“Creeksong” is the title chapter of the audiobook. It’s probably Wendy’s most poetic writing in the whole book, and for that reason, it presented some specific challenges because of the delicacy of the acoustic context.
For many of the other chapters, I used Brett Nielsen’s Breakfast at Kakadu (BAK) (https://brettnielsen.com/breakfast-at-kakadu/) immersive soundscape, which he recorded beside a billabong near Kakadu World Heritage Park.
However, there was no billabong anywhere near where Wendy was living. So, I needed to modify the background noise of the forest because the sounds of the water birds in BAK could be intrusive, and the Creeksong story demanded finesse.
This chapter is very simple. It is the beginning of the Dry Season, and Wendy is sitting in the running ephemeral creek, up to her shoulders in warm water slowly moving from a tiny spring (only a few hundred meters away). She is in a state of rapture, feeling grounded, safe, and at home in this unfamiliar environment. She feels blessed that the creek has magically started running again after it totally disappeared. She is delighted because an unexpected, unseasonal tropical cyclone refilled the dry creek.
I tried to communicate the sense of excitement, blessing, and novelty with the music I chose, which included a piece called “The Scent of Venus”. Primarily, I used the instrumental version of the book’s theme song, “Creeksong” (naturally), written by Wendy with orchestration and performance by the marvelous composer/performer Rachel Colella of South Australia. Rachel’s evocative music didn’t need any “sweetening”. It balanced and flowed well with the narration. Birdsong accented the music in a lively way.
I consciously made sure the results didn’t overcook this simple story.
Wendy had no recordings of her creek at Deep Creek. So, armed with my iPad and trusty mini shotgun microphone, I visited my local creek several times in the summer of 2022, recording its sounds in a dozen places. I discovered an amazing variety of sound qualities, most too loud to portray a tiny, tropical ephemeral creek in a normally dry environment. Blessedly, I found a little rivulet, more like a trickle, to stand in for Wendy’s wadi.
I also ventured further afield into my metropolitan neighborhood to find frog sounds at Burnaby Lake.
As I delved more deeply into creating the soundscape for this simple story, I learned about the specific challenges in matching sounds and music to “poetic” writing. A major challenge entailed finding in Canada’s “Wet Coast” sounds akin to an ephemeral tropical creek in the Dry Season in Australia’s Top End.
I created the atmosphere by blending narration with music, local creek and frog sounds with the sounds of tropical Kakadu birdlife – a truly Trans-Pacific production.
My major lesson in mixing sounds was to keep it in balance and make it magical.
We have a lot more magic to share!
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