Heather Spence – Nature Music: Experimenting with Field Recordings to Compose a Meaningful Song

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Exploring the Essential Features of “Heather Spence – Nature Music: Experimenting with Field Recordings to Compose a Meaningful Song”

Nature Music: Experimenting with Field Recordings to Compose a Meaningful Song

Transform the way you listen and create music. In this class, marine biologist and sound artist Heather Spence takes you to the field and studio and teaches you her soundscape-driven composition process — a process that will help you redefine your relationship to music and create meaningful work in your own style. Follow along with her complete process as she composes an entire new song, explaining everything along the way.

What you’ll learn

• Heather Spence’s complete process for composing music based on listening to and recording nature 
• Practical low-cost approaches to field recording in air and water
• Techniques for active listening to transform how you experience nature, your personal soundscape, and music
• Interpreting soundscapes
• How to find musical elements in nature recordings
• Tempo and Time Signature discovery
• Visualizing recordings using spectrograms to find and examine sounds
• Applying music production effects to nature recordings using scientifically informed approaches
• How to use unique rhythms from nature
• Strategies for highlighting raw nature recordings within a musical composition
• Using plug-in effects and automation to add missing musical components
• Jamming and improvisation strategies to “duet” with your nature recordings
• Crafting catchy musical segments and roadmapping them into a complete song structure
• Layering sounds to create dynamic and textural contrast
• Finding the right mix of soundscape authenticity and accessible musicality 
• Combining both “Thinking” and “Feeling” approaches to composition
• How to find the shape and purpose of the composition
• The Science of Sound

Class Overview

Discover the music in nature & how nature can shape your music

Dr. Heather Spence is a marine biologist and sound artist with over 200k soundscapes recorded. Known as the “voice of the ocean,” her unique blending of science and music has led her to be featured on National Geographic and funded by the National Academy of Sciences.

In this class, Heather Spence teaches you everything she knows about writing songs based on the experience of listening to nature. During class, Heather brings you into the field and into her studio, and shares with you her entire creative process from start to finish. You’ll follow along with Heather as she listens and records nature sounds, explores and jams with them in the studio, and crafts a brand new song.  

Along the way, Heather explains everything that she’s doing and thinking in detail – every idea, decision, tool, and technique. She’ll go through the exact microphones, software, and instruments she uses, with tips on making the process your own, drawing on your own perspectives and expertise.

By the end of the class, you’ll know everything you need to write nature-based songs. You’ll develop a toolkit of listening and composing skills you can use in your own practice and everyday life.

Lessons (8)

1. Introduction to Class
2. Field Recording in Air and Water
3. Playback Exploration
4. Discovering Musical Elements
5. Jamming
6. Finding the Shape & Purpose of the Composition
7. Finishing the Song
8. How to Keep Learning

Apply what you learn

Follow Heather Spence’s proven process, step by step

In the class, Heather Spence breaks down her nature-driven songwriting process into clear, actionable steps. Follow along with Heather Spence’s process step-by-step and create your own nature recordings and nature-based song. You can also watch Heather Spence’s process in full first and then bring the ideas, tools, and techniques into your own projects.

Who’s this class for?

1 Sound artists looking to find their unique voice and make music with meaningful messages and impact
2 Experienced songwriters and music producers wanting to escape writers block, get out of a rut in music making, or seeking new and different techniques for music creation
3 Field recordists, scientists, and nature lovers who want to get a behind the scenes tour of Heather’s composing process and inspiration for creating music

Heather Spence

Dr. Heather Spence is a visionary leader at the intersection of marine biology, sound art, and environmental advocacy. Recognized as “the voice of the ocean,” she merges science and art to inspire a harmonious relationship between humans and our ocean planet.

She created and sustains the first Marine Passive Acoustic Monitoring research program in the MesoAmerican Reef in collaboration with the Mexican government, studying and drawing attention to the importance of underwater soundscapes. She is a consultant to the U.S. government on marine bioacoustics and renewable ocean energy. As a composer, she weaves her conservation initiatives into inspirational music that transcends genres. From medieval to experimental, classical to trip hop, her award-winning compositions blend recordings from her coral reef research, live instruments, electronic elements, and sonified data.

Heather founded Ocean World of Sound to promote community-based conservation centered on listening. A portion of the proceeds from this class will be donated to this initiative.
 
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