Soundwalk

I hadn’t planned to write a post for Wren . In fact, just yesterday I was thinking about how I could skip even writing a Substack Note, which I had been mulling over. What to say? And then I found myself returning to the interesting thing I learned earlier in the week: how the Cherokee traditional calendar ended and started in the fall, and how that made intrinsic sense to me. A time of harvest an...

Today’s environmental recording captures the sound of an area within Forest Park that few people gave much thought to, until a headline grabbed their attention 21 years ago. In 2004, a pair of off-trail endurance runners came across a father and daughter living in a dugout shelter in Portland’s 5200 acre Forest Park. They had been living there for four years. Upon discovery, police were dispatched...

I’m sitting on a bench at the nearby city park listening to Creek & Raven . It comes out in a few days, as I write this. I haven’t listened to it for many months now, so it’s both surprising and unsurprising how it opens. Unsurprising is the trilling Pacific Wren, a distant Common Raven and the faint sound of a creek. Surprising is the mournful synthesizer lead that resembles a French horn. The vi...

It’s been a little while since my last Listening Spot release. If you’re just joining, Listening Spot is a pseudonym I use for stationary environmental recordings paired to atmospheric “ambient” compositions. Once again, however, I’m breaking with the tradition of avoiding piano with a Listening Spot release. Pianet electric piano alternates with Korg synthesizer “dew drops” at the center of this...

I like to work in batches. Pollinator Corridor can be filed under two batches: 1) Forest Park and 2) plein air soundwalks. So Forest Park is self explanatory, but could use some contextualizing, which I’ll get into shortly. The plein air soundwalks batch is still taking shape. Basically it’s just me recording and sketching—like I said last time—offering a little twist on my Soundwalk formula. One...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com When it comes to soundwalks, it’s unusual for me to let two years go by from the time of capturing audio until release. I had to leave this one alone for a while and come back to it with fresh ears. Dear reader, this is Ecola Soundwalk. There are a number of hiking routes at Ecola State Park just north of Cannon...

After a few weeks, I’m back, and excited to share something new. Out today is Meadow Showers, an album offering a new twist on the soundwalk form that has given shape to my work over the last three years. The twist is admittedly a gentle one: In a nutshell, it’s simply less footsteps in the mix. On this soundwalk I’m engaged at intervals in plein air (outdoor) painting using an iPad (or phone), wh...

I recorded the environmental sound for Sunset Bay Soundwalk about year ago while meandering over the rocky tidal landscape on a mild summer Sunday morning at Sunset Bay, near the city of Coos Bay, Oregon. Sunset Bay has a crescent-shaped beach, sheltered by the North Pacific waves. Here, little rollers fan out, lapping against the rocky head outcrops on each side. Acoustically it’s a natural amphi...

Out today under my instrumental Sleeping Animal pseudonym is a composition entitled Stream . It’s a measured and minimal eleven minute miniature suite for electric piano and synthesizers. Look for Stream today, July 25, 2025 on all streaming services . I’m over half way through the release schedule of Sleeping Animal releases that took shape pretty quickly at the beginning of this year. My hope wa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com The Columbia River basin is roughly the size of France. The Columbia is the fourth-largest river in the United States by flow, and the largest river emptying into the eastern Pacific Ocean. In the last 90 years, this mighty river has been mightily renovated. The multitude of dams (around 150) in the basin now rep...

The environmental recording for Oak Island Rain Soundwalk was recorded April 30th 2024. It’s a really gentle soundscape; dewy and hushed. I chose this photo for the cover because, if you look closely, it captures the fine rain drops that fell that morning. It’s hard to take a picture of rain. I got lucky here. I’ve gave Oak Island quite a bit of attention last year, initially surveying the soundsc...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com More than once in recent conversations I’ve revealed I’m not all that fond of Summer. The response has been interesting: incredulous laughter; a bemused disbelief. Why? Explain , they seemed to say. Maybe you recall the sleeper hit “ Heatwaves ” by Glass Animals that was ubiquitous in the Summer of 2022? There’s...

