Michigan water mix (small creek in Charlevoix; Kalamazoo thunderstorm; Lake Michigan waves in Fisherman’s Island State Park ; kayaking on the Platte River). Listen to 18+ minutes “Water Symphony”. Watch the same on YouTube (includes gorgeous water photos from mostly lower Michigan, some upper Michigan, and Kauai, Hawaii).
Paw Paw Prairie Fen Land Preserve , Spring 2020 early morning gorgeous wetlands chorus including a trickling water inlet (originally recorded using four channels). Listen to the full length version (23+ minutes). Watch the same on YouTube (includes photos from the preserve on different dates).
Paw Paw Prairie Fen Land Preserve, late Winter (3/12/2021) bird and waterfowl sounds with trickling water (short version). Long version with a few photos (around a half hour): Paw Paw Prairie Fen Preserve 3/12/2021.
Paw Paw Prairie Fen Land Preserve, sounds/images from the Beaver dam
Paw Paw Prairie Fen Land Preserve , Spring 2020 recording right on the pond near the trail head. Nice goose landing sounds just past the middle of the track (flew right by me).
June 16-18, 2021 Kalamazoo storms. Recorded on our front porch, includes thunder, light to heavy rain and a downpour, wind chimes (one on each side of the porch), and occasional heavy winds – plus our ever present birds, even a tree frog gets in the act. A great sound to relax or fall asleep to. Listen to a shorter version of this as a partner with music: Concept
September 20, 2023 recording of preparing then making coffee in a vintage Pyrex 6 cup stove top coffee maker. This model was manufactured from 1952 to 1956 and was my grandfather’s coffee pot. I remember him using this after meals when I was a kid. This recording includes unpacking Turkish coffee, preparing the coffee maker with a filter, etc., then the actual brew. The brew part of the recording was condensed. There was little staging in this recording, this is pretty much what it sounds like when I, somewhat noisily, prepare stove-top coffee.
July 4, 2020 excerpt of fireworks in a Kalamazoo neighborhood.
Nature sounds I recorded in Al Sabo Land Preserve and posted to Jansen Photography website years ago, along with beautiful photos from Al Sabo covering all seasons: Four Seasons at Al Sabo Land Preserve.
Wind chime trio. Two are from my front porch (metal chimes), one is over the back deck (bamboo chime).
Wind chime quartet. Same recording as the wind chime trio above, with a fourth track added. This is a 25 year old wind chime I built that’s been broke for years, I finally fixed it a few days ago and it’s in the back yard nestled in the pines. The tubes are from old plumbing pipes from when I renovated our previous house. The wind catch is a bent chunk of scrap tin.
Amazing Grace as a trumpet mouthpiece quartet (sheet music from https://www.8notes.com). I created this during Covid-19 stay at home, and away from the band I play in. This has been floating around the internet among trumpet players, and yes, I’m the original culprit.
Resistance is futile. Another Covid-19 time creation – my humorous take on the famous Borg from Star Trek – I’m imagining a very large trumpet section after many assimilations.
St James Infirmary trumpet quartet (sheet music from https://www.8notes.com). At the beginning of Covid-19, the band started talking about recording a chart remotely (each from our homes), so I wanted to see how much work you needed to put in recording tracks separately without hearing the other instruments. You have to consider meter, intonation, interpretation, etc. In this case I tuned before recording each track and had a metronome going in headphones. After this exercise, it was pretty obvious to me that we needed to lay down the rhythm section first, then folks can play with that and send in the results. On the St James recording above, I didn’t play with anything other than a metronome (independently, four times), so it was difficult finding an intonation center.
Fisherman’s Island State Park (Lake Michigan waves), not the same recording used in Michigan water mix on this page.
TopSail Island, North Carolina – two different sounds: first from the front of the condo on the inter-coastal waterway, then followed by the ocean on the other side.
Paw Paw Prairie Fen Land Preserve, crickets, mostly, and a snorting Whitetail Deer – late night, almost no light, still some birds kicking up sounds. Between road noise, a plane, and some dude running a chain saw, I managed less than five minutes of relatively clean sound from sixty minutes of recording. I’ve been meaning to add my two cents regarding noise pollution…
Spring 2020 rain on my back deck (4/27/2020) with some thunderstorm sounds recorded on the front porch on 5/14/2020, mixed in. Same house, different porches, different days.
Early April, 2021 – Bow in the Clouds Preserve, Kalamazoo. Shotgun mics practically touching the stream (very soft rapids), during high wind hitting the trees, especially White Pine. Some additional wildlife sounds.
Another back deck storm, but this time with high winds you can hear running through the White Pine trees, and the guttural sound of a couple of Green Herons (along with a few other chatty birds).