The HomeSounds Show

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode, Rob, myself and our Sidestrand School group head to the East Norfolk Coast. Keeping the exact location secret for conservation reasons, and in spite of the car park pay machine doing its level best to prevent anyone from spending anytime there, we gathered and laid out our plans. A beach and sea wall walk of about 45 minutes will lead us to a colony of beach nesting little terns. A team of RSPB wardens, permanently sited next to the colony for its protection, will introduce us to these small, chatty, short-tailed and fast flighted birds. A beautifully warm, sunny and lightly winded day suggested almost perfect conditions await.LINKSwww.homesounds.orgwww.rspb.org.uk www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/little-ternBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-homesounds-show--5490625/support.

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode, Rob leads us on a hunt for Frogs and their copper-eyed cousins Toads. We started with a careful walk through the woods at Sheringham Park, dodging the toads crossing our path that were making safe passage to the ponds where they lay their spawn. Rob tells us that toads squeak, so we stopped to investigate. From Sheringham we jump back into the bus and make our way to another pond at nearby Beeston Common. An army of frogs await us, their soft croaking alerting us to their presence long before we make out their damp, huddled mass in the bright spring sunshine….LINKSHomeSoundsSheringham ParkBeeston CommonArnold LobelHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In 2024 I was privileged and delighted to be appointed ‘Environmentalist in Residence’ for Suffolk Libraries, an independent charity running the public library service for the county of Suffolk in the UK. For this residency I created a project titled ‘Seconds of Sound’ within which lay two main strands of work.The aim of the first was for me to walk between all 45 of Suffolk’s public libraries, recording acoustic habitats and environmental sound on the way and then disseminating these recordings into a collection to be added to the main library catalogue. Reaching between 1 and 3 libraries a week and covering 350 miles in total these walks began in late April and finished in the middle of October. They were surrounded by spring, summer and autumn, visited city, town, and village, farm, field and house, and followed road, track, path, coast, river and railway. The second strand was to create and deliver public events and activities to engage people in the sounds of the world around them and to encourage Active Environmental Listening. This work involved me leading public soundwalks, giving talks and delivering workshops at libraries across the county, and led to the creation of a unique Nature Silent Disco, the first performance of which took place at the First Light Festival in Lowestoft that year. This episode of the HomeSounds Show is taken from a conversation I had with Suffolk Libraries children’s librarian Sophie Green in October 2024. This conversation, part of Suffolk Libraries ‘Wild Reads’ initiative, followed an incarnation of the Nature Silent Disco at Ipswich Library that drew on extracts from the Seconds of Sound collection I had created, live environmental sound and elements of bio-sonification. In our conversation we discuss the aims of the residency, my experiences of walking around Suffolk recording sound, the business of field recording, the HomeSounds project, soundwalking practice, active environmental listening and some of the complexities of human relationships with environmental sound. At the end of our discussion is an extract of the Nature Silent Disco recorded at Mildenhall Public Library towards the end of my residency.LINKSHomeSoundsSeconds of Sound CollectionSuffolk LibrariesSuffolk Libraries Creative ResidenciesHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!A few weeks ago I managed to get my hands on a new microphone developed by the field recordist and sound artist Jez Riley French. The ecoutic is an adapted version of Jez’s popular c-series contact microphone. Short or long metal probes attach to the original c-series microphone body. These probes allow the microphone to penetrate soils, substrates, plant stems and many other materials, enabling very fine sound within these materials to be detected without the low rumble often associated with this kind of recording. Excited to try the microphone, and confident that our Sidestrand School group would be equally enthused, Rob and I agreed that trips to the woods at Sheringham Park, and the gardens at Felbrigg Hall might offer good opportunities for fruitful sound exploration.LINKSSheringham ParkFelbrigg HallEcoutic MicrophoneMartin Noble-JamesHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode I, along with Sue Grime from North Norfolk District Council’s Coastwise project, take our Sidestrand school group on a trip to West Runton beach. West Runton forms part of the Deep History Coast, a 22 mile section of North Norfolk shoreline famously home, amongst other ancient treasures, to the remains of a 600,000 year old Steppe Mammoth, the bones of rhinos, hyeanas and bears, chalk rock pools that reveal rich bounties of fossils as the tide goes out, footprints and tools of our ancient human ancestors and, our contemporary focus for this trip, a line of cliffs that are slowly giving themselves to the sea. Sue and I were then joined by Rob on a second trip to the village of Happisburgh, another section of this deep history coast that is disappearing, though in this instance much more quickly than that of West Runton. Here we explore the beach, the cliff tops and St Mary’s Church, a religious site that has been watching the advancing sea for