Soundwalk

Dear Reader, In this Thanksgiving season, I just wanted to take a moment to express gratitude I’ve been feeling for three people here on Substack that I admire, and who have helped me to connect with a bunch of you.Carson Ellis Carson is a busy artist / illustrator and children’s book author, but when I asked her for her take on Substack almost two years ago she emailed back the same day with a 600 word email. At some point between then and now she added Soundwalk to the recommendations that appear in the sidebar of her newsletter, Slowpoke. In the interim nearly one in five of my subscribers found me through her! That knocked my socks off. It’s a testament to the naturally curious people that gravitate to her and her amazing work. Three cheers for Carson Ellis!Rowen Brooke I was immediately curious about Rowen’s fast-growing newsletter, Field Notes, from its title. Her posts relate her observations, challenges and insights in pursuit of becoming both a regenerative flower farmer & florist and aspiring naturalist. Her recent posts indicate a measured advance toward the latter, given the sensory detail emerging in her writing. Rowen’s past recommendation of Soundwalk points to nearly one in ten subscribers finding me through Field Notes. Thanks Rowen! Colin Meloy Colin is the frontman for The Decemberists, the author of many books, and is married to Carson Ellis. You’d be forgiven for thinking he couldn’t possibly sound like his writing in real life, given his ability to weave in some impressive and uncommon vocabulary words in his newsletter, Colin Meloy’s Machine Shop, but I’m here to tell you that he does. He writes like he talks, folks. Colin slipped Soundwalk into a little list he worked up for the official guest-authored compendium The Substack Post halfway through 2024. I recollect my subscriber count jumped by well over 100 overnight! A generous inclusion, to be sure. Thanks Meloy! It really underscores how meaningful word-of-mouth is to someone like me. If you’re reading this and found me through a recommendation, feel free to let me know with a ‘like’ or comment below. On to this week’s soundwalk. Last week I shared a recording made at Natural Bridges in Washington, a site with two rock bridges spanning a rock-jumbled ravine. The bridges were the remnants of a lava tube cave ceiling, created 12,000 to 18,000 years ago. A few miles away, another complex of lava tubes known as Guler Ice Cave(s) remain intact. These caves, once commercialized for their ability keep ice and preserve harvested crops by one Christian Guler, are easily accessed today, though exploring them extensively requires crawling through cold, dark, tight passages. My recording is centered on the main cave mouth that is pictured above. Once again you hear that marvelous wind in the pines (which appeared in the previous two recordings) juxtaposed against a constellation of drips, plinks and plops in the foreground. My composition pulls from complimentary instrument voices: the sweep of a dobro-derived synth pads; the resonance of low end stringed instruments; the percussive twinkle of a Dulcitone celeste; the shimmer of a percolating “swarm” synth pad. It’s all designed to mirror the tonality of the cave entrance environment.Strains of Pine Siskin and Dark-eyed Junco filter in. This is a short, textural audio postcard. I hope you enjoy it. Ice Cave is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms today Friday, November 21st, 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comIt’s a Substack exclusive. And, my favorite recording that I’ve listened to lately.Natural Bridges was on the shorter side (11:34) so I didn’t slate it for a wide release. I hadn’t even listened to it for over four months, until a few days ago. It surprised me how good it was: how transportive, how intertwined, how gentle, how concise.This all brings to mind the subject of confidence in artistry. A few years ago, when I was just beginning my explorations in environmental music—and while explaining what I’d been up to lately at a wedding reception—I decided to try on a few words: I’m the best at it.My logic was this: being the best at something almost nobody does is really pretty easy—an absurdist boast—so why not frame it that way? Why not project seriousness with a touch of humor? (This was well before my stats on the leading streaming service increased, by the way, so it wasn’t any kind of posturing based on numbers.) Isn’t it what every artist secretly wants: to be the best at what they do? So I said, “I make soundwalks. I record the sound of my walk and compose instrumental music to go with it. I’m the best at it.” I scanned the table for responses. I was surrounded by musicians who were all more skilled than me, incidentally. I saw some thin smiles, but overall a muted response. Usually when I’m uncomfortable, I immediately follow up with a qualifying remark, but I was determined to let this linger. Then a friend I admire said something along the lines of, “I don’t know… the best, huh?” like he was challenging me to a soundwalk duel, or at least like he imagined I would go down pretty easily in a soundwalk duel. It was delivered like a line at a poker table. I couldn’t tell if it was casual or calculated, or both. In that moment, though, I decided that the bravado didn’t suit me. I laughed it off and switched the subject. The exchange helped me realize I don’t need to, or want to be the best. Being the best is defending a title. It’s not motivating, it’s not authentic. It’s conflict, it’s worry, it’s stress. No thanks.But, I’m okay going on the record that this 11 minutes, 34 seconds of audio is good. In fact, maybe it’s the best 11:34 of environmental music I presently have to offer. Natural Bridges is a geological curiosity and a short hiking destination in Gifford Pinchot National Forest in SW Washington state. The “natural bridge” features are the remnants of a lava tube cave ceiling that collapsed, created during lava flows 12,000-18,000 years ago. The site is in a quiet region of mountain prairies, lakes and coniferous forests. Natural Bridges is only available (for the foreseeable future) to paid subscribers. Soundwalk is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for reading and listening. And, thank you for your support!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comOne thing I think you come to appreciate after some months or years of field recording, or intentional listening, is the variability of sound that conifers make when played by the wind.Where I live, I’m surrounded by conifers. Douglas-firs abound. They produce a sharp sound in the wind, occasionally what you might call a hiss. Just an hour to the east, beyond the crest of the Cascade Range, a more arid landscape plays host to ponderosa pine trees. The wind on their needles is quite different. Because their needles are flexible and bundled together, they sway and brush against each other in waves, producing a softer sound. More of a shush. Words fail me here. You just have to listen.This recording captures the song of the pines as a backdrop for the birds that make this habitat their home.We hear Western Wood Pewee, Pine Siskin, American Goldfinch, Hairy Woodpecker, White-crowned sparrow, American Robin, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and California Quail—to name names—on a mild June evening near Glenwood, Washington. But what is it about ponderosa pine trees that they produce such a sonorous sound? According to field recordist Gordon Hempton, the pitch is a function of the length of the needle or blade of grass. “We can go back to the writings of John Muir, which — he turned me on to the fact that the tone, the pitch, of the wind is a function of the length of the needle or the blade of grass. So the shorter the needle on the pine, the higher the pitch; the longer, the lower the pitch.”-Gordon Hempton, recordistWhile that sounds plausible and is certainly memorable, it’s not the whole story. It’s not just about length; stiffness, density, bundling, and flexibility all matter too. All the complexity of the canopy structure goes into the sound. The turbulence of the wind moving between needles, branches and trunks, and the brushing of the needles against each other all plays a role. Take a guitar string; the string is fixed at both ends and vibrates at specific frequencies determined by its length, tension, and mass. Needles are only fixed at one end, so they’re more like tines than strings. The frequency of a guitar string follows clear mathematical relationships: a string twice as long vibrates at half the frequency (one octave lower), assuming same tension and thickness. The sound of pine needles comes primarily from aerodynamics: wind flowing around needles creates fluctuations in the air. Needles twice as long do not whisper an octave lower; rather, they produce a lower range of pitches due to the lower frequency of movements and resulting turbulence they create. A string can produce a clear frequency. A needle produces a spectrum of frequencies; a texture. What can be said about all the variety of needles, leaves, and blades of grass and the sounds they make in the wind? Has someone attempted to map them? If there is such an inventory, I did not find it, but I did find the following observations made nearly seven centuries ago in an interesting piece of nature writing. It’s observational, philosophical, and poetic all at once: Wind cannot create sound on its own: it sounds only in connection with things. It is unlike the ferocious clamor of thunder, which rumbles through the void. Since wind sounds only in connection with things, its sound depends on the thing: loud or soft, clear or vague, delightful or frightening—all are produced depending on the form of the thing. Though it may come into contact with earthen or rock pedestals in the shape of tortoises, sounds are not produced. If a valley is empty and immense, its sound is vigorous and fierce; when water gently flows, its sound is still turbulent and agitated—neither achieves a harmonious balance, and both cause man to feel fearful and frightened. Therefore, only plants and trees can produce suitable sounds.Among plants and trees, those with large leaves have a muffled sound; those with dry leaves have a sorrowful sound; those with frail leaves have a weak and unmelodic sound. For this reason, nothing is better suited to wind than the pine.Now, the pine as a species has a stiff trunk and curled branches, its leaves are thin, and its twigs are long. It is gnarled yet noble, unconstrained and overspreading, entangled and intricate. So when wind passes through it, it is neither obstructed nor agitated. Wind flows through smoothly with a natural sound. Listening to it can relieve anxiety and humiliation, wash away confusion and impurity, expand the spirit and lighten the heart, make one feel peaceful and contemplative, cause one to wander free and easy through the skies and travel along with the force of Creation. It is well suited to gentlemen who seek pleasure in mountains and forests, delighting in them and unable to abandon them.-Liu Chi, (1311–1375)Thanks for listening and reading. If you made it this far, consider tapping ‘like’ just to let me know you were here. I often wonder things like, will I lose readers with this big block quote? Are subscribers alienated by a post marked ‘paid’? Ponderosa Grove is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms today Friday, November 7th, 2025.

