RESERVOIR
An extensive supply of water-based sound collages.
Built from original HD field recordings compiled between 2012-2020, this LP travels around the U.S. and presents nature sounds ranging from thunderstorms to beaver dams. Many of the core recordings for a few of these soundscapes were released in abridged form a few years back, but have all been extended with never-before-released sounds.
Besides the hydrophone survey of "San Diego Underwater", each track is over 8 minutes in length and rewards deep listening as the layers of audiophile sound unravel. All sounds were recorded in lossless quality with a small assortment of hand-held microphones, typically fed into a Tascam DR-07 or Zoom H6.
Scroll down for a track-by-track breakdown of the entire album. Enjoy on good headphones!
The typically stunning sunsets of Michigan’s Houghton Lake.
01.
Soothing Waves (Belle Isle I)
The LP opens with two tracks (totaling 17 minutes) studying Detroit’s Belle Isle park. This piece mostly utilizes recordings taken in a small, secluded portion of the rocky beach that faces Windsor, Canada. Almost all of the sounds were captured with the amazing Crown Sass-P Stereo microphone, so you get amazing depth of sound and a clear definition of different things occurring in each headphone. The focus is clearly on the sparkling waves, but in the distance you are reminded of the encroaching humanity through boat engine sputters. The car traffic hum is even further off and almost resembles a string-based drone in the lower register of the sound field.
I took extensive recordings of Belle Isle shorelines during my summers in Detroit, so it was easy to unearth more of these soothing captures and round out the initial 4 minute upload.
02.
Lake Takoma Mic Tests (Belle Isle II)
We remain on idyllic Belle Isle, but move away from the shore and explore more of the interior of the park. Things begin quietly as bleached-out ambiance from the main beach comes into focus. Lake Takoma sits in the center of Belle Isle, and the foundation for this soundscape comes from a Crown stereo mic test I made nearby. Cars passing slowly by the mic (especially ones with old & loud engines) really show off the stereo quality - with good headphones you can truly hear single cars trail off (from right to left ear) into the distance for several seconds apiece. This scene slowly trickles into a new soundscape with birds leading into a small fountain in the botanical garden. The outdoors still make their presence known via church bells from a nearby tower.
The Houghton Lake Flats - Flooding State Wildlife Management Area is a protected wildlife area located near Houghton Lake Michigan (where the beginning of “Calming Waters of a Beaver Dam” was captured).
03. “Calming Waters of a Beaver Dam (Romeo I)
An hour’s drive north of Detroit and Belle Isle lies the small, rural village of Romeo which is surrounded by woodlands, rivers, and ponds. An old train track has been converted into a long bike path that winds through the countryside. It was down this path that I stumbled upon a large beaver dam, which created a loud, soothing sound as the river passed under and around. A few recordings from different vantage points forms the main bulk of this collage. This allows for smaller details like crickets and other insects to be heard and not drowned out by all the white noise of the water. A few recordings from Houghton Lake (even further north into Michigan) rounded out the initial upload by providing some very quiet woodland/bird sounds to the intro and outro.
For “Reservoir”, I fleshed out these quiet moments with even more woodland sounds, keeping the atmosphere minimal and soothing while giving the listener more time to immerse themselves.
04. “Campground Swamp at Night (Romeo II)
Due to its placement smack dab in the center of the album and its scope (by far longest track at nearly 12 minutes) this soundscape is both the literal and figurative centerpiece of the LP. “Campground Swamp” is a nocturnal journey around the dirt roads of rural Michigan - exploring fields and swamps bustling with crickets, frogs, and other creatures.
The main recording was made with the Crown stereo mic just north of 32 mile road on Campground street. At this spot the road crosses over a large pond and offers lots to capture sonically. In addition to the expected chorus of frogs, there is also what sounds to be the squeal of a feral hog. To mold the original recordings into this longer collage, I added in a few more sounds including quiet crickets from my parents backyard and river water.
05. “Peaceful Waters of NYC’s Central Park”
Unlike the other tracks on Reservoir, this was built from audio all captured on a single day. In May 2016 I visited NYC (before moving to Brooklyn in the fall that year) and took my handheld recorder to locations including Central Park and Bryant Park. This collage focuses on the nature I found in the dense urban sprawl that day, with rushing water and plentiful birds taking centerstage. The background layer of ambiance includes weed-whackers, children playing, and morning doves.
Hiking the trails overlooking San Diego’s Torrey Pines park.
06. “San Diego Underwater (Hydrophone Tests)”
The biggest outlier on Reservoir, this collage jumps both to the west coast and under the water’s surface. Before heading out to San Diego in May 2019 I was fortunate enough to purchase a J. Riley French “Series D” hydrophone (underwater microphone). During my trip I experimented with the mic in a few different environments: bobbing into the surf, dangled into a tidal pool, and floating in a jetty are a few examples.
Some of the results made the three short EPs that were the audio component of the trip’s travelogue: The San Diego Tapes. However, I still wanted to use these shorter captures in a longer piece, which happened to fit perfectly with the theme for this album. You can clearly hear the change from one mic placement to the next, as we move along the coast from fountains (downtown) to tidal pools (La Jolla), and finally into Pacific surf (Torrey Pines).
07. “A New Rain”
What kind of water-sound compilation would this be without everyone’s favorite: rain?
This soundscape features three distinct storms/recordings, all taken from near Romeo, Michigan over the years 2012-2015. These field recordings were unearthed while in COVID quarantine (which gave me ample free time to scour my old hard drives for unused sounds) and were formed into this long collage designed for study, relaxation, or sleep. One advantage to re-visiting old sounds is the ability to (hopefully) improve on them with new skills and techniques. This is definitely true with my rain recordings, as I am always trying to make them sound clearer. For this collage, I went even further with the removal of unwanted human interference (traffic, planes, etc), applying specific EQ filters to trim away the excess sounds distracting from the calming rain.
There are 10 “Deluxe” editions of the album available on bandcamp. One of the bonuses is your own glass vial of an Atlantic beach.
Thank you!
I hope you enjoyed this experience of Reservoir.
All sounds and images property of R.J. Stefanski. All rights reserved.