Bernie Krause > Quotes

“when you’re in a rain forest, where the density and diversity of wildlife are the greatest, you will always hear critters entering the soundscape each day in a structured order, almost as if following Darwin’s timeline of evolution: insects first, then amphibians, then reptiles, then birds, then mammals.”
[from an interview in Sun Magazine © 2014]”
― Bernie Krause, Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World

“the comparative framework of sounds or tones that make up a musical scale. So while frequency is a physical property of sound—it’s a measurement of the number of cycles per second of a sound wave—pitch refers to what we hear. The chromatic scale,”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“Many of us don’t distinguish between the acts of listening and hearing. It’s”
― Bernie Krause, The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places

“biophony”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“Humans with perfect reception can hear frequencies between 20 wave cycles per second, or 20 Hz, at the low end to 20,000 Hz at the high end. The lowest note on a typical piano is 27.5 Hz, and the highest is about 4,186 Hz. Nonhuman animals have evolved different ranges of hearing, the widest”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“element”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“It was in that semifloating state--that transition between the blissful suspension of awareness and the depths of total unconsciousness--that I first encountered the transparent weave of creature voices not only as a choir but as a cohesive sonic event. No longer a cacophony, it became a partitioned collection of vocal organisms--a highly orchestrated acoustic arrangement of insects, spotted hyenas, eagle-owls, African wood-owls, elephants, tree hyrax, distant lions, and several knots of tree frogs and toads. Every distinct voice seemed to fit within its own acoustic bandwidth.”
― Bernie Krause, Le Grand Orchestre des Animaux - The Great Animal Orchestra

“sound,” in a different way. Most instruments produce tones that are quite complex, each generating a series of overtones that contribute to our perception of their timbre and that exist in each note played on the instrument, defining its unique, haunting sound. A clarinet, for instance, produces a series of overtones in which some of”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“Timbre is the emblematic tone, or voice, generated by each type of instrument or biological sound source. Not only do musical instruments have singular voice characteristics but so does every living organism and most man-made machines. The difference between the sound of a violin and that of a trumpet is as distinctive as that between a cicada and an American robin, or a cat and a dog—or between a Rolls-Royce and a Formula 1 automobile. When Paul Beaver and I first began”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“When Paul Beaver and I first began to reproduce sounds on an analog synthesizer, we needed to understand how each instrumental voice was produced. At first we had no idea how complicated this would be. Part of our problem lay in trying to define the sound, or timbre, of each instrument. In the nonelectronic,”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“captures”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“... we must be willing to make time and find ways to hike back to wild places. For me, the process is singularly edifying. Once I've located a noise-free location, a goal in itself, I listen -- sometimes with eyes closed -- to the ways in which the blend of creature voices define space. Because each habitat -- even those within the same biome -- will express itself with an assemblage of sound signatures that form a unique collective voice ...”
― Bernie Krause

“oldest folk-music tradition in Europe. Yoik is shaped, in part, to convey a sense of place through the composition of its sounds. Along with the Sami, Tuvan throat singers from Central Asia and some Inuit groups who”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“I had always used my ears as filters - for shutting noise out - rather than as portals allowing large amounts of information in. A fine microphone system lets me differentiate between what to listen TO and what to listen FOR.”
― Bernie Krause, The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places

“infrasound”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Earth

“the Aztecs when the Cortés expedition discovered”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“earthquake P-waves had reportedly been made with microphones”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Earth

“Pitch is closely related to frequency, but the two are not the same thing. Pitch is mostly used in the comparative framework of sounds or tones that make up a musical scale. So while frequency is a physical property of sound—it’s a measurement of the number of cycles”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“soundscape”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Earth

“previously”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Earth

“Humans”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Air

“and a measurable clinical effect. In fact, the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), founded in 1926, devoted itself to these places, promoting a “sustainable future” for the English countryside. A “tranquil zone” was later defined by the CPRE as “anywhere that lies at least 4 km [about 2.5 miles] from a large power station, 3 km from a major motorway, major industrial area or large city, 2 km from other motorways, trunk roads or smaller towns, 1 km from busy local roads carrying more than 10,000 vehicles per day or the busiest main-line railways. It should also lie beyond the interference of civil and military aircraft.” In addition, one of the criteria was the ability to turn 360 degrees and not have any visual interference from power”
― Bernie Krause, Sounds from The Great Animal Orchestra (Enhanced): Earth

“Sound, because it is so intimate, immediate, and physical, is probably the most influential of our senses:”
― Bernie Krause, Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World