Recording the West

The LATimes profiled Western Soundscape Archive field-recordist, database-director (and HV Producer) Jeff Rice, in “Recording the sounds of the West.” Also check their audio slideshow and photo gallery.

HV016- Bugs and Birds

Hearing Voices from NPR®
016 Bugs and Birds: Sounds of Summer
Host: Jeff Rice of Western Soundscape Archive
Airs week of: 2009-06-24 (Originally: 2008-06-18)

“Bugs and Birds” (52:00 mp3):

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Jeff Rice of the Western Soundscape Archive hosts an hour of creeping, crawling, flying critter sounds for the start of Summer:

Sound artist Nina Katchadourian makes car alarms from bird calls.

Ken Nordine argues “For the Birds” on his 2001 CD A Transparent Mask, with music by Paul Wertico and Jim Hines.

Virginia Belmont’s Famous Singing and Talking Birds tweet the “William Tell Overture (Canary Sextet).”

Recordist Lang Elliot’s CD Prairie Spring captures a “soundscape of prairie meadows and potholes in spring and early summer.”

An extinct woodpecker revives an Arkansas town; it’s “The Lord God Bird” by Long Haul Productions, with an original song composed for ther story by Sufjan Stevens.

Brian Eno’s music mimics some “Flies,” from the 2006 compilation Plague Songs.

Folk are buggin’, gettin bittin, swatting and swearing at “Mosquitos,” by M’Iou Zahner Ollswang (from the 1985 collection
Tellus #11: The Sound of Radio.)

Scott Carrier takes a morning walk with poet Jim Harrison.

Lang Elliot soaks up the sounds of “Sora Dawn” — “a pothole marsh at dawn with bittern, wrens, rails, and more (Prairie Spring).

Dr. Rex Cocroft, of the University of Missouri, attaches a phonograph needle to a blade of grass, plugged it into a tape recorder, to go “acoustic prospecting” for little-known suburban lawn sounds like “Leafhoppers,” rarely hard by humans.

Host Jeff Rice breeds bugs to make “Moth Music.”

Ken Nordine declares this “A Good Year for Spiders” (A Transparent Mask).

Entomologist Ian Robertson,, of Boise State University, does the “Gnat Dance” with host Jeff Rice and an outdoor chorale performance for insects.

And special thanks to Dr. Hayward Spangler of the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson for braving bugs between his teeth while “Listening to Ants.”

This hour produced with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Western Soundscape Archive -AP

HV’s Jeff Rice is interviewed in this Associated Press article “Recordings aim to capture calls of the wild West” about the Western Soundscape Archive:

Although it’s just a year old, the site already has more than 800 recordings. The goal is to catalog the nearly 1,200 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians that roam 11 Western states. It will also feature “ambient soundscapes” from wild places across the region.

Jeff recently hosted our Bugs & Birds HV hour.

HV025- Heat

Hearing Voices from NPR®:
025 Heat— Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer
Host— Scott Carrier of Hearing Voices
Airdates— 8/20/2008 – 8/27/2008

Five symptoms of heat fatigue:

A sound-poem for “Dead of Summer” in the city by Marjorie Van Halteren and Lou Giansante, read by Russell Horton.

Tuscon residents reflect the desert “Heat,” with author Charles Bowden, poet Ofelia Zepeda, and music by Steve Roach; produced by Jeff Rice.

The perfection of family, a crippled man on a blind man’s back, and a collective scream of “I’m not dead,” sweat it out in Joe Frank’s “Summer Notes.”

Cats pulling pianos are “The Little Heroes” in John Rieger’s Dance on Warning series.

And host Scott Carrier takes a long hot cross-country drive down “Highway 50,” the loneliest road in America.

Music by The Lovin’ Spoonful and Flying Lizards.

Heat (53:00 mp3):

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Heat (extended) cast

This week’s HV cast for a hot Summer’s day— It is 120°. The birds and animals, and even insects hide. We hear the the words, thoughts and sounds of desert residents: writer Charles Bowden, the Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda, and ambient composer Steve Roach, whose composition “Slow Heat” scores the piece. A story by Jeff Rice, “Heat- extended mix” (7:30 mp3):

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