I hadn’t planned to write a post for Wren. In fact, just yesterday I was thinking about how I could skip even writing a Substack Note, which I had been mulling over. What to say? And then I found myself returning to the interesting thing I learned earlier in the week: how the Cherokee traditional calendar ended and started in the fall, and how that made intrinsic sense to me. A time of harvest and reflection. So, I’m feeling inclined to reflect because this is the last Sleeping Animal release from a slate of several this year. As a brief recap, Sleeping Animal came about as a solution for two of my concerns: first, I was swamping my own name with too many releases, and second, I’d long feared my preoccupation with incorporating environmental recordings was seen as little more than a gimmick. So Sleeping Animal became my repository for instrumental works, destined to succeed or fail on their own birdsong-less merits. Let’s turn the clock back to 1994. Having re-enrolled at the University of Oregon after a stint at community college, I was edged out of upper level fine arts courses that I needed for my degree. They were all full. The solution was Independent Study. I would pay the university for credits I needed with the minimum amount of instruction. No problem, I thought. I’d already done that in high school by completing an International Baccalaureate art portfolio, a boon to my college credit tally going in. I wanted to impress my professor/mentor, so I put a lot of hours into having what amounted to a full exhibit’s worth of paintings to show at our first meeting. The oil paintings were monochromatic—raw umber primarily—using a medium to essentially mimic a watercolor technique. The subject matter was figurative, featuring simple, almost abstracted backgrounds. So there I was, in the little-used art school room I’d been using for a studio, with all my paintings spread out, only weeks into the term. I imagined my mentor would be surprised. He might say something like, “Well you’ve been busy!”What happened was he entered the room, said almost nothing, ranged around with a pained expression on his face, seemingly finding nothing worth examining closely, asking few if any questions, and then proclaimied—in so many words—that the work was thin and cartoony. Those were the words I specifically remembered anyway, because they cut. They hurt. There was not the slightest scrap of praise offered for my work ethic. If anything, it seemed like the number of paintings was taken as an affront; evidence for their thin-ness. I did not mount much of a defense, and was relieved when I was again by myself in the quiet room. In the following weeks I painted over every one of them. Though hard to hear, it was true. The paintings were essentially drawings, rendered with paint. You could see the gesso brush strokes under the washier areas. In my second act of Independent Study I turned to landscapes and still life. A little bit Rothko, a little bit Morandi. A completely different path. Now, looking at the gallery of album art that has swiftly assembled for Sleeping Animal—all monochrome and seemingly in service of a neoclassical trope—how could I not be reminded of that formative season thirty years ago?Now, in the peak of fall with my body of work on display, for all to hear, I’m drawn back to that quiet classroom in my mind. What is the verdict?Well, I’ll be the first to say they all look and sound more or less the same. Having said that, it’s not a matter of if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. More like if you heard one and didn’t find it at all useful, you can skip the others. But, isn’t it like that for most artists?When I first imagined Sleeping Animal, I thought I would revisit a type of work I made that was built up with arpeggiated synthesizers. I also thought that I would leave an opening for vocals, at first just dipping my toe in those waters. Alas, I never came round to those programmed arpeggios. The vocal layers, however, are a unique attribute, mixed at a whisper. I wanted them to be felt more than heard. What I’m proud of is how naive, imperfect and unvarnished these works are. And, for this first act, I’m happy that I didn’t come out with arpeggiated synths blazing. The thing I prize most about them, as compositions, is how they breathe. They expand and contract. They are expressive not through dexterity or dynamics, but in their relationship to time.Now for act two! Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane. It only took me a few decades to be able to tell the story. Find Wren filed under Sleeping Animal today Oct. 30th, 2025 on all streaming services. I rely on word of mouth to find my audience, so if you find my music or my storytelling entertaining, useful or relatable, please do share it with someone. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s environmental recording captures the sound of an area within Forest Park that few people gave much thought to, until a headline grabbed their attention 21 years ago.In 2004, a pair of off-trail endurance runners came across a father and daughter living in a dugout shelter in Portland’s 5200 acre Forest Park. They had been living there for four years.Upon discovery, police were dispatched for a wellness check. Eventually one officer helped the two resettle on a horse farm where the father, Frank, worked and they attended the local church. They left the farm after about a month, never to be heard from again. Their story inspired Peter Rock’s 2009 fictionalized novel My Abandonment, which was adapted into the acclaimed 2018 film Leave No Trace.When first discovered, Frank was 53 and Ruth was 12. Their makeshift home was constructed on the side of a steep hill, not far from where this recording was made. Inside the shelter were encyclopedias, a bible, toys, a doll, sleeping bags. Nearby was a planted vegetable garden and a water catchment structure.“But how could a 53 year old father with a 12 year old daughter survive in this thick, dense forest for four years?” asks a reporter as he bushwhacks down a brushy hillside in a 2004 segment for KATU news. “Well, police say Frank’s a smart guy, college-educated. He’s also an ex-marine who served two tours in Vietnam.”The reporter concludes, “So why would a father with no job, but a $400 a month disability check, hide in the forest? Those that saw them on their weekly walks out of the woods to church, the library and to buy food say it was a father’s fear society might separate him from the one he loves.” Amateur mystery detectives on Reddit wanted to know more. Based on the few details in the 2004 news stories, they placed the father, Frank Trecarten, in articles 20 years prior in 1984, describing a manhunt for a mountain man or “survivalist”, in Quebec and New Hampshire after allegations of desecrating an church altar and attempted arson. Then in 2005, log books for Appalachian Trail hikers signed by “Mountain Man” and “Miss Mountain Dew”—believed to be trail names for Frank and Ruth—were discovered. A photo corroborates the placement with the identifying note: Frank “Trefcarten”. Most recently, in 2013, the name Frank Treecarten reappears in articles outlining a flare gun shooting assault in Concord, New Hampshire, where it appears Frank was charged with two felonies and held on $8,000 bail. The verdict in the case is unknown.These details paint the story in a more acute light, potentially revealing a decades-long pattern of living on the fringes, possibly exacerbated by PTSD.I re-watched Leave No Trace and listened to the My Abandonment audiobook. Although the movie is adapted from the book, they diverge significantly, especially approaching their conclusions. The book is decidedly more tragic, while the movie hits a more optimistic note. The optimist in me wants the film to be closer to the truth. One can’t help but wonder about Ruth, who would be in her mid 30’s now, and Frank, now in his mid 70‘s. If amateur investigators