Wild Soundscapes is the first comprehensive guide to listening to--and recording--nature. Learn how to tune in to nature's biophonies, or creature symphonies; how to use simple microphones to hear more; and how to record, mix, and play with sounds you gather. Keep it simple or launch yourself into a new creative field. Whether you're an amateur naturalist, novice field recordist, musician, want to create your own natural sound library, or just want to gain further appreciate of the natural world, this is the book for you.
Bernie Krause, a professional field recordist and bioacoustician, shares his expertise in exploring nature's sonic landscapes. Wild Soundscapes comes with a full-length CD, narrated by Krause, sampling a variety of natural sounds: the crashing sea, the singing of ants, the bugling of Yellowstone elk, the plop of falling Costa Rican crabs, and more. With the help of this CD, Krause demonstrates techniques and tricks for field recording success.

Since 1968, Bernie Krause has traveled the world making sound recordings of more than 15 000 species through his organization Wild Sanctuary. In his previous book, The Great Animal Orchestra, Krause drew readers' attention to what Jane Goddall described as "the harmonies of nature … [that are being] one by one by one, snuffed out by human actions." Now, Krause builds upon the subject of his popular 2014 TED Talk and examines natural sounds produced collectively within the landscape. He goes on to explain how the secrets hidden within the natural world's shrinking sonic environment must be preserved for the sake of our cultural and scientific heritage as well as humanity's physical and spiritual welfare.
Beautifully written and accessible to a wide audience, Krause's narrative – supplemented by exclusive access to new animal sound recordings – draws upon a compelling range of personal anecdotes, histories, and examples to document his early exploration of this field and to lay the groundwork for future generations.

Musician and naturalist Bernie Krause is one of the world's leading experts in natural sound, and he's spent his life discovering and recording nature's rich chorus. Searching far beyond our modern world's honking horns and buzzing machinery, he has sought out the truly wild places that remain, where natural soundscapes exist virtually unchanged from when the earliest humans first inhabited the earth.
Krause shares fascinating insight into how deeply animals rely on their aural habitat to survive and the damaging effects of extraneous noise on the delicate balance between predator and prey. But natural soundscapes aren't vital only to the animal kingdom; Krause explores how the myriad voices and rhythms of the natural world formed a basis from which our own musical expression emerged.
From snapping shrimp, popping viruses, and the songs of humpback whales-whose voices, if unimpeded, could circle the earth in hours-to cracking glaciers, bubbling streams, and the roar of intense storms; from melody-singing birds to the organlike drone of wind blowing over reeds, the sounds Krause has experienced and describes are like no others. And from recording jaguars at night in the Amazon rain forest to encountering mountain gorillas in Africa's Virunga Mountains, Krause offers an intense and intensely personal narrative of the planet's deep and connected natural sounds and rhythm.
The Great Animal Orchestra is the story of one man's pursuit of natural music in its purest form, and an impassioned case for the conservation of one of our most overlooked natural resources-the music of the wild.

Schafer contends that we suffer from an overabundance of acoustic information, and explores ways to restore our ability to hear the nuances of sounds around us.