Electronic Music

Electronic Music Trailer Bonus Episode 52 Season 1

Jason Singh - Sounds Of Nature

Jason Singh - Sounds Of NatureJason Singh - Sounds Of Nature

00:00
Jason Singh is a sound artist, producer and performer. His creative output is an exploration of the natural world, voice and a wide range of music technologies. Works include live performance, immersive installations, studio recordings, broadcasts and sound walks. 

In this show he talks about how he makes music using the MIDI Sprout interface, a device that senses the electrical voltage of plants and converts it into MIDI information. He then uses the notes to control Ableton to produce the sounds he used in his recordings and immersive installations.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
01:48 - Getting Started in Audio
06:17 - Collaborating With Other Creatives
09:46 - Studio Toys
12:48 - Custom Built Instruments And Interfaces
14:08 - Live Performances
19:41 - Collaborating With Nature Using Biofeedback
25:07 - Using The MIDI Sprout and PlantWave
29:47 - Experiencing Nature Sounds In Real-Time
31:44 - Creating An Immersive Installation For Womad
40:54 - Opening Your Ears To Everyday Sounds

Audio Credits:
Afternoon - a commission by National Trust to create an entirely vocal piece which mimics the sounds of a woodland area in Tatton Park in Cheshire.
Passing Light - an Ambient Jazz piece featuring trumpet player Yazz Ahmed.
Rhubarb  - is a biosonfication track from the latest release "The Hidden Music of Plants and Trees", created in collaboration with a Rhubarb plant.

MIDI Sprout - https://www.midisprout.com/
PlantWave - https://plantwave.com/en-gb

Jason Singh Biog

Jason Singh is sound artist, nature beatboxer, producer, dj, curator, facilitator and performer. Jason’s life and work is rooted in listening - he follows a multi-sensory and cross-species approach to sound and music. His creative output is an exploration of the natural world, voice and a wide range of music technologies. Works includes live performance, immersive installations, studio recordings, music for film and theatre, deep listening and well being experiences, sound walks, broadcasts, music workshops, podcasts, soundtapes and immersive DJ sets. 

Collaborations and commissions include a diverse range of organisations and artists including BBC, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, V&A Museum, Earthshot Prize, WOMAD, Kew Gardens, Chester Zoo, SONOS, Luke Jerram, BFI, Celtic Connections, RNLI, National Trust, Tate Britain, Nitin Sawhney, George Ezra, Big Narstie, Yazz Ahmed, Shabaka Hutchings, Sebastian Rochford, Leafcutter John, Graham Massey (808 State), Natacha Atlas, Sarathy Korwar, Talvin Singh and Rokia Traore to name just a few. Jason is an associate Soundscape artist with D&B audiotechnik.

https://jasonsinghthing.com/

Credits:
Afternoon - was a commission by National Trust to create an entirely vocal piece which mimics the sounds of a woodland area in Tatton Park in Cheshire, England. 
Passing Light - Ambient Jazz piece featuring trumpet player Yazz Ahmed 
Rhubarb  - is a biosonfication track from the release "The Hidden Music of Plants and Trees" created in collaboration with a Rhubarb plant.

Caro C Biog
Caro C is an artist, engineer and teacher specialising in electronic music. Her self-produced fourth album 'Electric Mountain' is out now. Described as a "one-woman electronic avalanche" (BBC), Caro started making music thanks to being laid up whilst living in a double decker bus and listening to the likes of Warp Records in the late 1990's. This 'sonic enchantress' (BBC Radio 3) has now played in most of the cultural hotspots of her current hometown of Manchester, UK. Caro is also the instigator and project manager of electronic music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.
URL: http://carocsound.com/
Twitter: @carocsound
Inst:
@carocsound
FB: https://www.facebook.com/carocsound/

Catch more shows on our other podcast channels: https://www.soundonsound.com/sos-podcasts

Creators & Guests

Host
Caro C
Caro C is an artist, engineer and teacher specialising in electronic music. Her self-produced fourth album 'Electric Mountain' is out now. Described as a "one-woman electronic avalanche" (BBC), Caro started making music thanks to being laid up whilst living in a double decker bus and listening to the likes of Warp Records in the late 1990's. This 'sonic enchantress' (BBC Radio 3) has now played in most of the cultural hotspots of her current hometown of Manchester, UK. Caro is also the instigator and project manager of electronic music charity Delia Derbyshire Day.

