164 Garden rain as winter turns to spring (daydream and sleep safe)

Full Episode description

After last episode’s tumultuous waves upon a dramatic shingle shoreline, this week we retire behind the secluded walls of a little garden, at the back of a small suburban terraced house, for an altogether different sound feel. The sound feel of gentle rain, falling on an empty garden, in the quiet hours, when almost everyone is asleep. 

We love it this time of year as winter turns to spring. And when the weather forecast is for rain. Loads of rain, in bands, throughout the night. If we can, we may leave the back door open just before midnight for a while, to let the sound in, but the thing about rain is it does not fall to order. You have to wait for it to come, and that can mean hours. Witnessing the falling of the rain is something that can be done by setting up spatial mics to record, all night, and then listen back, to experience the passages of time when the rain did finally come.

At the edge of our yard,  beside a patch of old raspberry canes, there’s a perfect spot where the aural presence of the garden can be heard evenly balanced. The acoustic ‘presence’ that arises from its physical shape and reflective surfaces, clear. All the upturned half propped up things, evenly spread. Some overhead shelter, centrally positioned. Its where we post the mics, on a tripod, so they can hear everything, evenly. Hear, for us and everyone who couldn’t be there to witness it, the delicate sound and changing ambiences, of rain, falling. And when we did listen back, we heard not only the rain, but a nocturnal robin, somewhere far off in another garden, singing, as they do this time of year, in glorious solitude, in the dead of night.

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