The environmental recording for Forest Park Rain suite was recorded about a year ago on the quiet northern side of Forest Park, here in Portland Oregon.

It was a rainy day interspersed with sun breaks. Many migratory birds had buy then taken up residence here. Among them, Black-headed Grosbeak, Wilson’s Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler, and Hammond’s Flycatcher. Deer can also be heard moving among downed branches.

I love the acoustics of the forest slope where this was captured. I love the soft rain sounds.

Like all Listening Spot compositions, this one leans into atmospherics and emphasizes melody.. Loping, synthesizer phrases are layered with vibrato synth pads and various soft, shimmering sounds.

I’ve spoken a little bit about Forest Park in the past, but I've spent some time reacquainting myself with its trails over the last month. In particular, the 30-mile-long Wildwood trail that traverses the park from north to south. In the Spring of 1999 I hiked the entire trail (slightly shorter, then) in one day. A quarter century later I had the urge to complete it again, but not all at once, I’ll be sharing the fruits of that soon!

Til then, thanks again for your interest; for reading and listening along. I’m grateful for you. Forest Park Rain Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday, April 11th.

Forest Park Rain Suite II will land next Friday, April 18th.

Fern Canyon is enchanting.

My whole raison d’être with soundwalks is to bottle up that feeling. Enchantment. Fascination. Magnetism. These are the robust feelings that pictures and sounds alone often can’t quite stir up. I see music as the key.

The great thing about music, I believe, is you don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to know music theory, and you don’t even have to know how to play an instrument better than, say, an eager first-year student. For me, making music is about opening up, being sensitive, exploring.

Sharing music can be more fraught. A little over a year ago, I decided to make a home here on Substack. At first, it felt like play; an adventure in publishing. It still does. But, there is some tension with the commerce part. Honestly I feel like I’m floundering with that part of being a Substack author. It’s not that I don’t like it. I’m on board with writers and artists monetizing their work. From my point of view, it’s just challenging to sustain that sense of play, while trying to casually sell some part of it.

Today, I’m trying something new, to keep the exploratory vibe alive. Fern Canyon Soundwalk is only available here. Not Spotify, not Bandcamp. Not Qobuz—I like Qobuz by the way. Just here, and in its entirety, just for paid subscribers. It’s a little slice of enchantment, and practically speaking, it’s hidden. It’s if you know, you know. You know? I’m not fancy. Subscriptions start at less than $3/mo.

I don’t know if I’ll get any “conversions” from this post; any new paid subscribers. I decided not to let keep me from trying though. It’s probable that I’m making the wrong decision in terms of “exploiting” my work—It seems to me I’d earn more on streaming platforms over time. That’s okay. I’ve always felt better about my place in the economy when I’m not fretting and optimizing.

Fern Canyon is in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, in Humboldt County California. It was formed by Home Creek.

This modest stream has over the eons carved a 50 to 80 foot deep canyon through the rich sedimentary soils. The canyon walls sprout an amazing variety of luxuriant ferns and other moisture-loving plants. (vistredwoods.com)

Composing and finalizing Fern Canyon Soundwalk had many twists and turns. In the end, I went for soft, supple, simple. It’s a very tender and naive composition, grounded in felted piano, with chimes and sparkly synths punctuating the arrangement, alongside a myriad of water sounds and sparse birdsong.

I usually end with a thank you for your interest. It’s not performative. I really mean it. That’s all I’m after here…to tell stories with sounds, music, images and words. Folks taking an interest keeps me going. Thank you all!

Soundwalk is a reader-supported publication. To be one of a handful of people to hear Fern Canyon Soundwalk in its entirety, consider becoming a subscriber.

Hello. Just wanted to let you know about my new 8 minute piece in 10 movements, Woods.

A few weeks ago I released a similar instrumental work entitled Coots, mentioning it was the first in a series released under the pseudonym “Crou”. It immediately felt like a mistake.