are to be believed, Ruth is now married and living in Oregon. Another thing that I noticed and appreciated in the film was how sparse the score was. It was barely there. It inspired me to further pare down my own future scores, letting the soundscape “take solos”. Additionally, a lot of films get the wildlife sounds wrong, but this was better than most. Varied Thrush, and Northern Pygmy Owl stood out to my ear. I don’t remember hearing Pacific Wren though; a true soundmark of Forest Park. That late May morning I sat in the middle of the Maple Trail above Saltzman Creek. No one passed by. The trail had been closed for some time following bridge damage. Portions of steel decking were broken off and the railing remained squashed from the impact of a fallen tree. While there, I made an oil pastel drawing while soaking up the tranquil setting. I also made a half-hearted attempt to scout around looking some clue of a former habitation; a whisper trail, a depression. Then it occurred to me that I really didn’t know precisely where to look. That ridge or this ridge? It seemed pointless, really. Perhaps the reason that this story still looms so large in imaginations is because it makes us confront how estranged we truly are from the old ways: living light in the woods, not too far removed from hunting and gathering. We don’t really hear these kind of narratives in the USA anymore. We are aghast to discover that a father and daughter did so, undetected, for four years in a city nature park. It defied expectation. I wonder what this says about us; about the velocity and trajectory of civilization? I don’t have any conclusions of my own to offer. All I know is a young person, I spent nights discretely camped at a few dubious spots while cycling across the USA. You definitely sleep lighter. I can’t imagine that kind of background anxiety over the long term.My score attempts to hold these two things in tension: the wonder and a the discomfort of living outdoors, close to the land, peering into its wildness.Thanks for listening and reading. Saltzman Creek is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms today Friday, October 24th, 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

I’m sitting on a bench at the nearby city park listening to Creek & Raven. It comes out in a few days, as I write this. I haven’t listened to it for many months now, so it’s both surprising and unsurprising how it opens. Unsurprising is the trilling Pacific Wren, a distant Common Raven and the faint sound of a creek. Surprising is the mournful synthesizer lead that resembles a French horn.The vibe is meeting me where I am today, on this last overcast day of another extended Portland Indian summer. Winter is coming, literally and figuratively. I feel it; stark, curious and foreboding.The environmental audio was captured in one of the deeper canyons of Forest Park in early June of this year. The creek that carved this deep canyon is named Rocking Chair Creek after the discovery of a rocking chair in its waters. I’m visualizing it now like the heirloom bentwood rocker in my living room, half sunk with gold-green moss growing on it, illuminated in a sunbeam. I returned to the canyon a few weeks ago and made more sketches. It’s interesting to me how the palette shifted, on return, to bluer hues of green. This brings to mind how the observer influences a scene; how interpretations and tone can shift. About 8 miles away from this canyon is a different scene that has captured the imagination of the nation, and beyond, in the recent news cycle.Here, a nondescript beige multi-story federal building stands between Interstate 5 and the Willamette river on the margins of downtown Portland, Oregon. It is ground zero for a political Rorschach test. A lot has been written about it. I’m not interested in trying to summarize that here. If you know, you know…you know?But the idea that there is any debate about facts on the ground; that there is any set of conditions that presently call for US military intervention in my home town is unnerving. It is deeply strange and seemingly animated by a dark fantasy. Most here poke fun at the absurdity of it all; the disconnect between truth and image-peddling. A few have their own reasons to support some hazy notion of a “crackdown”. The city is not without problems, after all. Anyone can tell you that. It’s been a tough run over the better part of a decade, here and most everywhere. On that score, there have been plenty of indications that the city turned a corner. I travelled to four capital cities in Europe over the summer and they didn’t strike me as better or worse, any more or less livable on the whole.The fever-pitched finger pointing is what makes my stomach churn. The notion that educated people cannot in good faith arrive at a consensus on whether a city is “war-ravaged”, “under siege”, even “burning to the ground” or about average for its size is like a chapter out of George Orwell’s 1984. “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”“2 + 2 = 5”-Party doctrine from 1984 by George OrwellIn the finale of Creek and Raven we hear ravens croak and rattle with gusto. What are they saying?Ravens have long been cast as messengers in the symbology of First Nations. As a communicative carrion bird, their associations with prophecy, insight, and playing intermediary between life and death are long held. Do these ravens have any prophecies or insights to share about their home in Portland, Oregon? Recent studies have identified at least 30 to 40 distinct vocalizations in ravens’ repertoire. They vocalize for the same reasons humans do: talking about food, keeping track of family members, socializing, bonding, playing, warning, and identifying each other specifically. Ravens even use “emotional” prosody; they convey urgency or calm through tone. They can learn new vocalizations, mimicking human speech and other sounds.I think we could all benefit by taking time to actively listen to what Bernie Krause coined the “biophony”, the layer of the soundscape made by living organisms. We would do well to listen to each other as well; us human animals. I believe estrangement from the biophony, can lead to less empathy, and that can lead to all sorts of unfortunate outcomes.We have some mending to do. We have holes in our social fabric left over from the pandemic; splits aggravated by social media and the tribalism of news media empires. Maybe we can take a lesson from ravens and just remember to talk to each other; to shoot the breeze about food and family.A raven’s warning call is a sharp, urgent Kawk! Kawk! Kawk! But what happens when one of the flock spreads alarm when there is no real threat? We know from the old folk tale how Chicken Little—the sky is falling!—learns a lesson about spreading alarm without evidence…in the sanitized version of the tale. In most versions, the characters (Chicken Little, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, and Turkey Lurkey) encounter Foxy Loxy who uses the panic to trick them into his den and eat them all. What I think we are facing in this country is leadership that is acting like Chicken Little while also behaving like Foxy Loxy. It’s not normal. It’s not okay. I think it needs to be called out. I think we—all of us—deserve more from elected leaders. I’m not typically an outspoken person, but now doesn’t feel like the time to sit back and say nothing.Thank you, as always, for joining me here, and for listening to my point of view. Creek & Raven is available on all music streaming services October 17th, 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

