![\"Spring](\"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/Photos\/hegarty_four_walks_grdl_128_web.jpg\" "\\"Spring")
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Four walks around a year: spring | Sebastiane Hegarty<\/a><\/strong> GrDl 128 | Gruen Digital > [order<\/a>] Reviews<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The spring walk is the first of four soundwalks through a year in Winnall Moors Reserve, Winchester, England. During 2013, the full suite of walks will be slow released by Gruenrekorder Digital<\/em>, each perambulation reflecting the season of composition. <\/p>\n sound descriptors: a list of sounds as they appear on the spring walk <\/p>\n Background<\/strong> <\/p>\n Hampshire Wildlife Trust<\/a><\/p>\n winnall moors: soundwalk Blog<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n <\/p>\n MP3<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n MP3<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n MP3<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1 Track (25\u203201\u2033)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Field Recording Series by Gruenrekorder <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a>Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hal Harmon | Musique Machine<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n Spring is the first entry in the Four Walks Around the Year series. As the title implies, these recordings are represent four soundwalks at the Winnall Moors Reserve in Winchester, England. Each recording will coincide with one of the four seasons, this one being Spring. Over the span of 25 minutes we\u2019re greeted by the sounds of: birds chirping in chorus, geese, human voices, rolling river water, footsteps, creaking wood planks, a metal shovel digging, and a myriad of other natural recordings. Incidentally, 25 minutes is approximately the amount of time it takes to walk a full circuit of the reserve.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As with all Gruenrekorder releases all the sounds are expertly captured and really transports the listener to a majestic environment teeming with wildlife and human spectators. There\u2019s a real emphasis on the variety of birds found in the reserve, though that\u2019s not necessarily intentional. As Hegarty mentions in the liner notes, the sounds present on the recording organised their own path. It will be interesting to hear the seasonal change on the subsequent 3 releases that follows Spring.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Four Walks Around a Year: Spring is your perfect audio tour around grounds of a natural reserve. A picture perfect slice of life captured in stunning clarity. <\/p>\n Richard Allen | a closer listen<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n These are the sort of questions that interest Sebastiane Hegarty, whose series Four Walks Around a Year has just drawn to a close.\u00a0 His 25-minute walks around the Winnall Moors Preserve have now been captured for all generations, one recording for each season, each recording combining the sounds of multiple forays.\u00a0 Gruenrekorder\u2019s website provides an elaborate description of the walks, along with complete lists of identifiable sounds: much more than one might guess without prompt.\u00a0 When listening to the project in full, one experiences an entire year in a hundred minutes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 05Here\u2019s the sound of footsteps on hardened ground, and birds singing their joy at the returning sunlight.\u00a0 It\u2019s spring in the reserve, and there\u2019s plenty of life in the moors.\u00a0 The African warblers have just returned; the workers are at their posts; the water is flowing freely in the river.\u00a0 Human equipment can be heard in the distance, never far from nature.\u00a0 Spring is a time to check the reserve and to see what has survived.\u00a0 Has the winter been harsh?\u00a0 Have all of the residents made it through?\u00a0 Has the grass received enough moisture to sprout?\u00a0 The people sound as happy as the birds.\u00a0 The layers are being shed, the windows are being opened, the populace is venturing outside.\u00a0 Children are gathering, crying, playing.\u00a0 \u201dDon\u2019t drop it on its head!\u201d warns an amused gentleman; hopefully the child has not captured a swan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 06Will summer be different?\u00a0 Indeed.\u00a0 Again we begin with footsteps and birds, but the soundscape has subtly changed.\u00a0 Hegarty refers to the turnover as \u201ccalendars of sounds\u201d.\u00a0 Summer adds grasshoppers and wasps, ice cream trucks and active construction.\u00a0 A brief downpour affects the river and the leaves.\u00a0 As the initial burst ends suddenly, one remembers that this is not a single walk, but a patchwork; sounds are moved around in order to highlight their properties.\u00a0 Hegarty also writes about the absence of sound: \u201cthe ghosts of sounds no longer here.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s harder to hear what\u2019s absent than what\u2019s present, but the release trains us to concentrate and remember.\u00a0 The different timbres of precipitation make this the most immediately compelling of the walks, but \u201cWednesday evening bell practice\u201d contributes an especially lovely angle.\u00a0 No offense to humans, but the lessening of voices in the summer walk is a draw as well.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 02To autumn now: crunch, bird, we\u2019re off again, a similar introduction launching into the reverse of spring.\u00a0 Now the birds are saying their goodbyes, morose perhaps at the thought of so much travel.\u00a0 Or perhaps this is simply human projection.\u00a0 As Hegarty notes, the water sounds different: thinner, colder, in the author\u2019s words, \u201csharp and slightly angular.\u201d\u00a0 Shorthand radio conversations are interspersed with personal exchanges; the birds seem to retreat, having more important things on their minds.\u00a0 \u201dA very good day today\u201d, a woman declares.\u00a0 The traps have been set, more to help the local animals than to harm them, as conservation is frequently ironic.