I originally wrote this as a description for one of my long soundscape videos (embedded below). I’d been thinking about my fascination for soundscape recording since I had a chat with my friend Rob a few days prior, and these thoughts were bouncing around in my head waiting to be wrote down on paper (or pixels, rather).
One of my favourite soundscapes to listen to and record is that of rainforest hills. Rainforest because, well, it's a rainforest! Incredibly biodiverse, dense, lush and full of life. You don't really see a lot but you can hear an amazing variety of sounds. Hills because, unlike a flat, lowland rainforest, the sound is allowed to travel much further (even though not unimpeded).
By the time sounds from different distances reach you - the listener - they interact with the space and take on new meaning. A bird call coming from a distance sounds more washed out but also offers information about local geography, the absence or presence of vegetation, the levels of humidity in the atmosphere etc. Certain calls mask one another and result in new, more interesting sounds. Many sounds bouncing from the same reflective surfaces create a beautiful sense of space.
We as humans are wired to glean this information from sounds on a subconscious level. A lot of it gets lost when living in an urban location however, but fortunately we can regain it by immersing ourselves in a wild place like the Borneo rainforest. It just takes some time for our ears to get accustomed to the lack of man-made sound and conversely, the presence of so much natural sound.
The layers I mentioned can be heard in most of the recordings I made in Borneo, including this one. Just listen out for Gibbon or Black hornbill calls coming from miles away and contrast them with the calls of small songbirds skulking in the undergrowth. Even the sounds of water dripping on vegetation are a good example of this latter layer. Sitting somewhere in between, the constant, high frequency calls of insects are a bit more difficult to locate in space but still very pleasant to listen to. A beautiful highlight is the 4-second whistle of Black-and-crimson pittas that seem suspended in space.
End of Youtube video description. I will leave you with another soundscape recording I made in a similar spot in Borneo but at a different time of day. The various layers are less evident but with a little attention and time for your ears to accustom, you will hear them.