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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.

LINKS

HomeSounds
Seconds of Sound Collection
Suffolk Libraries
Suffolk Libraries Creative Residencies
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

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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.

LINKS

Sheringham Park
Felbrigg Hall
Ecoutic Microphone
Martin Noble-James
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

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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.


LINKS

www.homesounds.org
Home | Coastwise (north-norfolk.gov.uk)
https://www.timeandtidebell.org
https://www.visitnorthnorfolk.com/Deep-History-Coast
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

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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. 


LINKS

Ximena Alarcon
Three Listening Rituals in Sonic Migrations
HomeSounds 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. 


LINKS

Ximena Alarcon -
Three Listening Rituals in Sonic Migrations
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

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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!


LINKS

Sheringham Park
Homesounds
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club

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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.


LINKS

NT Blakeney Point
Where to see Seals in Norfolk

Homesounds
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.



LINKS

https://hii-mag.com/article/the-next-chart-topper-how-bio-sonification-turns-fungi-and-plants-into-our-musical-collaborators
https://electricityforprogress.com/biodata-sonification/
https://www.media.mit.edu/galvactivator/faq.html
Felbrigg Hall
Homesounds
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club