What is Electronic Music?

Welcome to the Sound On Sound Electronic Music podcast. On this channel we feature some of the pioneers of the industry, interview musicians and talk about retro and current gear.

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Hello and welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast about electronic music and all things synth. I'm Caro C and in this episode I'm talking with Jason Singh.

Jason is a sound artist, nature beatboxer, producer, DJ, curator, facilitator and performer. Jason's creative output is an exploration of the natural world, voice and a wide range of music technologies. Works include live performance, immersive installations, studio recordings, music for film and theatre, sound walks, broadcasts, and many international collaborations.

Jason is also an associate soundscape artist with D& B Audio Technic. Let's start with a taste of Jason's work. This is an extract from a piece called Afternoon, which was a commission by the National Trust to create an entirely vocal piece. mimicking the sounds of a woodland area in Tatton Park in Cheshire.

Hello Jason Singh and welcome to the Sound on Sound podcast.

Hi Caro, thank you very much for having me on.

Yeah, so wow, we've got so much to talk about. I think we should start with a kind of plotted history summary of your sonic and musical journey so far really and how you've got to be the kind of musical sonic polymath that you are now.

Well, I've kind of, I've sort of always had a deep love for listening since I was a child and I've loved listening to different things. I love listening to sounds. Sort of natural artificial, human made as well as music. And I've heard music in, the sort of, in the sort of every day since I was a kid.

Yeah. Before I realized the thing around music, I was felt like I was already listening to music just in the sort of world around me. So that's like where things start really a deep love of listening. And then through that, I've also, rhythm is a huge part of my life and listening to patterns and rhythms and things.

That kind of manifested. Into drum kit and percussion and then turntables and also beat boxing and playing with electronic gadgets to record and mess around and play around with sound. And yeah, so it's that sort of love of, and the sort of fun of, playing with machines, playing with technology to create rhythms and searching for rhythms, from a sort of a beat perspective, I've always had this.

Thing of trying to find the perfect beat and that's not necessarily just on drums, but they're the perfect pattern So that sort of fuels me On an everyday basis and then I guess of growing up, you know moving through these different technologies and musical art forms I realized that there were musical genres that I could listen to that sort of musically articulated the world that, that I'm in.

And that was predominantly through jazz. I moved from London in 1993 to Manchester. And I was very quickly introduced to a whole group of incredible musicians. And one of them was Shagan LaFrench who was part of the Speakeasy collective. And I remember when I met Shagan, He was playing this album in his house and it absolutely blew me away.

And I was it was the first time I think I heard in music how I heard the world. And he said, Oh, this is called bitches brew and it's by Miles Davis. And I was just completely, it was brilliant because it was like a revelation that, Oh, actually you can make music like this, and then really, I guess from the nineties, I've been involved in music education projects extensively with DJ culture, putting on nights, promoting club nights, being involved in different kinds of musical collectives in Manchester, in London. And then went on to facilitate and produce projects.

And then working across art form, working in dance, working in film theater. Yeah. And sort of everything in between. I think what's really lovely is that I personally just have this absolute love of sound and what can happen with that. And the way that sort of the role that technology plays, in, in listening in new ways and finding new, like unique ways of listening to the world outside of the instrumentation that we are in terms of our body.