It’s been a little while since my last Listening Spot release. If you’re just joining, Listening Spot is a pseudonym I use for stationary environmental recordings paired to atmospheric “ambient” compositions. Once again, however, I’m breaking with the tradition of avoiding piano with a Listening Spot release. Pianet electric piano alternates with Korg synthesizer “dew drops” at the center of this musical score. This time we are visiting the iconic Mt. Tabor Park of Portland, Oregon.The 636 ft (194 meter) forested peak rises up from the otherwise mostly level plane of SE Portland. It’s a dormant cinder cone volcano from a lava field formation now quiet for over 300,000 years. From a bird’s eye view, it’s a promising rest stop on migration, offering an island of green in a patchwork of grey.On spring mornings the park bustles with both bird and human activity. Many exercise routines target the broad summit, offering the reward of a city view looking west toward downtown Portland. Here’s a sketch of it I made on my phone:As far as environmental recording goes, I’ve historically found Mt. Tabor to be a difficult place to make “pleasing” recordings. This notion of pleasing is, of course, entirely subjective. But, in general, the topography and popularity of the park makes the anthropogenic layers more of a focal point. Dogs barking, joggers huffing up trails, sirens wailing, trucks beeping… These are all fine and interesting sounds—I’ve actually recently come to find backup beeps an interesting musical counterpoint to the sound of nuthatches, for example—but they are not the sounds I’ve set out to capture…yet anyway.More recently, I found a spot that’s pretty well insulated from the city soundscape and the bulk of human visitors. There is a knob between reservoir 1 and 5 with a solitary bench on top, offering a relatively tranquil listening spot in the 191-acre park. Here, I made this recording on April 4th of this year. The sounds of the city barely register below the songbirds belting out their springtime melodies.We hear Lesser Goldfinch, Red-breasted Nuthatch, American Robin, Song Sparrow, Pine Siskin, Steller’s Jay, Northern Flicker, and a Swainson’s Thrush, to name a few. It’s a sharp contrast to the subdued songs of fall.My score is of the minimal, imperfect, reflective and tender sort. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for coming along for the journey. It’s not always clear to me if I’m connecting with readers and listeners via Substack, so feel free to say hi.Or, if you can think of someone who might like what I’m doing, please let them know. It means a lot to me. Mt. Tabor Park is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday October 3rd. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

I like to work in batches. Pollinator Corridor can be filed under two batches: 1) Forest Park and 2) plein air soundwalks. So Forest Park is self explanatory, but could use some contextualizing, which I’ll get into shortly. The plein air soundwalks batch is still taking shape. Basically it’s just me recording and sketching—like I said last time—offering a little twist on my Soundwalk formula. One little experiment I did on this particular day was to make some botanical sketches.For being in Forest Park, you might notice on this cover that the view here isn’t thickly forested:This is the view looking back up the hill on BPA road, where a swath of forestland was removed long ago to accommodate the high voltage power lines that run up and over the Tualatin Mountains here on the north end of the 5000 acre wooded park. The gravel and dirt lane is maintained for power line inspection and maintenance purposes, while serving dual purpose as a multi-use trail connecting the trails that intersect it. It’s a distinct habitat in Forest Park; an edge land where grasses, berries and wildflowers grow, attracting some different animal species than the forest interior. Portland Parks & Rec. calls this a Pollinator Corridor. If you’re patient, you’ll see and hear these visitors: the migratory Rufous Hummingbird with its little toy motorcycle sound; berry-eating songbirds like the Black-headed Grosbeak; insects like bumble bees, and Western Tiger Swallowtail butterflies; and deer or sometimes elk slowly cracking through downed branches on the perimeter, coming and going. There are few places in Forest Park that open up sufficiently to afford views of the Cascade Mountains to the west. This is one of them: Fireweed, oceanspray, western goldenrod, and Oregon Sunshine also thrive here. Here’s a sketch of orange honeysuckle.It’s both serene and pulsing with life.For the score, I really leaned into the sound of the Soma Lyre “Organismic Synthesizer”. I’m using a virtual instrument playable by a midi keyboard, but the original inductive pad and knob box hardware is quite fascinating. Many electronic musicians find it unusually emotive and inspiring. I’m also using a virtual instrument that samples the quieter timbres created by manipulating the tone bars of a 50’s / 60’s Hammond organ. I used to own a Hammond M3 organ, and my earliest musical experiments involved playing with the toggle switches and tone bars to add warm, crackly textures to my nascent experimental performances. I didn’t reach for any Electric Piano for this one. In this way it’s crossbred with my Listening Spot ouvre, I suppose.Reaching the end of BPA Road, the hiker is presented with a three way fork. All options are a road less travelled. Two lanes lead out to prominences topped by high voltage electric towers overlooking the Willamette River and the lower Columbia beyond. The other lane plunges down to Hwy 30 below, and is prone to overgrowth. Here’s the view from the northernmost point. It’s very peaceful place with a meadowy feel, and a nice view of the Multnomah Channel and the Sauvie Island Bridge:Thank you, as always, for joining me here. I hope you enjoy Pollinator Corridor. It’s available on all music streaming services today, September 19th, 2025. Also, last week I released another instrumental EP under the pseudonym Sleeping Animal. So if you’re in the mood for some impressionistic electric piano-centered music, I’ve got you covered there too. That one is called Traverse, also available on all music streaming services. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comWhen it comes to soundwalks, it’s unusual for me to let two years go by from the time of capturing audio until release. I had to leave this one alone for a while and come back to it with fresh ears. Dear reader, this is Ecola Soundwalk.There are a number of hiking routes at Ecola State Park just north of Cannon Beach, Oregon. It’s an astonishingly beautiful headland chock full of seastacks and fog belt Sitka spruce coastal forests. It’s a national treasure really, as far as state parks go.I went for the Clatsop Loop route, hoping the inland leg would provide for some quiet encounters with wildlife. It was quiet, and this ultimately informed the instrumentation I chose. When I finally came back to it, I realized the whole thing just needed to be softer and quieter. That’s what was missing from my first pass at composing and arranging, over a year before.Not that any of my soundwalks are recommended for listening in a car or on a plane trip, but Ecola Soundwalk should come with a warning label: Do not attempt to listen outside a quiet environment. It won’t sound good. There are even some passages that might sound experimental with their woozy, threadbare, textured minimalism. Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Chestnut-backed Chickadees eventually enter the soundscape after the five minute mark, and they come and go through the middle bit. Red Crossbills fly over and Red-breasted Nuthatches move slowly through the upper canopy.After a Barred Owl sighting, we once again hear the surf about 2/3 of the way through. It’s distant. Below. This is not a beach soundwalk. It’s a moody coastal forest soundwalk.And, it’s a walk with periodic astonishing vistas. The lonesome Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is a sight to behold.Well, that’s really all I can think of to say this week. Thanks for reading and listening. Thanks for sticking with me.Ecola Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, September 5th, 2025.

