Crane Lake Soundwalk

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