So yeah, it's. Is there's a lot of stuff, and like you said it's not what it's not, it's definitely not linear in the sense of, Oh, then is this, and then is that things have ebbed and flowed and, spent time collecting particular kinds of music of particular underground music genres, and then switching from that and doing experimental sound design for.

For documentary series and then teaching and, sharing those things and then also just absorbing, absorbing pattern, not necessarily just through music, but through other art forms which then, influence and make their way into what I do as a producer, as a composer, as a DJ and a facilitator.

Yeah. And collaboration. I've only ever seen you, yes, you have stuff in your own name, but it feels like collaboration is absolutely key what you do. So you're not only responding to the technology or actually using the technology and yourself to respond to others.

Yeah. 100%. I absolutely love collaborating.

I, as much as my, I've got this sort of solo life as a performer. I think what I actually thrive on is when I'm in a, I'm in a space with other creatives both, human and non human. Early collaborations, I guess would have been with other DJs playing music that I've I, I have, and then other DJs who share their collections on the dance floor and also, privately and then when I started moving and transitioning from the dance floor and the DJ booth into sort of stage and live scenarios as a performer my life turned.

Dramatically, when I started collaborating with Nitin Sawney and at the time I was in the early days of beatboxing and I was working with turntables as a musical instrument. And and I ended up, writing tunes with Nitin and touring and yeah, and then doing things that.

Flipped my life. And yeah, and then collaborations have gone on to, lots of different artists in many different, situations of, just the sort of examples that come to my mind playing with, the Malian singer, Rocky Etrori. And playing this amazing West African music as a, and accompanying her as a beat boxer.

Stuart McCallum, Matthew Housel, Talvin Singh, Chewbacca Hutchings, Yaz Ahmed, Natasha Atlas. And yeah, that's, that's just in a sort of musical sense, then there's, been collaborations with dance and food and textiles and Yeah, photography, text and yeah, again, all of those things, I guess for me, all of those things are music and the collaborations are all in some way musical because I feel like music or music is the big one really.

But also it's a relationship, isn't it? Everything's in relationship to each other and we're in relationship to everything. And sometimes that can really, it really builds that. And, strengthens that connection, doesn't it, to life itself?

Yeah, 100%. I guess being brought up on Indian spirituality, where, everything is connected.

There's everything, it's holistic. There is no kind of fragmentation or sort of compartmentalization of the arts or spirituality or science. Everything is part of the whole. And I guess, the sort of, the more that I dive into that. And explore that the more it proves itself to me that, yeah everything is connected.

Sometimes the language might be different. The connections are all there.

Yeah. Awesome. So let's talk about the tools then. How have those tools evolved from theoretically maybe turntables and a microphone?

Yeah I guess I've spent a lot of time and I spend a lot of time alone.

And I know we call them tools, but I feel like they're more toys than they are tools because I just love playing with things. I don't really sometimes even understand, what their purpose is. And I may repurpose something for, for something else, but I guess, I think the first kind of, the first thing.

Tool really, or, toy would have been drumsticks and then applying those sticks to skins, to create rhythms. But then, yeah, using, using and exploring the turntable. And I think the turntable really blew me away in terms of being able to articulate. Myself by manipulating other people's music through, two decks, a mixer and, kill switches and faders and EQs and being able to turn off a deck and rewind it or hold a piece, hold a record and bring it backwards and forwards and generate a rhythm from that, that was different to what was actually on the record itself.

That to me, that was an absolute, like I became obsessed with that really. And then at the same time, growing up in the, in the eighties being around, machines like the Commodore 64, the Commodore Amiga, I guess those machines for me were really, I didn't know there was a word.

I didn't know what sampling was. I didn't know that, I knew nothing about bit rates or anything in technicalities. All I knew is that I could record into my computer and I could press a key and it will trigger, it will play this sound. And then if I do, if I click another key, it will slow that sound down.

And for me, that was just a way of just diving into these worlds where I could pitch shift and, and slow and speed up tempos. Of sounds to create other things. And it was all sound, it was all based on other people's music. And I just really loved that because I could hear things in the things I was listening to and the machines allowed me to then bring those other things out.

