Pure Nature - 3D Soundscapes

Nature sounds are too often used in casual and incongruent ways in the now overly saturated domain of meditation and relaxation recordings. They are ultimately diminished in how they are overlayed and co-mingled with myriad other textural and musical elements according to the subjective “artistic” sensibilities of the producer/creator. Lang offers none of that. He simply shares wondrous moments of nature’s spontaneity and gives us the opportunity to practice true listening. As I have come to understand through my own experience of listening to what Lang has captured, and in reading his own views on his work, he is a rare individual who patiently assumes the role of a searcher. And through his own deep practice of active listening, he invites us into that same action, but with a more honest discernment of where our attention is actually situated. As a longtime backpacker who has been woken up countless times (during both day and night) to so many wonderful, spontaneous, and sometimes alarming collections of sounds, I appreciate that the particular nostalgia these recordings evoke in me is not connected to specific moments or memories, but to a basic nostalgia for what is real.

I love these kind of apps, and own many of the best of them. The only issue that I have, is that after hearing one of the nature loops for a while, my ears will begin then to pick up the “seams” in the recording, meaning, that the files should be way bigger than they are, that is to say longer in duration, and as they are in the amazing hands down winner grandaddy of all environmental sound apps, ENVIRONMENTS. Here, I can completely tell when the loop begins anew, and then after a while of hearing it, it actually starts to bother me, as I have become accustomed to the repetition of what should be natural and seamless soundscapes, lasting much longer (so as to fool the ears and the brain) into believing one is actually present within nature, and not on a holodeck. The other issue is the sound quality, as once again ENVIRONMENTS wins hands down ... I don’t know what quality sound file, compression, they are using here, but it must be relatively small, for look at the size of the app (Environments, once again,is over half a gigabyte in comparison, and with less sounscapes, although theirs run nearly an hour each). Other than that, though, this is nice.

I suffer from migraines that can put me into bed with a mask on and earplugs at times. I’ve given up on prescription migraine medicine because I’ve had so many of them over the years that I seem to have become resistant to them. I found Bluetooth sleep headphones online that come in the form of a head band which has small, flat speakers that you can actually sleep with even if you turn and lay on them. Last week I got a migraine, but there were things I needed to take care of so I took a Xanax, put on that headband and chose the rolling thunder sounds. I played it for a second hour. Suddenly I realized that my migraine was gone! I don’t think it was a fluke and I don’t know how it works, but it did, and that’s all I care about. Thank you for these beautiful sounds. I thought they might be synthesized until I read your story Thank you took so much for the time you spent recording in the wild.