over 1000 years, and that sometime in the next 100 will be undermined by the waters wearing motion, and the ground’s submission to it. Our aims were to listen to the cliffs and the rock pools, the sea and the sand, and the soon to be lost topography of these places, and also to explore more generally the physical, human, and of most interest to us, acoustic nature of coastal erosion.LINKSwww.homesounds.org Home | Coastwise (north-norfolk.gov.uk) https://www.timeandtidebell.org https://www.visitnorthnorfolk.com/Deep-History-CoastHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome home everybody!In this episode, Rob led our Sidestrand school group on a hunt for Hares across the North Norfolk Countryside. Using the school minibus as a mobile hide, we scampered down country lanes, and pitched in opportune parking spots when we either came across suitable hare habitats, or spotted one sitting on, or sprinting across, a farmers field. To aid our hunt, we made use of a Hare Call to try to draw them closer, or peak their interest. A classic anthropogenic sound of the countryside, the Hare Call peaked out attention about as much as it did the hares. LINKSHomeSoundsHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode, the second of two which have been created as part of HomeSounds ‘Lessons from Listening’ series, Martin talks with Ximena Alarcon, a sound artist-researcher interested in listening and sounding human sonic migrations, and experiencing the resonances left in between the borders we cross when we tune in and meet others across distant locations.Throughout her career, Ximena has created what she calls telematic sonic improvisations and interfaces for relational listening, in order to understand migratory experience from a sensory perspective. Our conversation explores Ximena’s work, the points of connection between this and HomeSounds, and the subtle power of listening to cross physical borders, cultural context, political circumstance and personal experience. LINKSXimena AlarconThree Listening Rituals in Sonic MigrationsHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode, the first of two which have been created as part of HomeSounds ‘Lessons from Listening’ series, Martin talks with Ximena Alarcon, a sound artist-researcher interested in listening and sounding human sonic migrations, and experiencing the resonances left in between the borders we cross when we tune in and meet others across distant locations.Throughout her career, Ximena has created what she calls telematic sonic improvisations and interfaces for relational listening, in order to understand migratory experience from a sensory perspective. Our conversation explores Ximena’s work, the points of connection between this and HomeSounds, and the subtle power of listening to cross physical borders, cultural context, political circumstance and personal experience. LINKSXimena Alarcon - Three Listening Rituals in Sonic MigrationsHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode Rob and I have invited our group of young people from Sidestrand School to Sheringham Park. A regular venue for us, we make the education centre at the park our base for today’s adventures.On this trip we’re hoping to be able to watch, listen to and learn more about the bird life of the park, particularly those that visit the feeders at the education centre. We also hoped to take a walk through the park’s extensive pine woodland and do some communal listening activities….at least as long as the taps of this wet spring remain off!LINKSSheringham ParkHomesoundsHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome home everybody!In this episode Rob and I lead our Sidestrand School group on a walk along the shingle and sand dunes of Blakeney Point, a spit of land on the North Norfolk Coast that is incrementally lost to the sea as it rolls out for 4 miles.The point is a national nature reserve currently managed by the National Trust, and it gives protection for Blakeney Harbour and the surrounding salt marshes, which in turn provide habitats for a vast array of resident and migratory wildlife. The point is known internationally for spectacular displays of summer breeding Terns and also for its winter breeding colony of grey seals, which make up roughly 30% of the world’s total population, and giving birth this season to almost 5000 pups. After a mile or so of labouring along the shingle we came across a small group of 8 to 10 adult seals. we didn’t want to get too close and instead decided to watch them through scopes and binoculars, and listen using parabolic and shotgun microphones.In the end we weren’t able to make good audio recordings of the seals, partly because their calling can be infrequent and muffled by the roaring sea, but also because the thrill of seeing them spawned an almost constant excited chatter amongst our human troop. This didn’t mean the trip wasn’t worthwhile though. The effort of walking on shingle, the fun and challenge of being in a wild environment, and the positivity garnered from getting out of school, hanging out with your friends and experiencing something totally new gave the trip its meaning.LINKSNT Blakeney PointWhere to see Seals in NorfolkHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome home everybody, and welcome to The HomeSounds Show!In this episode, Rob and I are looking for mushrooms, not only because of their incredible variety and fascinating history as possibly the first life forms on planet earth, but also because of the potential, made possible by bio-sonification, of hearing them. Following our previous experiments in this inspiring area of environmental listening, we wander the Great Wood at Felbrigg with a beginners hope of finding fungi that we can tune into.If you'd like to keep listening visit homesounds.org where you can find