Martin Scaiff holds the post of Tutor in Education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of East Anglia. He is the founder of HomeSounds, a sound-walking group for young people. This article details a sound walk I went on with him at the UEA lake. The event at Wheatfen Nature Reserve I was originally set to go to had to be cancelled as one of the artists involved was ill. Martin therefore kindly invited me to this soundwalk on the same day, where I would have an opportunity to try some specialised equipment and ask him a few questions.
Sound-walking. It’s a simple-sounding idea with a theory-rich background. Going outside with a microphone to record the sounds of your environment may not sound like much, but it actually has extensive personal benefits alongside a range of practical applications.
14:00, Wednesday 27th October 2021. After a hasty cup of coffee, I greet Martin outside the Sainsbury Centre and we walk down to UEA lake. What was the inspiration for HomeSounds? I ask him. And so the conversation begins.
It all started when Martin was working with children in care placements. He began to notice that as the children changed placements so much, they weren’t as able to build trust and share their problems with the adults around them. It was also harder for them to sit in one place and focus for long periods of time. An idea began to form: why not start a long-term group to get these kids more interested in sound and music? Martin envisaged a few benefits of this group: (1) allowing the kids to build social cohesion; (2) allowing creative expression; and (3) allowing the kids to feel better about themselves in the long-term. It was never going to be a ‘teacher-y’ group – one where kids had to sit still for ages. Rather, it would be a safe environment where they felt comfortable enough to sit and focus. The group expanded to cater for more young people, especially secondary school students. Over time, it evolved into what is now HomeSounds.
Soon Martin began to notice that the more they practised, the longer that kids were able to focus and the more they were able to get out of these periods of mindfulness. Furthermore, over time the level of trust strengthened between them and the adults around them, simply because in this quiet space the kids felt they could be heard.
Now Martin moves on to talk about the scientific applications of field recording. I learn that if you listen to a field recording, you will be able to hear a whole range of frequencies. But it’s these frequencies that hold the key to determining the biodiversity of an area. If you have frequencies that are less like white noise, and more like a few distinguishable tones, chances are that that area is less biodiverse than one where you can hear a whole spectrum of frequencies.
So, to summarise so far, sound-walking has the potential to improve your mental health; attention span; awareness of surroundings; creativity; and scientific knowledge.
Now we pause our conversation for a moment and plant ourselves on one of the jetties beside the lake. Martin then procures a handheld recorder from his bag, along with a very long cable with what looks like a plug on the end, which I find out is a hydrophone (an underwater microphone). We fling the end of it into the lake, as if it were the line of a fishing rod. At once, we begin to hear a kind of muffled splashing. Sound travels quicker and further in water than in air, so when we splash a stick on the surface of the water we can hear it crystal clear.
After that comes the geophone (for recording vibrations under the ground). We have to embed this a little way into the earth. With this we can hear the vibrations made by our own feet as we shuffle around. On an especially windy day, Martin tells me, you can even hear the crackling of trees as they sway, transmitting sonic vibrations through their roots into the ground.
Most interestingly, a geophone is just a specialised seismometer. That is to say, with them you can hear earthquakes and volcanic activity. Of course, since Norfolk is not very seismically active we don’t get to hear anything like this today. But it just goes to show the range of purposes for different kinds of microphones.
Then we experiment a bit, taking it in turns to listen through the headphones, combining the sounds of the different microphones, playing with the levels, adding a normal microphone to record the things above ground, and just experimenting with producing different sounds. And it’s therapeutic. I haven’t done HomeSounds for a couple of years now, but just sitting there with Martin listening and warping the sounds of our environment makes me feel nostalgic. Of what? Perhaps of my experience with HomeSounds. Perhaps of the times before the pandemic. Perhaps because I am simply connecting to nature – that which is always new, yet always hints at ancient times.
I feel so grateful to Martin for taking time out of his day to go on a sound-walk. Hopefully my tuppence of this article will encourage more people to try out sound-walking. You don’t need special equipment – all you need is something to record with, such as a phone. And perhaps you will see a benefit to your life.
Written by Earl Murdoch
Martin Scaiff’s soundcloud: https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/mtwyr
Martin runs a HomeSounds podcast which can be found here: https://www.spreaker.com/show/homesounds
There are a multitude of soundscape artists out there. Some of them include:
Hildegard Westerkamp: https://www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/
Chris Watson: https://chriswatson.net/
Leah Barclay: https://leahbarclay.com/
David Monacchi: http://www.davidmonacchi.it/
R. Murray Schafer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Murray_Schafer
Other links:
World Soundscape Project: https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/worldsoundscaperoject.html
Article about Bernie Krauss: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/everything-is-wrong-bernie-krauses-concept-of-biophony/
Fragments of Extinction: https://www.fragmentsofextinction.org/mission/
YNA COLLECTIVE 