And then it's gone on to, modular synthesis and playing around with analog synths and drum machines. And then also working with instrument builders who hack instruments or create new instruments, both in software and hardware. And yeah, trying to find, because I'm not a programmer, I don't have any electronic sort of knowledge of, circuitry and things like that.

I just have an idea and I go I have this idea of this thing that I would like to explore. How can I, how can I explore that? And, who's out, who are the makers out there who sort of work in these ways and. So yes, definitely. So everything, is also collaborative.

Any examples of any of those hardware or software toys that you've, people have helped you realise?

Yeah, I work I live here in South Devon and there's a modular synth musician, artist, Robin, who has designed me a joystick that that I can use based on an Arduino that I can pan and move sounds around in real time when I'm doing things within multi channel scenarios.

He's also built me kind of electromagnetic microphones that I can listen to those kinds of electromagnetic frequencies that are in, my wifi router and plug sockets and things. And then also from, from a software perspective collaborations with leaf cutter John, where he built me an instrument where I could, it was like a it was a granular synth basically and effects machine where I could load samples in and record things in real time and process them based on objects, from collections at the VNA.

When I had a residency there in 2012 yeah, 15th century bowls that would become software granulated synth apps. So yeah, lots of different things.

Wonderful. So let's dive a bit into the kind of yeah, the live collaborations. I don't know whether you want to give us a general overview or whether you'd just like to showcase one example in terms of the process and again, the toys that you would, that you have employed for that particular collaboration.

It's two things really, when I was beatboxing with Nitin and doing live stuff that, that was heavily based on just my voice and a microphone. And so the technology and the toy was the SM58 and using it in creative ways unscrewing the top and placing the mic, deeper in on the outside of my throat or around parts of my body and creating textures and frequencies, through dismantling the microphone.

And again, but also looking at my body as a technology and how I could manipulate that. And that was really interesting to doing that literally without any other kind of external effects other than just the microphone and myself.

Good old SM58 workhorse.

Can you have, yeah, give you lots of fun. They did. And actually

I found that the beta 58 was actually better. For kind of, for beat boxing, cause it just has slightly lower end, that yeah, it was just better for kick drum bassy sounds. And then moving forward, quite a few years.

I was in a quartet with Yaz Ahmed, the trumpet player and We had the project called Yaz Ahmed's electric dreams. And I used a lot of machines and sort of pedals, in that the sort of main architecture really was the sort of the boss RC five Oh five loop station. And then a kind of a range of, granular.

Pedals really and delays things like the sort of Stroman timeline delay space echo chaos pads and also a machine by a pedal by a red panda called tensor like a live, yeah, granular processor. And then, yeah, many sort of, pedals came, yeah, came and went but that was for.

The sort of live processing, live recording and trying things and I really enjoy doing things that are, that are free open and, I can click things, I can press things to, to trigger tap tempos or manipulate things that kind of have their own time or they have their own sort of shapes.

Yeah. Generate other shapes and patterns. So those machines really helped me. Yeah, almost become like the other, the machines I was in collaboration with within a collaboration and we did some amazing shows sort of jazz cafe, jazz festivals around the country and, just recording the tail end of a symbol or, processing some of Yaz's trumpet horn and, running my voice, my own voice through things, it was absolutely wicked, and those machines have they're in my arsenal of, of hardware that if I'm doing things in a live.

As it's a live processing, live sampling, then they, I still use those machines and I sometimes engineers will say, Oh, that's a bit noisy or that, but I actually like the texture and I like the kind of the hum and the buzz of things that kind of, that sort of really give something an organic feel as opposed to everything sounding pristine all the time.

Does my head in, I guess it can also become a sort of a rabbit hole just constantly never ending. And I do. I think over the years, what's happened is that if I'd work on, I had an idea for a particular project, some people say, Oh, there's this thing that does this.