After a few weeks, I’m back, and excited to share something new. Out today is Meadow Showers, an album offering a new twist on the soundwalk form that has given shape to my work over the last three years. The twist is admittedly a gentle one: In a nutshell, it’s simply less footsteps in the mix. On this soundwalk I’m engaged at intervals in plein air (outdoor) painting using an iPad (or phone), while quietly soaking up the soundscape as I sketch. If you’ve been keeping up, you may recall this post from June 12, introducing the concept: The soundscape for Meadow Showers was captured on June 20th of this year at the Holman Lane entrance to Forest Park in Portland Oregon. The meadow had already grown tall. Grass cuttings lay on the trail. A squall whipped through the trees.I took cover across the meadow under a broadleaf tree with a bench underneath it, Looking in the opposite direction, I worked up this image as a summer rain shower passed over.Eventually other visitors came into the scene. A child squealed with delight. A group of young people walked by speaking Chinese. The birds were temporarily quieted by the weather.Before long, I ventured out on the Wildwood Trail, stopping to sketch this image of the hillside terrain:Rain clouds came and went. With another downpour brewing, I found myself taking shelter under a tree overlooking this woodland scene with two snags emerging from the bracken: The wind massaged the canopy, playing it like an instrument.In all, Meadow Showers is a postcard-esque series of vignettes, writ in image and sound. It’s a new soundwalk formula that I will revisit through the coming year. The first handful is already on deck and slotted in the release schedule, and I have designs for creating more, with the aim of pushing against some of the self-imposed boundaries of my craft.I’ve been feeling a little stuck and disaffected lately, I guess. Insofar as this relates to my work, I’m hopeful a new angle can open some doors. What do you do when you feel stuck, alienated, or upset? Feel free to help me brainstorm with a comment.Thanks for reading and listening. I’m glad to have you along!Meadow Showers is available on all music streaming services August 29, 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

I recorded the environmental sound for Sunset Bay Soundwalk about year ago while meandering over the rocky tidal landscape on a mild summer Sunday morning at Sunset Bay, near the city of Coos Bay, Oregon.Sunset Bay has a crescent-shaped beach, sheltered by the North Pacific waves. Here, little rollers fan out, lapping against the rocky head outcrops on each side. Acoustically it’s a natural amphitheater. The birds, foraging in the tree canopy on the bluffs sound amplified. A Swainson’s Thrush ethereal song reverberates. The surf sound is a distant murmur. Windstill.Perhaps the first thing you register though, is the sound of humans. For this edit, I spliced clips that were peppered here and there with human voices. They are largely undecipherable; adding a textural layer in the soundscape. We hear feet scuffling over rocks, with no rhythm. No urgency. While there, I gazed into the tide pools, enchanted by the colors. Looking for movement, I was delighted by these little colonies of life adapted to the flushing seawater tides in their dance with the moon.I did my best to translate the sweetness of the morning in music. Nothing like a morning outside to rinse and reset the mind!Thanks for listening and reading. As per usual, Sunset Bay Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, August 1, 2025. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

Out today under my instrumental Sleeping Animal pseudonym is a composition entitled Stream. It’s a measured and minimal eleven minute miniature suite for electric piano and synthesizers. Look for Stream today, July 25, 2025 on all streaming services.I’m over half way through the release schedule of Sleeping Animal releases that took shape pretty quickly at the beginning of this year. My hope was that they might find an audience outside the niche I’ve cultivated with my penchant for field recording taking a co-equal, or maybe even primary role in my music. It seems like a fine time to reflect on how the Sleeping Animal experiment is going. If you’re interested in this, by all means read on. If it’s not what you signed up for, feel free to skip it. Neo-classical, Chilly Gonzales, Mood Music, and What Now?I’m thinking about an essay by Chilly Gonzales entitled Why I Regret Giving Birth to the Neoclassical Genre that opens with this paragraph:It’s usually a forest, or a mountainside, or a beach. Ideally, it’s an otherworldly volcanic terrain, maybe in Iceland. A piano sits conspicuously in the middle of this landscape, as a pianist with eyes closed exaggerates the effort required to present some familiar arpeggios on the white keys. This is Neoclassical music, a genre I may have birthed, and I hate myself for it.I had to laugh. This was accurately calling out Sleeping Animal before it even came to be. It’s usually a forest. Check. Familiar arpeggios on the white keys. Fair enough. I mean, I’m pretty comfortable on the black keys too, but I tend to follow familiar pathways when composing, so touché, and ouch!In this essay Gonzales reflects on his 2004 solo piano release, aptly entitled Solo Piano, offered up as a curveball to the “electro-hipster” fanbase he garnered in the preceding years.Back in 2004 my music business contacts saw my Solo Piano transformation as career suicide. Nobody thought of solitary piano music as a potential gravy train. But here we are, the algorithm has spoken and background music is now big business.Playlists like Peaceful Piano or Music for Studying have turbo-charged the monetisation of functional background music. These playlists pay, albeit badly. And when the playlists pay, the industry pays attention…The essay was published in September last year. While the Peaceful Piano playlist is still a gravy train for the premiere names of the genre, the chill playlist diaspora have been largely reprogrammed with “ghost artists”. (In a nutshell, ghost artists are fictional artist identities given to tracks created by for-hire studio musicians willing to crank out original songs to fit a mood, all in an obfuscated scheme to cut costs for the platform.) Today, the few high traffic playlist slots that remain for real artists might be the last of the low hanging fruit for the AI-generated music tidal wave that we are being warned about. I’m not ashamed to say that the invention of Sleeping Animal was in part an experiment to see if I could grow my streaming income by diversifying. I said that much from the get-go, calling it a spin off.Gonzales relayed an anecdote about the allure of chasing playlists: A musician friend of mine worked painstakingly for years on a complex and challenging album only to hear from his record label that “we love it but we feel we could invest more of our time, energy and money if you would add something for the fans of Ludovico Einaudi”. In other words, to become Zweinaudi or Dreinaudi.It’s difficult to resist this pressure. It wasn’t long before my friend went back to the studio and aimed a few more pieces squarely at the “peaceful piano” bullseye. And worst of all, my friend and the label were rewarded mightily for their capitulation.But really, worst of all? This seems a bit holier than thou, honestly. So, real artists only make complex, challenging music and never think about earning a living?I watched the 2019 documentary, Shut up and Play the Piano, profiling Gonzales several years ago. He exudes main character energy in the film in a way that’s almost hard to watch: complex, bedeviled, and willing to go to extremes to compensate for something—we’re not sure what. A sibling rivalry? Imposter syndrome from portraying himself as a musical genius, while struggling to read beginner level sheet music? For all the vulnerable sequences and observations in the film, there’s an equal number of clips cultivating a chameleonic chicanery.I am one of the many devotees to Gonzales’ solo piano works. These albums featured minimalist black and white drawings, evoking the trope of a serious, studied artiste. His cover for Solo Piano III went so far as to insinuate technical prowess: three disembodied hands dancing across the surface of a piano keyboard. I bought it. I thought he was a piano genius. In a way, both he and the movie pulled the rug out from under fans like me. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.When I listen to Gonzales’ solo piano pieces, I hear sincerity, depth, melody, sophistication. They want for nothing, to my ear. Did that opening paragraph in his essay ring so true because it cuts close to home? A lot of ink has been spilled about the dumbing down of musical taste at the hands of tech overlords and opportunistic hacks in service of the playlist era, serving up mood music: frictionless, dull, generic background music to soundtrack one’s aspirational chill. It’s hard to shake the fear that my own catalogue isn’t also being dragged through the mud with this critique. A lot of hand-wringing and dislocation will certainly play out in the dawning era of AI in the music industry. The neo-classical, and lo-fi beats genres that populate so many chill and focus playlists will almost certainly be inundated. How are artists like myself to navigate the shifting sands?Ten to twenty years after they were released, Chilly Gonzales’ solo piano albums sound timeless. To me, they are classics. I hope to feel something similar for my own work after the passing of many years. That’s my aim. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comThe Columbia River basin is roughly the size of France. The Columbia is the fourth-largest river in the United States by flow, and the largest river emptying into the eastern Pacific Ocean. In the last 90 years, this mighty river has been mightily renovated. The multitude of dams (around 150) in the basin now represent 44% of all US hydro-electric power generation. It all started in the 1930’s with the Bonneville Dam, a signature project of The New Deal. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) was created by Congress to market the power generated by the dam. The agency would grow over the years as more and more dams were built in the basin. My father was hired by BPA around 1970 as an electrical engineer. Within a few short years his salary enabled him to purchase a new home for his young family of four, and a new Ford Mustang for his commute to work from the Portland suburbs. As the 70’s drew to a close, my father began climbing a managerial ladder at BPA. Visiting his office was exciting for a kid. At one point it was located on the upper floors of the tallest building on Portland’s east side. The cars on the street looked like toys from up there. Elevator rides were a thrill. My sister and I would jump at the first sign its rapid ascent was slowing, elated by the hang time we felt.In 1984 dad moved to a new office, in an even fancier building with a curved facade overlooking the freeway. I distinctly remember him telling me about a modern white noise system that was built in. It made the office seem quieter, he said, by adding sound; a special sound that made background noise less noticeable. Conversations in far-off cubicles couldn’t be heard. This puzzled me. It sounded like white noise was black magic. Adding sound, in my experience, was a surefire way to make something— someplace—louder. What exactly he did at work in those years wasn’t obvious to me. His white collar job, in his white noise office wasn’t tangibly connected to the mechanics of hydro-power or the delivery of electricity into our homes in the Pacific Northwest. Similarly, now a generation removed, my son is both uninterested and unimpressed by my vocation, which amounts to me spending a lot of time in my home office/studio with headphones on, plunking away on a midi keyboard, scrutinizing bands of orange-hued spectrogram stereo files, poking and prodding at them with a mouse in hand.In the words of Woody Guthrie—who was hired by BPA in 1941 to ennoble the burgeoning hydro-electric empire in song—the Columbia rolls on. It rolls on four miles north of our home. Electrons arriving in wires from turbines at Bonneville Dam are converted to LCD light and computational power right here in front of me, enabling, in part, the wonderfully complicated but seemingly straightforward task of drafting this post. It rolls on and I take it for granted. Air conditioning requires a great deal many more electrons, which I’m also currently enjoying, with little thought given to it. While the hydroelectric empire of the Columbia has given the region abundant renewable electricity and supplied it with water to irrigate arid landscapes, it has done so at the cost a once great salmon fishery.Here BPA would say, no it wasn’t us. We’ve helped Salmon. We’ve spent billions. Look at all our hatcheries and fish ladders. We even transport fish in trucks around our dams. It was the fishermen and canneries who depleted the fishery before the dams were built. On that score, they wouldn’t be entirely mistaken. The early 1900’s Columbia commercial fishery knew no bounds, and within half a century it brought about its own demise. But to say that salmon and dams can get along hunky-dory, well, that’s increasingly hard to fathom.Less than a year ago, three hundred miles to the south, a campaign of dam removals was concluded on the Klamath River. The basin is still far from its pre-Euro-American state, but it was is a big move for restoration of salmon spawning habitat in the upper Klamath. Within days of the last dam removal, fall run Chinook were observed upriver for the first time in a century. Years from now perhaps stakeholders will look to the Klamath for answers about what to do about the aging infrastructure on the Columbia.Celilo Falls and the Cascades of the Columbia, once roaring, are but memories of a mighty river that ran wild nearly a century ago. Submerged by slackwater pools, today’s river soundscape is now formed by the wakes created by cargo ships and barges that ply its lower reaches. This recording is essentially a slice of time on a mild December day in 2024 between two such vessels. Centered on a reach of river absent of shoreline highways, it harkens back to a quieter time. It captures the sound of a great expanse; miles in all directions.Accordingly, the musical composition and arrangement are imbued with harmonic complexity that I don’t usually reach for: 7th suspended 4th chords, add-9th chords. Delivered in slow, overlapping succession, these unsettled voicings follow each other rhythmically, like waves tumbling ashore. Small animals scuttle through the brush on the shore while gulls and Bald Eagles cry in the middle distance. Common Mergansers call to each other upriver. Whorls of water formed by the current hint at the great power that lies beneath the placid surface. Roll on Columbia, roll on… Thanks for reading and listening, friend. Quiet Columbia Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms today Friday, July 18th.

The environmental recording for Oak Island Rain Soundwalk was recorded April 30th 2024. It’s a really gentle soundscape; dewy and hushed. I chose this photo for the cover because, if you look closely, it captures the fine rain drops that fell that morning. It’s hard to take a picture of rain. I got lucky here. I’ve gave Oak Island quite a bit of attention last year, initially surveying the soundscape without ornamentation:Later, I visited the spur road that leads to the area in the winter, basking in the sound of skeins of geese overhead and croaking Sandhill Cranes foraging in fallow fields. Finally, I used a recording made peering in the heart of the 100 acre Oak Savanna preserved at Oak Island for my sophomore Listening Spot effort: So we’re back, and even though it captures an out-of-season sound for this part of the world, I thought it might be a soothing addition for summer programming. The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been idyllic. Meanwhile, headlines land in my news feed about heat waves on the US East Coast and in Europe. If you're feeling the heat, this one goes out to you.In this season of open windows and being outside, our cities become a little noisier. Sometimes that can be exciting. Sometimes it can be unwanted. I make no pretenses about what my soundwalks are for, what purpose they serve, but if this one can quell any thirst for peace, quiet, and tenderness out there, I’m all for it.In this landscape we hear migratory Bullock’s Oriole, Rufous Hummingbird, Orange-crowned Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Western Tanager, Purple Finch, Tree Swallow, Black-headed Grosbeak, Savannah Sparrow, Red-wing Blackbird... The interesting thing is they are all singing lowkey, as the kids say, as in quietly. The rain seems to have a subduing effect. Thanks for listening and reading! I’m making this one available in its entirety here on Substack, because I think there is probably someone new-to-me it could be useful to. If you enjoy what you hear, please consider telling just one person about it. As per usual, Oak Island Rain Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, July 4, 2025, Happy Independence Day! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comMore than once in recent conversations I’ve revealed I’m not all that fond of Summer. The response has been interesting: incredulous laughter; a bemused disbelief. Why? Explain, they seemed to say.Maybe you recall the sleeper hit “Heatwaves” by Glass Animals that was ubiquitous in the Summer of 2022? There’s a line that I always misheard: Heat waves been fakin' me outCan't make you happier now…Well, I always thought it was heat waves been freakin’ me out, because that made perfect sense to me. The year before, in late June 2021, the US Pacific Northwest experienced a Heat Dome event that shattered all kinds of records. It reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit here in Portland, Oregon. It sparked wildfires, warped train tracks, and contributed to a heat-related death toll of over 1400 people in the greater geographic area including Canada. Over 70 heat-related deaths occurred in the county I live in.I rarely enjoy feeling hot. The smell of forest fires provokes an adrenaline flight response that requires distinctly modern reasoning to suppress. The cabin fever that settles in after multiple bad air days due to wildfire smoke produces a profound feeling of disassociation. Smoky skies were until recently thought to be a western US state phenomenon, but that seems to up for debate now.The anticipation of these sensations as markers of Summer, often arriving earlier in the season each year, just makes me wish I could skip to fall. These are a couple of the reasons I don’t entirely look forward to summer.Nevertheless, apart from two days with temperatures in the 90’s, it’s been a mild and dry June here. Temperature-wise, it’s felt more or less in line with an average end to spring in the Pacific Northwest, which is to say, lovely. Highs have hovered in the low 70’s.Back in Forest park, baby bird voices can be heard seemingly around every other bend along the trails. Baby bird sounds are imbued with so much joy, new life, and vulnerability. You’ll get better looks at the parents too, as they dart through the shrubs and understory defensively. American Robins can be seen hopping along the trail in front of you in an apparent defensive distraction behavior to protect a nearby nest. In this way, it is a season of being on guard for the birds too. The trills of Pacific Wrens overlap at intervals. Their effusive song is sweetened by the columnar structure of the conifer woodlands. I picture the frenetic notes of their song like pinballs bouncing off bumpers, scattering through the understory, arriving at my ears in a wash.At the 16-minute mark we hear a Stellar’s Jay practicing its Red-tailed Hawk imitation. It must be a youngster because it calls again and again, not quite getting it right. Summer officially starts on June 21st, the day after this recording is released. All but the deepest creek canyons have already dried up in Forest Park. A wildfire 75 miles east of here destroyed 56 homes in the Columbia Gorge community of Rowena, Oregon last week. As I sit here writing this, it’s 34% contained. This news is just one of many developments in that time span to absorb, consider, and file away in my mental model of the world.I was out near where this soundscape was recorded last week, doing some plein air sketching and recording. It was so serene. When the world can feel overwhelming, it’s nice to just have something to do with your hands, something to focus on in the present, something to contemplate with a sense of wonder.Happy Summer Solstice. Thanks for being here; for listening and reading. Forest Spring Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday, June 20th.