Not the music. (For someone who has never felt particularly self-confident as a musician, that was not the problem. I felt good about the music.) The problem was there was another artist going by Crou already, and though I professed the ambiguity of pronunciation appealed to me, I soon reasoned how it would not appeal to the likes of Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant in voice commands. Abort, abort, I thought on release day.

So goodby Crou, we hardly knew ya. Hello Sleeping Animal.

I like the new name. It’s been switched for the Coots release for over a week now, and it’s felt steady as she goes. It is one of ten releases I’ve served up to my distributor with release dates fanning out to September, so the name is pretty much set now. There’s plenty more Sleeping Animal to come!

Why Sleeping Animal? To me, the name has a warm, tender, and vulnerable connotation. It also doesn’t hurt that, as an artist who has to devoted himself to environmental and wildlife recording for the past five years, the name functionally alludes to not containing wildlife sounds. That appeals to me.

Starting from square one is always a hand-wringing affair, so if you enjoy it, do me a favor and tell one person about it. In an implacable algorithmic world, word-of-mouth is real.

Woods follows in the footsteps of Coots. Not having an environmental sound bed opens up space for a sonic nuance that I’ve been enjoying experimenting with.

And spoiler alert: The die is cast on monochrome cover art. I have another fun project to announce shortly that this aesthetic plays a big role in. Anyway, I’d be delighted if you gave Woods a listen.

The sophomore release Woods by Sleeping Animal is available on all music streaming sites (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal, Qobuz etc.) today, Friday, March 28th.

Malheur means “misfortune”. It comes from French-Canadian trappers who applied the name to the SE Oregon area, when in 1818, a cache of beaver furs was believed to be stolen by local indigenous people. Malheur River, Malheur County and Malheur National Wildlife Refuge all take their names from this origin story.

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is a wonder. Its main geologic feature is the basin lake: Malheur Lake. It’s similar in one way to The Great Salt Lake, a closed basin lake, but Malheur is technically an intermittent basin lake. In wetter years the water flows outward and onward from the lake. This prevents salts from building up, keeping it a fresh water habitat. For this reason, and because is surrounded by arid lands, it is a migratory bird haven.

The refuge was created in 1908, partly in response to the wholesale slaughter of egrets and herons for their plume feathers, which were used as ornamentation on women’s hats of the time. Eventually the reserve grew to 293 square miles in size. It’s a beautiful, quiet country. Sagebrush uplands surround the lake and riparian habitats.

It really is something to realize that when you boil it down, the Euro-American expansion in to western North America was hastened by hat fashion. Before gold, there were beavers, herons and egrets. That’s where the easy money was. Showy hats with little practical value. Beaver hides were felted and often dyed black for bowler, fedora and top hats.

Today, in wet years high numbers of nesting colonial birds, including White-faced Ibis, can be found here. I associate Florida and the gulf coast with ibises, not Oregon. Observing these birds here feels novel to me. Ibis can be heard in this recording, on the wing, ranging by.

There’s all kinds of shorebirds too, on the shorelines and mudflats.

The melodious Western Meadowlark, welcomes in the day.

As for Malheur, it’s arguably a word more apropos to the fate of the Native Americans than the trappers and settlers. In the winter of 2016 a different kind of malheur—misfortune— played out, but we’ll save that for Part 2, next week.

The environmental audio was recorded from the sagebrush uplands pointed towards the vast shallow lake wetlands. This soundstage was truly large; on the order of 1000 acres across the auditory horizon.

The instrumentation is familiar for a Listening Spot recording. (This is 7th such effort.) String-like sounds with slow attack and decay rise and fall in movements. Among the more novel sounds are undulations; gently percolating guitar voices and fuzzy textures. It gets very quiet and sparse at the 19 minute mark (Track 9) near the end. A Whimbrel can be heard in the distance, while high thin tones punctuate the ambience in a plaintive sort of way. It seems like the quietest moments are usually my favorites. I hope you’ll check it out.

Thanks for reading and listening. I’m grateful for you. Malheur Suite I is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) Friday, March 14th.

