The Urge To Merge
On their dance tunes, "Jungle Shoes" and Fish Wrap," Krause and his partners organized the sounds in families of orchestral-type "instruments." They also used Sound Designer to combine sounds, although most of the sounds on these recordings (such as the snapping shrimp hi-hat) are pure, sounding the way they do in nature. They wanted the fish and walrus to make up the percussion tracks, but found that their drumfish sound (one of a co1lection of sounds gleaned from old U.S. Navy recordings) lacked bottom. The solution was to use the drumfish for the attack of the sound and a sampled lion's roar for the sustain portion of the sample.

For lead voices, the Krause team listened to some more melody-oriented sounds-a coyote, some whales, and some dolphins-but they still couldn't find the right lead line. They decided to use Sound Designer to loop together certain dolphin sounds and the voice of Humphrey the Whale. (Humphrey is the famous California gray whale who became lost in San Francisco Bay and was eventually led to safety, partly by Krause playing sampled whale sounds.)

A Cornucopia Of Sounds
Wildlife sounds are not limited to the obvious vocalizations; for example, fish emit several different varieties of sound. Krause explains: "Some make noise with their swim bladders, fins, grinding teeth; some emit an electrical charge. They have remarkable ways of putting out vibrations. The motion of swimming, using the tail fin, creates a waveform that is picked up by all the other creatures around them. If a predator, such as a shark, picks up that vibration, and it is somehow funny or wrong, the predator will go after that fish, because it's in trouble. Snapping shrimp sound mostly like bursts of static. They are a few inches long, and they snap their claws to stun prey with sound pressure. Underwater, they put out 200 dB SPL. Once in a while, it's quiet, there's a lull, and you hear individual snaps." That's when you record them.

The Wild Sanctuary

By Steve Oppenheimer

Wild Sanctuary Communications is the production company founded by Bernie Krause. The modest studio where much of Krause's music is produced is located in his San Francisco home and is operated by Krause, assisted by intern James Reeve.

In addition to the field equipment and previously mentioned computer software, the Studio includes: an Apple Macintosh Plus and Mac II; a Bryston 370 power amp; Crown pressure-zone microphones (PZMs); a Digital Audio Corporation DAC-150 time-based digital filter; Dolby SR/SP series noise reduction (eight channels) and 363 SR/A noise reduction (two channels); E-mu Emulator II and Emulator III; a Furman PB-40 patch bay; a Klark-Teknik DN-300 graphic EQ; MacADIOS II spectrum- and waveform-analysis program; a Moog Model 12 modular synthesizer; a Nagra IV-S stereo recorder; an Orban 622B parametric EQ; Otari MX55 2-track and MX5050-ASR 8-track decks; a Sony TCD-5 cassette recorder and Sony TCD-D10 (R-DAT);a Soundcraft 200B mixer; a Symetrix compressor/limiter/expander/ducker; a Tascam 34 tape deck; and UREI 809 studio monitors.

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