I’ve been doing soundwalks for three years now, but it feels like longer. Crane Lake Soundwalk is officially #64.I remember the day my dad told me he listened to The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” on the morning of his 64th birthday. He expressed a certain disbelief that he caught up to the song he first encountered as a twenty-year-old. He didn’t feel sixty-four, he said. I even remember the day he repurchased the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album as a CD in his forties. He picked me up at Dudley’s Records in downtown Portland, Oregon, and on a whim did some used CD shopping. In addition to the aforementioned Beatles, he picked up Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tillerman and James Taylor’s Greatest Hits Vol. 1. Quite the haul, and ultimately not lost on me, even though I was in the thrall of Post New Wave. I spent my money on New Order and The Smiths. Anyway, I suppose that’s just to say, time has a way of sneaking up on all of us. And it leads me to ask, as one does occasionally, how did I get here? Luckily I’d been doing some thinking on it recently and I have a few responses in mind. Here is why I’m still making soundwalks: * These soundwalk environmental recordings—rendered while moving through the landscape at the human scale—possess an intimacy that a fixed position soundscape does not have. In the same way that a human photographed in front of a redwood tree helps communicate the grandeur of the tree, footsteps, and the passing of sounds in and out of the audible horizon lend dimensionality and scale. * It’s so much easier to get “good tape”, when you just roll all the time.* It gets me outside. * There’s room to grow. I’m getting better.Crane Lake Soundwalk is an interesting addition to the catalog. It’s stimulating. There’s a lot of wildlife to hear. And if you have the time to spare, you can compare this soundwalk to my debut Listening Spot release, Crane Lake Suite, made on the same day, in the same place, but from a fixed position. It does illustrate differences in the approach.It’s just not every day you find yourself next to a shallow body of water roiling with carp.Now, if you just tuned in to the soundwalk without reading this, and didn’t know about the carp, you might think it was me sloshing through the water, before realizing the splashes had a fishiness to them. I can imagine it being a little puzzling to the uninitiated.To get to Crane Lake you walk down a grassy lane on a seldom visited quarter of Sauvie Island, just north of Portland, Oregon.Soon enough you come to the lake. There are no official trails. Just slightly trampled lanes in the grass. Here we hear Cedar Waxwing, Black-headed Grosbeak, Tree Swallow, Song Sparrow, Western Wood Pewee, Yellow Warbler, Swainson’s Thrush… We also hear the swish of grass underfoot and the cottonwoods quaking in the breeze.At the lake Great Blue Herons stand statuesque. They occasionally erupt from the grass thickets with Cretaceous croaks, ranging around for a new fishing spot. This is like a fast food drive thru for Bald Eagles. Easy pickings in the shallow lake.Juveniles have dark head feathers. They remain silent for the duration of my visit. You will, however, hear a Stellar’s Jay mimic a Red-tailed hawk call (28:20). The Red-tailed Hawk call has long been a stand-in for an eagle call in Hollywood movie sound design. Fine sheets of rain fall in waves. The drops sound like little pin pricks, falling on the brim of my recording hat. I walk along the western perimeter of the lake on a little lane. Gentle sounds abound. I walk slowly. This is not the oldest composition I’m sharing this year, but it was tracked a year ago. It’s a little surprising to me that I’ve stuck with a lot of these instrument voices since then. My general drift, I would say, is toward a more electrified palette. But finding the electric sounds that are expressive is time consuming, so I guess it makes sense that when I find a few, I’m going to use them for a while. That’s about all I have to say about this one. I hope it adds a little something to your corner of the world. Thanks for listening and reading!Crane Lake Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, June 6. Have a listen, and if you enjoy what you hear, please consider telling just one person about it. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is who we hear at the top of our soundwalk: The Black-headed Grosbeak.They say it sounds like an operatic American Robin. I can’t say I disagree. Its phrases rise and fall with ebullient fluidity.This week we are back in Forest Park, in my hometown, Portland, Oregon. It’s the subject of a multifaceted series that is spooling out across all my music pseudonyms throughout the year, and probably into the next here on Substack and on music streaming services. So far we’ve been introduced to Forest Park Rain Suite I & II, The Wildwood Trail in Sound and Vision, and last week’s Ancient Forest Suite. This week it’s Forest Melody Suite.The first thing I notice is that this breaks the rule I set for Listening Spot releases: no pianos leading the way. Forest Melody Suite has a Wurlitzer electric piano front and center through the whole 17 minute runtime. I love the deep tone of this particular electric piano, and I love the punctuated, syllabic structure of a phrase played on a piano. Maybe hearing all the melodic birdsong made it irresistible to reach for it. Or maybe it was just easier to start with. Honestly, I don’t remember. It was the path of least resistance, one way or another.The environmental audio we hear was recorded in the Miller Creek watershed on the quiet northern side of Forest Park; definitely a top spot for migratory birds in the vast park. Here you’ll find a healthy fish-bearing creek (the only one in the park to host salmonids) and complex structure in the forest canopy. I kinda took Forest Park for granted, growing up in Portland. But it really is something special! We hear plenty of Pacific Wren, Wilson’s Warbler, Cordilleran Flycatcher, Downy Woodpecker, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Song Sparrow and some tricky-to-ID baby birds too. The scene was positively alive.Thanks for being here; for listening and reading. Forest Melody Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday, May 30th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadcrouch.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comRenewalSometimes my brain wakes up before my body wants to these days. And sometimes, when this occurs, I reach for my earbuds to feed my brain a gentle signal while my body transitions from asleep to awake. A couple days ago, when this happened, I instinctively decided to cue up the oldest, least recognizable opus in my trove of draft audio files: #2046. (You’re invited to tap that play button at the top if you haven’t already to listen in.)The tones of a familiar Pianet electric piano trickled into my ears, followed by a tape-delayed synth, an unrecognized electrified piano, then brighter, more kaleidoscopic voices. I had forgotten this piece. I listened, charmed by many things, annoyed by numerous details as well. Later that day I pulled up the session, noting it was created a year ago, to the day. I massaged it, sanded its rough sonic edges, and came away with something I was happy with. Indeed, I’m eager to share this rediscovered piece. I’ve titled it Renewal. Beyond the preview above, I’m making this another Substack Exclusive. This is the only place you can hear it.Soundwalk is a reader-supported publication. Paid subscriptions start at less the $3/month. Free subscribers are valued too!Looking back, it is perhaps one of the earliest harbingers of a new direction that would become my Sleeping Animal oeuvre. Which is to say, it’s the first of a string of impressionistic and atmospheric instrumental suite pieces that do not use environmental recordings to lend atmospheric overtones. Speaking of which, another planned Sleeping Animal release arrives tomorrow, May 22 on all streaming services. Look for Rays, wherever you get your music.Human Dust, or 50 Times Dumber than a StarfishThis morning I did it again. This time, at 5:30 am I chose to cue up the debut album by Eliana Glass: E. I formed a favorable first impression watching a video clip, so I was hopeful the album would prove out my hunch. Long story short, after a couple listens it largely did. I do like Glass’ unique voice, which according to her blurb, “blends sonorous, androgynous poise with fluttering delicacy.” One track, “Human Dust” piqued my interest as I tried to parse out the lyrics in the dawn light of the bedroom.The first line grabbed me: “He was an artist. He died of a heart attack. He was born fifty years ago, which means he lived a half century, or 2/3 of his expected lifespan.”Well that could be me, I thought. Go on. The nearly eight minute song then lists a number of statistical observations—both private and quotidian—in an attempt to eulogize this man with objective candor, as if from an omniscient point of view. But the tone, if objective, was not empathetic or charitable: “He