that the sound of a lawn mower? Alas, a car drives by anyway. So much for my escape… I should have left earlier.