all previous episodes of the HomeSounds show, as well as many more opportunities to actively listen and numerous ways to support, and get involved, with the HomeSounds project. Alternatively you look for the 'Riverlands' show on Poppyland Radio, which broadcasts live sounds from Woodland in Felbrigg and the Silvergate Stream in Blickling every Wednesday evening at 10pm.LINKShttps://hii-mag.com/article/the-next-chart-topper-how-bio-sonification-turns-fungi-and-plants-into-our-musical-collaboratorshttps://electricityforprogress.com/biodata-sonification/https://www.media.mit.edu/galvactivator/faq.htmlFelbrigg HallHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode, the second of two parts, Martin continues his interview with acoustician and naturalist Michael Stocker. Drawing inspiration from Michael's wonderfully free-ranging and rich book, Hear Where We Are, the conversation, and accompanying audio extracts, explore the myriad themes within Michaels book and relate these to the experiences of the HomeSounds project. The book examines how humans and other hearing animals use sound to establish relationships with their surroundings. It does this by examining sound in incredible scientific detail and mixing this with stories of everyday human experience and emotion. As well as enriching our understanding of sound, the book is inspired by a desire to shed light on seemingly illogical and self-destructive human behaviour, so often unconsciously and profoundly influenced by sound.With an extensive background advising on and designing sound environments for clients including the National Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., George Lucas's 'Skywalker Ranch', the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Mexico City's children's musuem 'El Museo Papalote', and numerous Hollywood sound and film studios, Michael is now the director of Ocean Conservation Research, an organisation seeking to understand the impacts of human generated noise on marine life, a theme touched on in both our conversation, and the sound extracts selected by Michael and I.LINKSHomesoundsOcean Conservation ResearchHear Where We AreHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode, the first of two parts, Martin interviews acoustician and naturalist Michael Stocker. Drawing inspiration from Michael's wonderfully free-ranging and rich book, Hear Where We Are, the conversation, and accompanying audio extracts, explore the myriad themes within Michaels book and relate these to the experiences of the HomeSounds project. The book examines how humans and other hearing animals use sound to establish relationships with their surroundings. It does this by examining sound in incredible scientific detail and mixing this with stories of everyday human experience and emotion. As well as enriching our understanding of sound, the book is inspired by a desire to shed light on seemingly illogical and self-destructive human behaviour, so often unconsciously and profoundly influenced by sound.With an extensive background advising on and designing sound environments for clients including the National Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., George Lucas's 'Skywalker Ranch', the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Mexico City's children's musuem 'El Museo Papalote', and numerous Hollywood sound and film studios, Michael is now the director of Ocean Conservation Research, an organisation seeking to understand the impacts of human generated noise on marine life, a theme touched on in both our conversation, and the sound extracts selected by Michael and I.LINKSHomesoundsOcean Conservation ResearchHear Where We AreHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!In this episode, recorded in the late summer of 2020, Rob and I visit a section of Weybourne Heath on the North Norfolk Coast here in the UK, in search of a bird the song of which is matched only by its appearance and character in exciting the imagination. An African migrant, the crepuscular Nightjar, and its breathless churring song, sits comfortably in the unscientific category of magical nature.If you'd like to keep listening visit homesounds.org where you can find all previous episodes of the HomeSounds show, as well as many more opportunities to actively listen and numerous ways to support, and get involved, with the HomeSounds project. Alternatively you look for the 'Riverlands' show on Poppyland Radio, which broadcasts live sounds from Woodland in Felbrigg and the Silvergate Stream in Blickling every Wednesday evening at 10pm.LINKSHomeSoundsSheringham Park Extended EpisodeHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening.In today's episode we are joined at Sheringham Park by staff and young people from Norwich City College's MINT employment project. This project focuses on getting young people aged between 16 and 25yrs into sustainable paid employment. The aim of the today's walk was to give the group some experience of working as a ranger at the National Trust, as well as to to get them actively listening to the environment, and learning about the habitat and wildlife of the park. With the help of current ranger Hannah Blades, the group took part in some Rhodie bashing, a colloquial term for managing the Rhodedenron plants that whilst a major attraction of the park, are also invasive and damaging to its bio-diversity.Throughout the day we tried to capture something of the sounds of the working life of the park. We also introduced the group to bio-sonification, a tool for translating the electrical currents created by organisms, in this case Rhodedendron, into sound. Everyone was wondering what the plants were going to say...LINKSSymbiotic (Bio-sonification device)Sheringham Park MINT ProjectHomesoundsHomeSounds Show Supporters ClubImage Credit: National Trust

