It’s been a huge privilege to work with several teams at Google on Sound Matters, a collection of birdsong audio elements for the new Pixel phones, Chrome browser, Fitbit app and others.
When Henry Daw got in touch with me last year, he had an excellent idea with lots of potential. He wanted to create a collection of natural dawn chorus sounds that could be used as alarms, ringtones and notification sounds on the upcoming Pixel devices. My job was to research and select a suitable location, plan and organise and expedition, lead the expedition where I would record all the required material. Lastly, I would have to edit and master the material and deliver it according to the brief. As we kept discussing these aspects, the project grew and evolved based on my input and lots of feedback from Henry and his colleagues.
It was tough to choose the best dawn chorus I’d ever experienced. I’ve had the privilege of exploring many parts of the world that harbour extreme biodiversity and are home to incredibly lush dawn choruses. From Costa Rica and the Congo to Borneo and Southern Africa, and even places closer to home like Romania or Scotland, you can experience amazing dawn choruses if you can find a spot that is far enough from people and anthropophony.
On location in Zimbabwe
In the end, I decided on Southern Africa for reasons that include the number of species and individuals, the beauty of its dawn choruses, the relative lack of man-made sound in many parts of this region, and the fact that as members of the human species, we’ve heard these sounds at the dawn of our history and some sort of response to them may still be with us in our genetic material.
This last part is not very scientific, but I’ve seen an excellent response to natural sounds of the African savannah on my Youtube channel. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that this part of the world hosts amazing biodiversity and good recordings from there have the power to captivate audiences. I had also been there already and could share some lovely material that Henry and his team at Google were very fond of. With a lot of patience and iteration, we managed to get everything approved and in December 2023 I was off to Gaborone.
Behind the scenes video and teaser trailer
I decided to do an overland expedition starting from Gaborone in Botswana, through several places on the Limpopo river, crossing into Zimbabwe, stopping in Matobo Hills, all the way to Mana Pools and Lake Kariba, and ending in Victoria Falls. The journey involved driving for thousands of kilometres in the bush, several river crossings, four boat transfers on the Zambezi and being off the grid for many days at a time.
There were some challenges as well, including luggage that never arrived and had to be collected just before our flight back to the UK, and a nasty bout of African tickbite fever that took me out for days and had to be dealt with on return. I was fortunately accompanied by my wife and work partner Eco Zhang who took care of the visual side of things, and stepped in when I was too weak and feverish to do any meaningful work.
Now that the collection has been released, it looks like the response has been excellent both from users and the teams at Google. I’m happy to have played a small part by capturing and sharing the sounds of these beautiful environments, and I hope this will lead to a change in people’s perception of nature and wild places. It was an absolute pleasure to embark on such an expansive project and to work with Henry and his team.
Long-form sound recording - part of the Sound Matters collection