And buy that pedal or get that thing or but I guess these days I'm just more, I'm exploring the gear that I have and also just being a little bit more conscious of, the. The time and the money that I spend on gadgets on things, and trying to be a little bit more mindful about, the sort of footprint of what I'm doing and, yeah, just being a bit more conscious about the environment and, Do we need more electronics in the world?

I don't know.

I think most of my kit over the years has come from the Sound On Sound readers ads. Sorry to plug my own thing that I'm working for, but in terms of that, because generally people have looked after things really well. It's a great way of accessing stuff that otherwise you have to buy new.

Yeah, definitely.

Talking of collaboration, you've also collaborated with what we might call the natural world. I know you've done some imitating bird song for the BBC and also of course, making music with plants and trees and tell us about that.

Going back to the thing of sort of Eastern spirituality and philosophies all things are, all things have life in them.

And I guess, joining that up with a love of listening. I guess I've always been interested in, how I'm listening to the sounds of a fan in my bathroom and something within it makes it feel living. It makes it feel real and alive and communicating, and I guess from the kind of the extension of that, of listening to, everyday, everyday objects or everyday things, I just, I've always wanted to, I've always read different things, read different texts about, the sort of the natural world and frequency, within the natural world.

And a number of years ago, I came across an album by my lease, which, and if you're not familiar with my lease, she's an artist and instrument designer who created an album. Where she built an instrument that would, listen to biofeedback and can, convert those, convert that biofeedback information into music.

And it blew me away. And also there was an album in the seventies, which Stevie Wonder, I think it was called the secret world of plants or the world of plants. And although that itself was just songs based on plants, I guess it was just, again, it was an interesting thing of that, this whole natural world is alive, and the animals and the insects and the things that we can hear, but also trees and mushrooms and plants, all of these things are living things.

And then, yeah, just discovered different technologies. That kind of listen to vault, record voltages and then convert those voltages into other information, into MIDI in MIDI information. And I discovered this it's called the MIDI sprout and it's now actually defunct.

But the company that makes it plant with, which are called plant wave have got a kind of new version, but I prefer this old, Out of they can't get it anymore. A machine. And what I find with it is that I'm able to control the amount of information that is coming through it.

And, and I guess it's, it does what it, what I want it to do. And, by listening to plants, trees and mushrooms I guess I've just wanted to find a way to be able to articulate that to the world. And it's, it's quite now it is quite a popular thing.

People working with biosignification and biofeedback, but I guess, I'm. I'm very clear that I'm not an expert, and I don't wish to be an expert. I love exploration and, and the sort of playfulness of that to see where things can go. And I'm very passionate about that.

I guess for me, it's like. Yeah, today I'm recording plants and trees and mushrooms and soil and insects. And tomorrow it may be something else. And also, as a beatboxer kind of looking at ways of mimicking the natural world and also the imagined world, I'm, I like to create imagined environments using my voice, places that, people might make references to or animals that they might make references to, but they're also imagined animals.

There are also things that could be new possibilities. And so all of it is just like deeply exciting and deeply interesting. And and like I said, I like the kind of thing of, sometimes I don't know the name of a tree or I won't know the name of a bird. But that's irrelevant, it's about the kind of, it's about listening and helping it to, helping me to understand the world and myself, maybe, and potentially in a better way.

And there are things where, there are moments of learning when doing, doing things. When I was creating the soundscapes for for BBC wild isles we went out into Dartmoor and, I was working with fly agaric mushrooms and mycelium and, and I knew nothing, about those worlds, to really send us like a deep level, but there were moments of learning within that, and then acquiring knowledge in one way, which then has gone, Oh, actually what, it creates questions for other things.

So what about this and what about that? And then from there, it's Oh it's this type of mushroom or, this is what mycelium does. And yeah, it's you learn, you renew, you learn, you renew. And, and what it does is it just, I think the inquiry just always lends itself to just more discussion and more conversation and more questions really.

