Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 6, 1993 TAG: 9305060463
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDY BAUERS KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Or you can listen to the great humpback whales hooing their melancholy refrain in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Then, you can let the cicadas, crickets and frogs of the Amazon lull you to sleep.
It's a big, loud world out there, full of raucous mating calls, territorial howls, cries of hunger, and a multitude of other snorts, snufflings, screechings and slurpings.
But to hear those calls of the wild, you don't need backpacking equipment, and you won't get jet lag. You don't have to get drenched in a tropical rainstorm or attacked by a gorilla. All you have to do is push the "play" button on your stereo.
This is the world of recorded nature noises, a most politically correct way to relax. The proliferation of tapes and compact discs is also seen as a way to learn about nature and - just maybe - be inspired to save it.
Pick an animal, almost any animal, and there's proably a recording that features it. You may not even know what a montezuma oropendola is (it's a large blackbird from Latin America), but you can listen to it. You want frogs? There's a whole tape of them. Wolves? They come plain and with music.
For those who prefer themes, there's a recording with sounds of the equator, all the way around the world. "Dawn Chorus" presents "a wave of birdsong" sweeping across America "in advance of the rising sun." "Cloud Forest" brings the sounds of various Costa Rican locales. With "Natural Voices/African Song Cycle," you can get the highlights of 24 hours at an African water hole.
Then there are the generic oceans, mountain streams and even a few versions of thunderstorms.
Interest in these tapes is driven more by people's need for stress reduction than by their curiosity as naturalists. The recordings are soothing because they are primitive, says Tom Klein, president of Northword, a Wisconsin company that got into the business in 1986 with a loon-call tape to hype a loon book. (The tape has sold more than 100,000 copies, and the company now has more than two dozen titles.)
"The recordings let people get tuned into something that has been part of the human experience for a million years," Klein says.
They "put you in a less urban place, which people find relaxing and interesting," says Jennifer Kaiser, spokeswoman for the Nature Co., which produces its own recordings and sells many others as well.
You couldn't get to some of those places in a week's worth of hiking. You couldn't get to some at all: A few no longer exist. Even if you could get there, could you find the spot where you couldn't hear the chainsaws or an overhead airplane?
Like the animals themselves, the nature-noise niche of the recording industry has been evolving. There are many species of recordings and an ever-growing number of companies producing them.
For purists, guys such as Bernie Krause and Gordon Hempton - two of the "names" in the biz - offer animal sounds straight up, ungussied by music. They spend weeks in the wild, collecting the "Earth's music," as Hempton dubs it.
Krause edits the sounds somewhat into what he calls a "sound sculpture."
"You just can't stick a microphone out on the beach for 30 minutes and call it `Oceans,"' says Krause, who rails against what he sees as an influx of inferior "knockoff" nature tapes, spawned by the genre's popularity. (Imagine what he thinks of the guy who buys computer chips with animal noises on them, then inserts them between modified classical songs that he performs on his synthesizer!)
Krause, who has been in the business more than 25 years and has a creative-arts doctorate with an internship in bioacoustics, boasts the world's largest private-sound library of rare animals and habitats. (Krause actually was attacked by a gorilla on one of his forays.)
Other companies offer nature with music - some of it classical, some of it nondescript synth-sound - that makes the tapes a bit more palatable for most. After all, listening to solo monkey shrieks and dolphin clicks as relaxation is an acquired skill.
This is a matter of some debate, however. Although he formerly included music in his recordings, Krause now disdains it, saying it smacks of "us trying to control nature again. We Westerners have a propensity for doing things like that. You simply can't improve on the sounds of nature."
There's also a whole instructional branch - recordings during which human announcers introduce each noise before you hear it. Or, as in the case of the American Museum of Natural History's wolf tape, after a side of wolf sounds, you get a natural history lecture read by Robert Redford. Norton has a series hosted by David Attenborough, the British natural-history broadcaster.
Frogs are among the bestsellers, topped only by loons and wolves. The loons used to be No. 1, says Klein, "but lately the wolves have pulled ahead," perhaps because they have become "the icon of wilderness."
By simply existing, most of the recordings make political statements - some more overt than others.
Many companies donate a portion of their proceeds to the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit group.
\ NATURE-ON-AUDIO COMPANIES\ \ Amirra Press offers a "Dance of the Dolphins" tape benefiting the Wild Dolphin\ Project. 5621 Broad St., Greendale, Wis. 53129; phone 800-526-0212.
\ Audio Partners offers "The Language and Music of the Wolves," with Robert Redford. Box 6930, Auburn, Calif. 95603; phone 800-231-4261.
\ Chelsea Green offers nature-identification tapes by Lang Elliott. Titles include "Know Your Bird Sounds" and "Guide to Night Sounds"; with booklets. Route 113, Box 130, Post Mills, Vt. 05058; phone 800-639-4099.
\ Earth Sounds offers Gordon Hempton recordings. Includes "Dawn Chorus," "Old Growth," "Okanogan Overture," "Rolling Thunder," "Tennessee Nightwalk." Distributed by Miramar, 200 Second Ave. West, Seattle, Wash. 98119; phone 206-284-4700.
\ Great American Audio offers "Interludes" recordings, including "Ocean Waves,"\ "Thunder and Rain," "Babbling Brook." 33 Portman Rd., New Rochelle, N.Y.\ 10801; phone 914-576-7660.
\ Nature Co. offers "Last Great Places on Earth" recordings, plus dozens of others. Box 188, Florence, Ky. 41022; phone 800-227-1114.
\ Northword offers Bob Baldwin recordings, some of animals alone, some animals with music (full orchestra), some themes. Box 1360, Minocqua, Wis. 54548; phone 800-336-6398.
\ Jeffrey Norton offers "Animal Language" series with David Attenborough narrating. 96 Broad St., Guilford, Conn. 06437; phone 800-243-1234.
\ Wild Sanctuary Natural Sounds Bernie Krause's company, with many themed tapes of endangered places. 124 Ninth Ave., San Francisco, Calif. 94118; phone 800-473-9453.
by CNB