The music on this cd has all been created using the calls of subtropical eastern Australian frogs.It has been inspired by the incredible wealth of music that we can hear around us in the natural world.
Listen to "Frog Septet" (mp3 audio 1.2 mb)
Frogs in particular provide a huge variety of amazing sounds. On this cd there are calls from 27 different frog species and no other sounds have been used. The calls of these frogs were recorded by David Stewart and can be heard on his cd . www.naturesound.com.au
I have taken the recordings of the frogs and selected small sections of their calls to create samples, changing the pitch and only occasionally filtering out different frequencies in the sounds. In many cases I am using the original unchanged sound at its original pitch. Sometimes I use only one species of frog in a piece of music (playing its call at different pitches) but often a variety of frog species have been used in a song. I have provided information in the sleeve notes about which frogs have been used in each piece as well as the pitch changes of each call.
I first used frog calls for a sound installation in 2001 called “Tadpoles” that was part of the “Forbidden Forest” (Queensland Biennial Festival of Music) and I have recently designed an installation called SQUIRT where the sounds of frogs are triggered by squirting water from bottles at large acrylic frogs.
Frogs are a good indicator of the health of this planet. There are 27 species of frogs on this album. 2 are classified as rare, 6 vulnerable and 2 endangered. This is not a good state of health by any reckoning.
Photos are by Philip Griffin.
An Akai MPC1000 sampler was used to create the samples and music.
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