For our next series we are going to be exploring various locations in Redwoods National & State Parks. First up, Grove of the Titans!

The interesting thing about this grove is that it’s not on the official Redwood National Park map. That’s because it became too popular in the Instagram and Google maps era. Visitation grew exponentially in the late 2000’s and 2010’s. The bases and roots of the trees were getting trampled. In response, the park service installed 1,500 feet of metal boardwalk in 2019—contributing a signature sound mark to this particular soundwalk.

The other factor the park service considered in its decision to reduce official visibility of this grove is limited access to the trailhead itself, via Howland Hill Road, an old stagecoach route. On this dusty, winding, single-lane gravel road you can practically reach out the window and touch massive old-growth trees—and cars passing the other direction!

The truth is, the grove isn’t markedly more spectacular than others in the park, which are easier to visit.

But there are some unique features. One centerpiece may be Screaming Titans, a fused tree with a diameter of 30 feet, seen from the central platform.

Another is Chesty Puller, where the boardwalk winds around another fused giant on a slope.

None of these pictures convey the sense of awe that one feels being here in person.

What is most distinctive about the soundscape, though, is the absence of sound. We made our visit in the evening, which I’d recommend for the mellow light and the thinned-down crowds on a summer day. Except for the ravens, who add their calls in the final minutes, you’d be hard pressed to pick out other birds, who are sparsely seen but go largely unheard. This surprised me, even in July. My guess is it’s a different story in the early morning.

But, there is something quieting about the trees themselves, too. The extensive surface area of deeply pitted bark really does dampen sound energy. It’s distinctive for the absence of reverberation that one expects in a grove of trees.

"The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time." - John Steinbeck

The backbone of my score instrumentation is the Hohner Pianet electric piano. Playing off that is a Korg Prototype 8 patch that is sure to cause some lean-back listeners to lean in, on first hearing it. (You’ll have to listen via streaming or consider become a supporting subscriber to get my drift here, as it enters the mix in track 4, about five and a half minutes in.) Lastly, there’s a little upright piano, celeste and dulcimer. In all, quite minimal. That seems to be my trajectory. Less is more, even when there’s no birdsong.

I hope you enjoy this very quiet soundwalk through Grove of the Titans. It is most certainly not the default vibe here. If you can make the trip, especially in summer, expect plenty of company. This, and other coast redwood groves here are truly wonders of our planet!

Thanks for listening and reading. I’m thankful for your interest. Grove of the Titans Soundwalk is available on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Amazon, YouTube…) on Friday, March 7th.

This post originally introduced the pseudonym Crou, which I quickly abandoned, given the name already had multiple artist profiles on streaming services, and I realized a lot of people rely on voice commands to play music in the car and at home. “Crou” made that difficult.

My usual approach angles don’t seem to apply here. This is something new. This is Sleeping Animal.

I think I’m going to script a conversation, à la NPR. Bear with me. Here goes:

What is Sleeping Animal?

Well, Sleeping Animal was a name I landed on a while ago, because I thought it sounded warm, contented, and vulnerable. It’s something I want be a placeholder for a side project that isn’t fully defined. It’s also apropos of not including environmental sound, as if the animals were all sleeping.

You just spun off Listening Spot, right?

Yes, and I actually used those words, even though they’re giving gimmicky energy. Listening Spot and Sleeping Animal, and some of the others that have come before could have been projects released under the name Chad Crouch, but I’m already pushing it when it comes to having a “right-sized” release catalog.

Is there anything different about the music?

Yes. There are no field recordings with Sleeping Animal. There is more room for more instruments and layers in the arrangements. And, there is, for now, a hint of vocals… Otherwise, pretty similar, really.

Anything else?

Hmm… I’ve really been enjoying old photographic images; glass plate negatives, sepia-toned silver gelatin prints; that kind of thing. Might be a visual direction for the project. It is for this release!

The debut release Coots by Sleeping Animal is available on all music streaming sites (Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal, etc.) Friday, February 28th.

Earlier this week: Reflecting on some formative listens.