was unhappy and lonely more often than not, achieved 1/10,000 of his dreams…” The line that really grabbed me was this: His work was good but not great,and the last 10 years of his life he resigned himself to this fact.Could that also be me? I wondered. In the ranks of all those who self-identify as artists, what percentage are great? And these “great” artists; do they know it, like without a doubt? Padding down the stairs to make the morning coffee I felt a mix of introspection, intrigue and a touch of resentment as I strained to decode all the lyrics. Later that morning I discovered that the lyrics are a reading from the text of Agnes Denes’ 1969 art installation piece, Human Dust, which features a shallow bowl of cremains on a pedestal, and the text on the wall.The interesting moments in the song come from misreads. While describing the man’s future offspring, instead of “1 will have an unusual talent, 1 will be a politician, 1 will collect garbage,” Glass sings, “I will have an unusual talent, I will be a politician, I will collect garbage,” forcing a lurch in narrative framing. Instead of “[He consumed] 140 gallons of wine,” Glass murmurs, “4000-and gallons of wine”. Rather than “moved his bowels 18,548 times,” a mouthful, she abbreviates “384 times” with a cool nonchalance. Lastly, instead of “his brain contained 1010 neurons and it received 109 electrical impulses,” she deadpans “His brain contained 10 neurons and 10 electrical impulses.” Poor soul. No wonder he never achieved greatness. He was a constipated drunk; 50 times dumber than a starfish! But, comic reading aside, the heft of the work survives—despite the specifics lost in translation—and one could argue it possesses an impact that the stark bones, dust and text in a museum do not convey. I ruminated on it all morning.I could not find the text quoted on the internet. I zoomed in on the gallery photo to read it. ( In all fairness, the “1” in the typeface is mistakable for an “I”.)His work was good but not great. It struck a nerve. It’s a much more potent insult to an artist, than say, a tradesperson. Good but not great is often too much to hope for, for say, a politician, but will do fine for a garbage collector, waiter, coder, etc… We hold artists to a higher standard, don’t we?It’s a trap. It’s a wine snob type of thing, I defensively thought. “Great” is just marketing. An illusion. Shoot, even good-but-not-great wine is an order of magnitude more tolerable than good-but-not-great art. That brings me back to work #2046 / Renewal slumbering a year in digital obscurity. Just yesterday I started in on #2114. In the past year I’ve taken 70 stabs at making audio art. It’s fair to say they can’t all be great. Maybe none can. Fair enough. Whatever.I’ve always subscribed to the idea that art is not so different from other work. It’s just something you keep doing, especially if you want to do it for a living. There is no one correct way of working as an artist. It takes all kinds. It’s more of a use it or lose it proposition, as far as I’m concerned. In 1977 Woody Allen offered, “80% of life is showing up.” He went on to say, “Sometimes it’s easier to hide home in bed. I’ve done both,” but that part got lost. So it goes with creative work. You show up. You put in the time. You practice. Hopefully you find ways to evolve and grow. Eventually you revisit old work, and it might inform a new direction. Shoot, some part of the creative process can even happen in bed. But, boil it all down, it’s mostly just showing up, just like any other job. If someone says you’re great, well that’s just a bonus.Thanks for reading. Thanks for showing up here. I don’t take it for granted.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comI’ve been doing a lot of writing about Forest Park, here in Portland, Oregon, so I decided not to double up this week. In fact, I’m putting a pause on the Wildwood Trail Sound & Vision series, to pick it back up later this year, when the photos I took match the season better. The environmental audio for today’s release was captured at Ancient Forest Preserve, a non-contiguous 27-acre chunk of Forest Park floating about two miles to the northwest of the 5200 acre park proper; an island outpost of old-growth, managed by the Forest Park Conservancy with little fanfare. Private forest lands surround it on two sides, while the Metro-owned Burlington Creek Forest fans out like an apron beneath it, providing public access.This is what it looks like from above:Recorded last December, this soundscape is quite delicate. Small water sounds are magnified and cave-like. Allow me to explain: Burlington Creek flows through this forest, entering a culvert beneath a gravel road at its eastern boundary. My microphones were just within in earshot of that culvert, a 6’ diameter pipe, which had an amplifying effect on the water trickling through. The stereo field captures both the foreground creek sound as well as the distant culvert undertones. I tried to select instrument voices that blended well with this constellation of little sounds. Droplet synths, hammered dulcimer-esque synths, banjo, pan drum... Washy sounds and sparkly sounds.Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and Ruby-crowned Kinglets busily forage in the mild December evening light. Geese fly overhead. And, there’s a mammal or two as well. Possibly deer. Possibly a very quiet human. A mystery.Ancient Forest Preserve has a squiggly horseshoe trail nearly looping back to itself. I made a leisurely circuit while leaving my recording gear to soak up the creek sound. I didn’t expect to see anyone else in the fading light. What a memorable evening; what a charmed place. Thanks for revisiting it with me. Ancient Forest Suite is available under the artist name Listening Spot on all streaming platforms Friday, May 16th.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.comThis soundwalk concludes a short series from the Redwood Coast of Northern California, including the Substack-only Fern Canyon Soundwalk, as well as Grove of the Titans Soundwalk and Preston Island Soundwalk.Brown Creek Trail was the clear winner on the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park trail map for soundwalkin’. It runs parallel to the busy scenic parkway, with a ridge rising up between the two, acting as sound baffling. It’s probably one of the quieter options in the park. The creek adds to the relaxed atmosphere, and draws in the birds. I loved this hike.I’m going to drop this Steinbeck quote again, because I think it bears repeating:"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 SteinbeckIt’s so true. I actually took more videos than photos on this hike. (The quote applies to video too. you can’t successfully make a video of a redwood tree.) I captured short clips out of habit, thinking they would lend themselves to Spotify “Clip” content. I used to do this for a while; add little video clips to all my tracks, just on that platform. It was tedious, but I rationalized it was a nice portal into visual world of the soundwalk, and I thought it maybe it would put me in the good graces of the algorithm. It didn’t seem to move the needle in that regard.Then I started questioning how it changed a listener’s relationship to the music, seeing an <8 second video loop over and over. Further, I noticed the user interface incentivized interaction with these clips with an animated rectangle at the top of an album track list. For me, because the tracks are invariably longer than the video clips, it just made me feel less relaxed, and more aware of the skip button. This is not what I wanted to facilitate, so I don’t do it anymore. So, no videos in this post either. Same reason. I want to facilitate settling in. Closing eyes. Letting the mind wander. Basking in the sound, not the pixels. I was with my family on this walk, lagging behind just out of earshot much of the time. This was a “working vacation”, while out on some quiet trails. There is a short spur loop trail in the middle of this valley, leading visitors by many outsized redwoods, named after “founding fathers of forestry”. And, here I thought it was just birds that were given honorific names. Generally speaking, I’m not in favor of naming birds and trees after people, but I’ll go along with the quote on the plaque at the entrance: Forestry is a good thing but love is better. Speaking of loops, we went for the loop hike option which added some elevation gain on the South Fork Trail. Soon we were seeing the trees from a different point of view.I read a trail user’s review that resonated with me. “This trail could be called ‘The Circle of Life trail’. Everywhere there is death of the forest but new life growing from it,” she wrote. It’s astounding how regenerative these ecosystems are. The music is about what you might expect from me. The tempo is slow and measured. Arrangements are minimal; a string of duets for the most part. There are some droney passages. I like this one. It’s my hope it can be of some use to you. Thanks for listening and reading along with me here!Redwood Soundwalk is available on all music streaming services today, May 2nd.