Yeah. The joyful curiosity. So I wonder, in terms of the MIDI sprout, which now I'm more aware of the plant wave, the device they have now, it's a kind of, am I right? And think it's a kind of sensor that goes on to, for example, connects with you put you place it either on a mushroom or let's say that under the back of a tree, and then it picks up.

It's not the electromagnetic, it's picking up signals, which then are translated into MIDI or audio, or would it just be MIDI? And then you can do what you want within Ableton, if you like.

Yeah, it's it's it picks up tiny fluctuations of voltage. From the tree or whatever it's attached to, and then it converts that into MIDI and it will assign that voltage to a, to a note.

And it is, yeah, it's MIDI information. And I guess, yeah, people use lots of, there's lots of different ways of manipulating that that information plant wave have a. They have now an app, which you can play the, the music of the plant or the tree directly through the app.

Or you can run that through an external instrument or within a, a DAW. I use Ableton and I use Ableton because I've never really been comfortable using linear. Production tools like logic or pro tools or, yeah. Any of those kinds of yeah. Cubase.

Exactly. I've just. It does something to my mind of brain left to, something moving a timeline moving from left to and I think being raised on tracker programs through the Commodore Amiga, where you just had these cycles of things running in cycles.

When I discovered Ableton and this whole idea of clips, to me, that was how I, that's how my brain works. This is how I work with sounds. I want to stretch things. I want to pull things apart. I want to drop an effect on, I want to, process it or isolate a little bit. And so Ableton really allows me to achieve the things that I want to achieve very quickly because my brain works very quickly. Hear something and I want to get to that point and yes, so that program really allows me to do that, but also the sort of functionality of it, of being able to, yeah, to connect other things, I love the, the connectivity of it.

So yeah the sort of work that I do, In terms of plants is this kind of relationship between a device, this Arduino midi sprout and then and then Ableton live and then a whole heap of synthesizers and effects and drum machines. Which are processing, reprocessing and then samplers, I imagine.

Yeah. Sometimes actually not samplers. I really like to work with the raw data that comes out of the plan. Yeah. I don't. Very rarely will I run anything through a sampler. It will go through, it will be, it will go through a synth or it will go through effects and and then I'll, I'll record those in real time and then maybe reprocess those, but I've, I very much like to work as closely as to what the plant is generating as possible.

So it's a different vocabulary, isn't it? Cause a lot of your. What I've, what I'm aware of in terms of your live stuff is more, you as the instrument, you as the composer, you as everything in a sense, the producer, the manipulator, the engineer, whereas this is more you're on on the outside create separation again, but do you know what I mean?

That kind of.

Yeah. I always feel like I'm facilitating a process. It's facilitation more than An intervention in any way there's been moments where I've been recording orchids and, this the plant itself is just generating this incredible, symphony of music and I'm just, steering certain things.

I might be adding some delay or, I don't know, like processing something in terms of pitch. But. Trying to yeah, to facilitate that process between the machine, the human and the tree, and yeah, seeing seeing what happens when with the sort of, the gestalt of all of those things.

I wonder if there's any particular collaborators of the non human world that you would, that really stick with you as wow, wasn't expecting that sound or that rhythm or that noise or that, yeah, symphony.

Yeah. I, to be honest, I think all the sort of the plants That I've collaborated with because everything is always different.

So you can never record the same thing twice because it's just different things happening all the time. And there's been, there's been moments where, especially doing things in a live situation where I've led a group into a forest and, we're recording an oak tree and everyone can hear the music being generated.

And. It's beautiful with things that can happen, like a bird will land on a branch and then slowly something will start to change in the music and people recognize it, and I guess what happens is as well is that the beautiful thing of when you're working with groups of people who are listening, they're listening out, to, to these things and then recognize that there is a change or they recognize that something's happening and how that then affects them.

