I traveled to Walden Pond on August 28 & 29 to collect field recordings for Not Less Than the Good. It was an amazing experience. I am not a morning person, so rising well before dawn in order to drive to the park and get setup before dawn was a challenge. My efforts were rewarded. Not only was it deeply satisfying to be out in nature as the sun came up and the forest came to life, I was able to record the first songs of the first bird that morning.

I’d like to publicly thank The Walden Woods Project for assisting me in this process. I was not able to get onto the Walden Pond property before they open at 5am (it’s a state park with very strict and unbending rules). For some of the very early recordings I set up next door on the property owned by The Walden Woods Project (a private non-profit organization) with their permission and support.

Here are two excerpts from the recordings that I made:

When I moved my recording location onto the Walden Pond property at 6:30 am, there were about 25-30 people swimming in the pond already. These were serious swimmers out for exercise, who swam back and forth across the length of the pond. I setup on the trail in the woods and recorded their splashing for a little while. This recording also includes and airplane passing overhead.

The second recording was made standing next to the pond on the second morning I was there. It was made around 8:30. There are a lot of sounds in this one. In addition to the birds and insects, you can hear voices of people walking on the trails nearby, the footsteps of a runner on the same trails, the splashing of distant swimmers, another airplane, and the cough of a sound engineer (whoops).

All told I captured about 3.5 hours of recordings over the two mornings. I’m going to go through and find the moments that I need and begin assembling the sonic foundation for this music.