In this episode I take you to the platform of the Grand Canyon Railway, which runs its vintage steam locomotives on the first Saturday of every month from March until October, from Williams, Arizona to the historic El Tovar lodge on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

You’ll hear details from various parts of the hissing engine, the rails and most beautifully of all, that whistle! As well as a train going by at full speed. This train is environmentally friendly. How so? It’s been converted to run on waste vegetable oil from the GCR’s restaurant kitchen, using water from a rainwater runoff collection system.

This is a binaural stereo recording - best heard using good quality headphones.

Photo by Taylor Wright at unsplash.com

Photo by Les Anderson at unsplash.com

The P51 was a crucial fighter plane for both the US and Britain in WWII - and they were also flown by the US in the Korean War. You can learn more about them on this informative video:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-the-p-51-mustang-became-a-legend

Sounds in order of appearance: Galloping horse, Chilean hueso (Aldo) playing the accordion; flock of parakeets; horse whinnying & grazing grass; setting off & meeting cattle being herded by gauchos; big river crossing; description of the day’s scary ride; washing in a chilly mountain stream; mounting my horse on day 8; Chilean trip leader & expert horseman Rodolfo Coombs giving riding tips; last morning sunrise commentary; Black-faced Ibis.

These were tricky conditions to record in. I used a cheap recorder & mini mics, which I wore. But an audio postcard like this evokes memories of a trip in a totally different way from images alone.

I hope that it inspires you to try making an audio postcard on your next holiday adventure.

Invented in the 17th century, pansori was originally sung only by men. Then in the 1850s along came a woman called Jin Chae Seon - who dared to sing pansoiri so well that she trail blazed a path for many women singers to follow. There’s a 2015 Korean film about her called ‘The Sound of a Flower’

Listen with headphones for the full immersive experience.

Photo: Brian Negin https://www.flickr.com/photos/bdnegin/

Anyone remember the 1978 arcade game Space Invaders? I couldn’t help feel there were some similarities!

Further research revealed that the simple story of how the female frogs of this species chose their mates is actually more complicated than I’d thought:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aab2012

Contact me for information and pricing on bespoke sounds and sound packages.

Take a audio tour with me from the outskirts of the busy Panamanian port of Colon through the mangrove forest to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Instutes’s coastal research station at Punta Galleta where we dive beneath the waves to hear the lively underwater soundscape too.

Photo: STRI

This soundscape was recorded very early and so there’s fabulous reverb across the high altitude meadow surrounded by pine trees.

Photo by Andrew Orr: https://www.andrew-orr.com/

Go to Instagram: @inthesoundfield to see the video of this seagrass being washed by sunset waves and glistening like gold.

It turned out not to be a simple task. The flocks are typically on private land, guarded by a sheep dog. And then, if I could get close enough, there was the challenge of making a recording free of passing traffic and overflying planes…

The shrill repeated piping you can hear towards the end are the cries of juvenile seagulls calling for food to parents who are rapidly leaving them to fend for themselves among the rooftops.

The message is how little has changed in 20 years - despite our capability to switch to techmology that reduces CO2 emissions to a fraction of their current levels. Metro Phoenix is sadly, a superb example of extreme long-term unsustainability.

Find out in this episode….

You can learn all about how and why American freight train horns came to sound this way in this feature I made for BBC Radio 4: https://on.soundcloud.com/b6WGmcq8Q9JqEAft9

How they compose these songs is intriguing - learn more here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210603171153.htm

and by listening to this episode…

Unbelievable that crashing waves on the coast of California can be picked up in vibrations in rock formations as far away as Utah!

I’d never seen … or heard so many bicycles in one place at the same time!

You can hear a piece I made about them for Arizona Public Radio here: https://on.soundcloud.com/fPC9UtfMXpo58sDQ7

Photo: Heckle & Jekyll by Eyal Shochat

Often its the soundscape that is the most relaxing element. In this recording, waves of wind play over the canopy of the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest.

Getting to go the premier of the piece during the Shanghai Music Festival really was the icing on the cake!

Its enormously difficult to get noise pollution free recordings - overflying plane traffic is the major issue, usually at its busiest in the early evening, just when the frogs and toads are calling to best effect..

Northern Leopard Frogs are a particular favourite of mine … hear why in this short episode.

Photo by Eyal Shochat

These are some of my favourite recordings from New Year in the UK and Lunar New Year in Shanghai - along with an example of how I used some of those sounds in an experimental radio documentary I made for Australian National Radio. .

Then finally, back in Seoul - the perfect summer festival to end my trip with.

Waiting to be discovered was tasty street food, the incredible Jalgachi fish market, and Korean ‘trot’…

It was a stretch of the trip that included navigating the busy streets of Gumi City (pictured below), savage gradients, lush nighttime cricketscapes, and the Tomb of the Loyal Cow …

But it wasn’t the gradients that were the problem … the soundscape became full of very loud distractions…. and then - a crash!

Time to hop off the bike and break out the sound kit!

Then … a dedicated bike tunnel - and on the other side, something completely different!

Find out how the soundscape changed here …

It was pretty nerve wrackiing that sunny September morning when I set off and joined the cycling trail on the Han River, that would take me, mostly on dedicated cycle paths, all the way down the spine of the country to the south coast city of Busan.

But first, there was Seoul to explore ….

I’d tried doing this by putting a small mic on the end of a flexible fishing pole and inserting it down a burrow … but prarie dogs make lots of sharp turns in their tunnels so that didn’t work.

Then I got the chance to record in a burrow specially prepared for a BBC filming project - the camera crew’s attempt to get video failed, but I captured these wonderfully intimate and never-before heard sounds.

To capture the close up sounds of bees in a roiling mating ball, bee expert Steve Buchmann used heavy gloves to grab them and put them into a shoe box I’d made two holes in, which I poked a pair of DPA 4060 high sensitivity omnis into.

These recordings were made in central Shanghai and Seoul - including bridges and tunnels across the Han River, the main road through Gangnam, in heavy traffic on the Sinchon Rotary. and winding around the base of Namsun Park.

Recorded while I was staying at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s field station, which is located on this island in the middle of the Panama Canal.

I used DPA 40460s and a Sennheiser 418S stereo shot gun on this trip. These mics performed very well in the hot, very humid conditions, as did my Sound Devices recorder.

To find out more about these birds go to: https://www.birdnote.org/bird/northern-flicker-colaptes-auratus and https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Flicker/overview

Experience what that sound is like with me, as I happened upon it at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music - and enjoy the coments of Professor Wu Wei, one of the world’s leading sheng players.

Recorded with a Rode NT mic in XY stereo.

Recorded with head mounted DPA 4060s - listen with good headphones for the full, immersive binaural stereo effect.

The small amplifier and concrete shelter gave a great acoustic as you’ll hear on the recording. Then I got to record a virtuoso erhu student in the practice rooms at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Another wonderful sonic treat.

Recorded in binaural stereo with head worn DPA 4060s - listen with good headphones to get the full immersive experience.

If some personal coaching would help you to improve your sound recordings skills check me out at: http://www.dianehope.com/fieldrecordingcoaching

You can hear how I used these sounds in my immersive audio documentary Lonely Nights (BBC Radio 4) here: https://soundcloud.com/diane-hope/lonely-nights-bbc-r4

To learn more listen to: https://www.birdnote.org/listen/shows/pinyon-juniper-and-pinyon-jays