To me, that's that just is a great example of how people can, yeah, be truly moved by, nature externally and internally, and it can change people in a really, dramatic way. It's really beautiful.

And then I think I'd like to delve a bit into your, I'm going to call it your D& B work, but I'm sure it's probably not just for D& B but you're more multi channel immersive work. Cause I know that, yours was cited as one of the most beautiful pieces that played at WOMAD last year. So I'd like to hear more about that.

Amazing. Yeah. I guess through through listening through my body I've always as a beatboxer trying to mimic sounds is always been, a kind of an inner aim that I don't just want to try and copy a sound, but I'm always thinking about how that sound.

Sounds in space, and where it's coming from and, and how that sound might yeah. How my body might be able to recreate the things. Additional to just the sound itself. Being aware of how sound moves in space. I guess working in, using binaural technologies, ambisonic and multi channel environments just always been just, interested in, experiencing sound in, in, in that way or being able to work with, engineers to say, actually, sometimes I've heard this sound doing this thing, and then this, there's some sort of phasing or some other weird thing that's happening with this.

Is there ways that we can recreate that as a headphone experience or something that would happen in a controlled sort of speaker environment? And so over the years I've dabbled in these different technologies and, some of them. I feel are probably not better or worse, but they there's a, I find that for instance, with the sort of ambisonic environments, they're very controlled for for a few people.

And, my work is very much about access and kind of, and people having access outside of, institutions and especially So I guess, I'm always searching for ways of being able to bring these kind of high end, if you like, audio experiences, to, to everyday people.

So last year I was commissioned by WOMAD festival to create a response to Luke Jerram's museum of the moon. It's an installation that I'd seen. Over the years of this gigantic moon hanging from a cathedral or swimming pool or in a forest. And and I always I always had this sort of inner dream really of I wonder, if I was ever create something for this thing, I wonder, what would that be?

And so anyway, last year I got commissioned by Tammy Bedford at WOMAD and, It was to create a response. And so the actual moon was hanging in this space, which was called the secret forest it was a kind of a circle of ash trees. Now, we've got ash dieback happening which is decimating trees and unbelievable rate.

And. Most of the ash trees were dying in that area. And so my idea was to create a series of soundscapes that were derived from those ash trees. Because I knew that by the time that the installation was going to be put in. Some of those trees won't be there. So to be able to still have their voices present was a kind of, yeah, it was a goal really that I wanted to achieve really.

We were put in touch with DMB who are one of the main sponsors of WOMAD festival. And I spoke to Jack and Amber audio who are based in Bristol and yeah, spoke about, how this might be achievable but I also work with an engineer called David McEwen, who is a soundscape engineer which is D& B immersive audio technology and And everybody was like on the same page of yeah, we're going to do this in in soundscape and it turned out to be this incredible 28 speaker resolution of, surround sound, 30 meter in, object in the woods.

And it was phenomenal. It was absolutely brilliant. So I created eight soundscapes called moon scales. And It was yeah, all derived from ash trees with additional processing and samples and yeah, taking people on this immersive journey, but then also because.

I was given the space for three days. I ended up curating like live events. So I did a DJ set DJ sets. We had collaborations with other musicians, had an Indian classical collaboration. There was talks by Chris Howard from BBC wild Isles. We had John Haycock playing Cora and it was all processed.

In a live for soundscape to give people this immersive 360 experience in the woods. And it was unbelievable. And like you said, people from the people from WOMAD were like, this has definitely been the highlight of this festival this year. And yeah, And it also forged a new relationship with D and B because they, they're really on board with kind of how I want it to hack the sort of soundscape system to work in the way that I work as a DJ, and an extension of sound system culture as, sound designer and someone who works as a sound artist in, creating installations.

But I want it to do it in a way where I could take soundscape apart and rebuild it. So we've got this really beautiful relationship now where Dean B support most of my immersive audio productions. And and we're working on developing a sort of a new. Yeah. And a new thing that we're going to be taking out on the road at some point.