I’ve been doing soundwalks for three years now, but it feels like longer. Crane Lake Soundwalk is officially #64. I remember the day my dad told me he listened to The Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” on the morning of his 64th birthday. He expressed a certain disbelief that he caught up to the song he first encountered as a twenty-year-old. He didn’t feel sixty-four, he said. I even remember the day...

This is who we hear at the top of our soundwalk: The Black-headed Grosbeak. They say it sounds like an operatic American Robin. I can’t say I disagree. Its phrases rise and fall with ebullient fluidity. This week we are back in Forest Park, in my hometown, Portland, Oregon. It’s the subject of a multifaceted series that is spooling out across all my music pseudonyms throughout the year, and probab...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Renewal Sometimes my brain wakes up before my body wants to these days. And sometimes, when this occurs, I reach for my earbuds to feed my brain a gentle signal while my body transitions from asleep to awake. A couple days ago, when this happened, I instinctively decided to cue up the oldest, least recognizable o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com I’ve been doing a lot of writing about Forest Park, here in Portland, Oregon, so I decided not to double up this week. In fact, I’m putting a pause on the Wildwood Trail Sound & Vision series, to pick it back up later this year, when the photos I took match the season better. The environmental audio for today’s r...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com This soundwalk concludes a short series from the Redwood Coast of Northern California, including the Substack-only Fern Canyon Soundwalk , as well as Grove of the Titans Soundwalk and Preston Island Soundwalk . Brown Creek Trail was the clear winner on the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park trail map for soundwalk...

Decay is a natural process. It breaks down structures so that new ones can form. Decay is also the attenuation of a sound over time. Bearing this in mind, it is also the name of a new work I’m pleased to share with you, from my strictly instrumental project, Sleeping Animal. Here I step away from his my field recording gear in an effort to evoke nature with instruments alone. Electric piano holds...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com And we’re back! More spring rain; more Pacific Wren and Wilson’s Warbler duets … It’s Forest Park Rain Suite II . And now you might be thinking why split it up ? Honestly I don’t entirely remember my reasoning, but the main thing that I noticed for some of my work is that once you get to the 40 minute mark, it ha...

The environmental recording for Forest Park Rain suite was recorded about a year ago on the quiet northern side of Forest Park, here in Portland Oregon. It was a rainy day interspersed with sun breaks. Many migratory birds had buy then taken up residence here. Among them, Black-headed Grosbeak, Wilson’s Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler, and Hammond’s Flycatcher. Deer can also be heard moving a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Fern Canyon is enchanting. My whole raison d’être with soundwalks is to bottle up that feeling. Enchantment. Fascination. Magnetism. These are the robust feelings that pictures and sounds alone often can’t quite stir up. I see music as the key. The great thing about music, I believe, is you don’t have to be an ex...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Hello. Just wanted to let you know about my new 8 minute piece in 10 movements, Woods . A few weeks ago I released a similar instrumental work entitled Coots , mentioning it was the first in a series released under the pseudonym “Crou”. It immediately felt like a mistake. Not the music. (For someone who has never...

Last week I alluded to Malheur—a French word which translates as “misfortune”—having a kind of name-place irony, back in 2016. It was national news. Maybe you recall? But, before I go further I want to take a moment to say that telling this story makes me a bit uncomfortable. On the surface it has little to do with the sound of Malheur, with music, with a connection to nature. And, because it invo...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com Malheur means “misfortune”. It comes from French-Canadian trappers who applied the name to the SE Oregon area, when in 1818, a cache of beaver furs was believed to be stolen by local indigenous people. Malheur River , Malheur County and Malheur National Wildlife Refuge all take their names from this origin story....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit chadcrouch.substack.com For our next series we are going to be exploring various locations in Redwoods National & State Parks. First up, Grove of the Titans! The interesting thing about this grove is that it’s not on the official Redwood National Park map. That’s because it became too popular in the Instagram and Google maps era. Visita...