Welcome Home Everybody!The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening.In these sessions we play listening games, explore on foot, learn about the wildlife of the area, and tune in to their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. For todays episode we visit Incleborough Hill on the North Norfolk Coast, where a small group of us traversed the rises and falls of the Cromer ridge. Military jets training in the clear coastal skies made sound recording pretty difficult, but we found some temporary havens amongst the din. We also discuss the habitat management of the area, share tales of the shrieking pits, and see the Devils own Guts strewn wildly across the gorse bushes.LINKSRiverlandsIncleborough HillHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening. The first of these is working with a small group of young people from Sidestrand School here in North Norfolk.In these sessions we play listening games, explore on foot, learn about the wildlife of the area, and tune in to their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. This show is the second of two parts in which we visit Felbrigg Hall. In part 1 we listened for recently arriving migrant birds. In particular the Chiff Chaff and Blackcap. For this episode, part 2, we learn about some work taking place at Felbrigg to improve the Scarrowbeck Stream that flows through the estate .This work intends to create new habitats for wildlife by restoring the streams natural flow. We talk with Ursula from the Norfolk Rivers Trust who explains why and how they are doing this project. We explore the acoustic habitat by dropping hydrophones into newly created ponds and walk along the stream investigating the creatures and plants that populate the water and stream bank.LINKSRiverlandsFelbrigg HallNorfolk Rivers TrustHomesoundsHomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening. The first of these is working with a small group of young people from Sidestrand School here in North Norfolk. In these sessions we play listening games, explore on foot, learn about the wildlife of the area, and tune in to their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. This show is the first of two parts in which we visit Felbrigg Hall. In part 1 we are listening for the recently arriving migrant birds; the Chiff Chaff and Blackcap. In part 2 we learn about some work taking place at Felbrigg to improve the Scarrowbeck Stream that flows through the estate . This work intends to create new habitats for wildlife by restoring the streams natural flow.LINKSRiverlandsFelbrigg HallNorfolk Rivers TrustHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!HomeSounds creator Martin Scaiff is joined by exquisite musician and friend Jesse Barrett. Together they attempt to discuss and demonstrate something of the role acoustic habitats play in shaping our creativity. They also fall in a big hole, try to start a rumour about a fish-man-creature of the broads and spot a heron. After walking and recording at Wheatfen they retire to Jesse’s self-built studio-come-motorcycle workshop to improvise a piece of sound inspired by the morning.LINKSWheatfen Nature ReserveVibhaasHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening. The first of these is working with a small group of young people from Sidestrand School here in North Norfolk.Towards the end of 2022 we ran a couple of sessions with this group at Sheringham Park, and at Felbrigg and in these we played listening games, explored the estates on foot, learnt about the wildlife and habitats of the area, and started to explore their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. This episode focuses on a trip the group made to Morston Marsh on the North Norfolk coast to learn about wading birds, the hardy inhabitants of this mysterious and iconic landscape.LINKSRiverlandsMorston QuayHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening. The first of these is working with a small group of young people from Sidestrand School here in North Norfolk.Towards the end of 2022 we ran a couple of sessions with this group at Sheringham Park, and at Felbrigg and in these we played listening games, explored the estates on foot, learnt about the wildlife and habitats of the area, and started to explore their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. This episode focuses on a trip the group made to Sheringham Park in Norfolk to listen for the unmistakable spring sounds of woodpeckers.LINKSRiverlandsSheringham ParkHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

Welcome Home Everybody!The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening. The first of these is working with a small group of young people from Sidestrand School here in North Norfolk.Towards the end of 2022 we ran a couple of sessions with this group at Sheringham Park, and at Felbrigg and in these we played listening games, explored the estates on foot, learnt about the wildlife and habitats of the area, and started to explore their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. This episode focuses on a trip the group made to Horsey in Norfolk to see, and listen, to the Seals.It was a typical bleak January winter's day when we all arrived at Horsey Wind Pump, but enthusiasm was high! We planned to walk the one and a half miles through the marshes, past the Nelson pub to a break in the sand dunes that run the length of the beach, and that provide a valuable barrier shielding the seals from public view. It was an ambitious aim….We set the kids their first task; to channel their inner naturalist and make audio field notes as we trekked through muddy fields, on windy roads and across gravel paths to reach a natural spectacle that none of them had seen before.LINKSRiverlandsHorsey SealsHomesounds HomeSounds Show Supporters Club