But this year I've been asked back by Womad to do this voice DJ set in the soundscape tent. So looking forward to headlining that on the Sunday.

Wow. That must have been some rigging involved in aesthetically and sensitively installing everything from floor speakers to, the 360 floor speakers above you, and obviously wanting it still to feel like you're in a forest.

Yeah. Soundscape's really beautiful technology. Works on this idea of object orientated sound. So it's not in a sort of traditional sort of say ambisonic scenario, three 60 audio, where you've got sounds coming from, speakers above and his speakers on the floor.

This is a kind of an array, a lot, a ring of speakers with subs and then the mute, and then the signal is processed within that framework. That, that kind of invisible space becomes a three 60 Space to be able to work with audio within and yeah that's really special to be able to be, and cause it was in the woods when the, when it became darker and the night, night fell, it was, the speakers disappeared.

And we were doing these full on DJ sets and then also improvising vocally and mimicking things and processing things through the set. It was, people said, I've been getting, so there was, there's one group of people that are like, we've been going to gigs for 50 years and never experienced anything like this in my life and I've seen them all.

He said, I've seen them all, but I've never experienced anything like this. And it was a really, truly beautiful experience. And even being on a train randomly going to. Going to London from Devon and somebody in the, in, in the seat in front going, do you remember that thing at Woad, with the moon?

And that guy was DJing and beatboxing and it was just mad. It was just like people talking about it, nearly a year on. And it was a really, truly life changing experience in terms of also the size of creating work, of taking people from binaural headphone experiences into, having thousands of people in a space.

Completely rocking out and also like lying down and meditating and dancing and yeah, just being immersed in this sound world, but also being mindful of your other senses of, of smell and light and temperature. And, it was, yeah, it was truly like a holistic sonic experience.

Yeah. And other people, and it's that thing of. It's bringing it back to, dare I say, almost more natural, that kind of, it is very unnatural, the left right stereo constructed reality that we're very used to, or even mono. But it's something about, for me, you're wanting to reach for that beauty, that grace.

Yeah, I guess I, I feel it can be experienced on a daily and I do experience it on a daily basis. And it's, and I think you can experience that grace in very unexpected ways. If a person cultivates a practice of opening themselves up to be able to listen to the world, but not also just externally, but internally.

And. I guess the kind of the experience at Womad was brilliant in, in, in a way that, things that I'd heard or sounds I'd heard and techniques I'd experienced of ways that sounds were being made to implement and put those in that environment and present those, to a larger audience.

Yeah, was a brilliant experience to go, yeah, I just want to I don't know, do something with. The sound of flies, but I want to take out loads of the frequencies and just have this texture of wings that sort of moves around.

And then when you see, when you're observing people tuning into those kinds of sounds and it's yeah, we've done it. They get it, and people, I feel like they do get it and they do get it quite quickly. And which is also why I was saying before about this kind of thing about access to technology and access to these sort of, the systems that sometimes talk about them in a sort of a, almost like an effect in a sort of fetishized way, of.

Wow. Go into this kind of really clinical, sterile environment and you can hear sounds in this way. But then also similarly, someone can just see a butterfly in front of them and hear the sounds of the wings of a fly and all of a sudden they've just had this otherworldly experience, which has connected them in a way that, they're having this with thousands of other people.

Yeah. Wow. I think I'm going to leave it on that hopeful collective note. Yeah. Wonderful. Cool. Lovely to hear more about your work and get under the hood of your toys and processes. And yeah, wish you all the best with your adventures.

Nice one, Caro. Wicked. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on.

Thank you for listening and be sure to check out the show notes for further information, as well as links and details of other episodes in the electronic music series. And just before you go, let me point you to soundonsound. com forward slash podcasts. So you can check out what's on our other channels.

This has been a Caro C production for Sound On Sound.