\u00a0 The natural soundscape is clearly quieter than the preceding installments, as the aforementioned ghosts have become obvious.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 05And finally to winter.\u00a0 The final installment begins with wintry tales, rescued from the archives.\u00a0 \u201dBefore this war we used to go skating\u201d, reminisces an older man.\u00a0 And then it\u2019s frost, ice, snow, and rain.\u00a0 Now that one has been trained, one notices the subtraction of flocks.\u00a0 Individual birds call to one another, either hardy or left behind; but the sonic field is wide open.\u00a0 When they are suddenly pulled from the recording in the fourth minute, one can\u2019t help but wonder what has happened.\u00a0 Chalk, CO2 and crystallized air are amplified in the resulting crevasses.\u00a0 By the end, Hegarty himself grows melancholy, writing, \u201cI have become a ghost listening to myself not now there.\u201d\u00a0 The winter walk is a lonely walk, but it is not empty; to enjoy it, one needs the mind of Wallace Stevens (\u201cThe Snow Man\u201d):<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the listener, who listens in the snow, <\/p>\n
\nThe first instalment of the winnall moors soundwalks<\/p>\n
\nMP3 & FLAC<\/p>\n
\nRe-composed from recordings made through March, April, May and June, the spring walk begins at dawn with the first isolated notes of birdsong and my own frosted footsteps upon a boardwalk over the reed beds. The birdsong builds in volume and complexity as several dawns combine to reveal a polyphonic chorus, surrounding the listener in territories of song. The company of my own footsteps lead the listener into an emerging landscape, simultaneously reminding them that another was present here and that this dawn is now passed. When composing the walk I did not feel it important that the coordinates of the soundwalk be arranged in strict correspondence to the fixed geography of the moors: that is, I did not attempt to map precisely and chronologically a fixed circumnavigate movement through the landscape. I preferred to let the sounds organise their own path, although by chance the location of the dawn chorus, with which the walk opens, corresponds almost exactly to location of the creaking pagoda, with which it concludes. This suggestion of circular transit is echoed in the flight path of a bank of swans that are heard arriving and evaporating, before returning only once more to disappear. At the finale of the walk a bouquet of warblers, having returned here from Africa, throw their songs of DNA into the air, whilst a work party sinks a wooden post into the ground and a mobile phone adds a digital phrase to this chorus of territorial voices. The vibrations of human toil are telegraphed down a wire fence, surrounding the moors in one more acoustic circumference as the pagoda adagio closes in.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Crackling hesitant steps, a pause, a bird singing, another song, and another, brittle steps on the wire covering a boardwalk, a dawn chorus, geese fly past, another dawn, a green woodpecker, dismantling the ringing nets, a bird hanging in a cotton bag, ringing, a call of distress, release, feathers against cotton, dismantling the ringing nets, a stream, a kick sample, rolling the river bed, trickle of water, foot steps on gravel, river hatch, a girl screams, preening swans, pond dipping, nets dripping, pagoda bending, pond effervescing, a herd of tadpoles, a cuckoo, post hole pincers, shovel of earth, sinking post, swans circling, sedge warbling, swans returning, reed warbling, a creaking pagoda adagio.<\/p>\n
\nThe Winnall Moors soundwalk project was made in collaboration with Hampshire Wildlife Trust (HWT). The project began in the winter of 2010, with the aim of creating a soundwalk based on recordings made in the Winnall Moors conservation reserve over the period of one year. Extending the recording process over this timescale, allowed the discrete temporal patterns of the landscape to become apparent. The inclusive nature of the sounds collected, reflect both the complicated topography of the reserve, which is at once a shared public space, a historic and natural landscape and an area of encircled wilderness.
\nAs the project progressed, it became apparent that composing one soundwalk for the whole year would be restrictive. It seemed more appropriate for there to be four walks, responding to individual acoustic character of the years celestial quarters: winter, spring, summer, autumn. The temporality of the sonic environment is reflected not only in the migratory, seasonal wildlife sounds, but also in the calendars of local, human and conservation activity.
\nThe duration of each soundwalk is set at twenty-five minutes, which roughly corresponds to the time it takes to walk a full circuit of the moors reserve.\u00a0 For the purposes of the HWT, the soundwalks provide a form of poetic audio guide; a sort of headphone transit, that may allow the previous and present sonic landscape to intertwine.
\nI would like to extend my sincere thanks to all the employees, wardens, scientist and volunteers at the Trust and in particular, Martin De Retuerto, Rachel Remnant and David Eades for their help, inspiration and support.<\/p>\n
\nGruenrekorder \/ Germany \/ 2013 \/\u00a0GrDl 128 \/ LC 09488<\/p>\n
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\nGruenrekorder imprint presents Four Walks Around a Year: Spring by british artist, writer, and lecturer Sebastiane Hegarty.<\/p>\n
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\nHow well do you know the soundscape of your own neighborhood?\u00a0 Are you in tune with the seasonal changes, the cries of different birds, the direction in which they migrate, the flow of local river banks and drainage systems?\u00a0 Do you know when the neighbors come home from work and when their children leave for school?\u00a0 Do you know their names, or the names of the trees in your yard, or the thickets that grow behind them?\u00a0 What creatures live on your property, and what sort of sounds do they make?\u00a0 Where do they go in the winter ~ do they migrate, burrow, or die?<\/p>\n
\nAnd, nothing himself, beholds
\nNothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
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