Rain in the desert

Описание: Rain in the Namib desert is incredibly rare and sounds fascinating. Sometimes it evaporates even before it reaches the ground due to the scorching heat and lack of humidity. It isn't unheard of though, and I was fortunate enough to capture 5 minutes of it on my expedition to Namibia last year.

I was actually trying to record the subtle air of the desert with microphones carefully placed on a dry camel thorn tree (not at Deadvlei where this photo was taken, but closer to dune 45). The next morning I sat down for breakfast and had a quick skim through my recordings, only to find this unbelievably beautiful 5 minute section of what sounded to me like a poorly tuned chromatic percussion instrument.

I eventually realised this was rain. The trees here have been dead for hundreds of years, and since there is almost zero humidity, there aren't any bacteria or other microorganisms to help them decompose. As a result they're bone dry and very tense, just waiting to be played like a musical instrument.

I'm not going to go into a rant about what constitutes music and whether there should be a boundary between it and sound recordings or soundscapes. This has been a controversial topic among scholars and my views are simple: music is whatever tickles my ears in a pleasant way. It can be classical compositions, a beautiful choir singing, early Autechre records, dub techno, birdsong, or indeed raindrops on a dead tree in the Namib.

A few words about the length of this recording. I mentioned the rain only lasted for about 5 minutes, but this soundscape is more than an hour long. The way I stretched it to fit in with the videos on my channel is by using what's called granular synthesis. This technique works perfectly with this sort of recording that features a lot of transient content. If you listen closely you'll be able to identify "grains" that the software identified and played back in a semi-random fashion. I would say this approach blurs the lines between sound recording and composition but it doesn't process the soundscape too much.

Recorded close to Deadvlei in the Namib desert with Sony PCM D10 and Lom mikroUsi microphones. Enjoying the videos I upload on here? Feel free to support me by:
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#rainsounds #desertsounds #namibdesert