Since Tim Prebbles fantastic blog the music of sound pointed to my post about “dispersion of sound waves in ice sheets” and then later sound and music as well as kottke.org linked to the same post, hits on my site here exploded. So thanks to everybody for the nice comments and emails I received! Let me take the opportunity to draw the attention to some other very interesting webpages concerning the sound of ice. First, there is the Audio Live Stream from Antarctica hosted by the German Alfred-Wegener-Institut. You should give it a try even though sometimes the connection doesn’t work. Only the possibility to listen in to what is happening under the ice shelf in Antarctica, to hear seals whistling their electronic sounds and whales clicking is just thrilling. Most of the time there are no ice sounds in the live stream, but occasionally something like this happens (wait for the sound at 40sec to start):
The scientists from the Alfred-Wegener-Institut do not know exactly how and why this sound happened. But it was incredibly loud and could possibly come from strong forces within the ice. I wrote about it here. Subsonic sounds emitted by a huge iceberg were recorded by Christian Müller, a scientist collaborating with the Alfred-Wegener-Institut. The infrasounds of the iceberg were pitched higher into the audible range of the human ear and the term “singing iceberg” was coined. The sound can be heard here. National Geographic wrote about it and Müllers paper is available here. He also gave me the permission to incorporate the sound in my piece frost pattern, along with the other above mentioned ice noises. New Scientist has a video online about research of the University of Chicago with some other subsonic iceberg sounds:
Then there are several other sites on the web that feature ice related sounds. One collection is available for free download from the German label Gruenrekorder, called the sound of snow and ice. Another nice recording – at the edge of the ice – was done by Mike Rooke and can be heard on the sound is art website. Also check Marc Namblards CD chants of frozen lakes at Kalerne, there are some audio excerpts as well. By the way: my ice recordings will be part of the CD release “fire and frost pattern” due to be out at Gruenrekorder in June this year.
In the comments of the ice dispersion post Jason turned my attention to this nice little video with an ice fishing guy experiencing strong breaks in the surface:
Sometimes a multitude of such breaks can cause a lake to “sing” in a certain tone, as is documented in this video:
I should not forget to mention that recording endeavours on the ice or at glaciers and icebergs can be extremely dangerous. I was warned in Greenland when I was trying to do sound recordings of calving glaciers and I saw once how davastating such a bigger incident can be. Flipping icebergs are also a very dangerous threat, look at this (sorry for the stupid music background):
And see what a tsunami caused by a flipping iceberg can do to some poor fishermen in Greenland:
Finally you can ooze your frozen fingers with some tunes played on ice instruments by Norwegian musician Terje Isungset on his myspace site.
Update: also check the fantastic recordings of Yosemite’s frozen lakes by Cheryl E Leonard (15th Feb. 2012)
Incredible stuff.
Both posts were fascinating. Thank you.
great post Andreas!
Really beautiful. The live stream is one of the greatest wonders of the web I have to say. Many many thanks for posting link,
Brian
Wow, this is great stuff, it’s sent me into a total spin investigating ice recordings…
Very very interesting work.
Gilles Malatray
http://desartsonants.over-blog.com
Hello Andreas
Your recording and post give us a new direction for our surround filed recording.
Thank you very much.
Jana Winderen is also active ice field recording. I had the pleasure to listen to a live diffusion of glacier movement performed during Hydrophonia 2009; amazing amount of detail and dynamic range.
http://www.janawinderen.com/
Great blog title 😉
Kind Regards
-Mike
Great blog title
Last week I visited the Split Rock Lighthouse along Lake Superior in Minnesota. We went down to pebble beach and saw that people had skipped stones out over the ice. So, we did too, and with amazing results: as the rocks skipped over the ice it sounded like birds chirp, chirp, chirping. I don’t live in a part of the country that often has hard ice that is also rather smooth, so was completely awestruck. I could kick myself that I didn’t record it (I have a camera that does short videos with audio).
Tonight I googled sounds of rocks on ice and found this.
Are those chirping sounds fairly common or are they rare? Is the sound influenced by the shape of the body of water? This was in a small bay.
What is the explanation for these chirping sounds? I assume that they are created by different processes than the sounds of ice cracking.
Hi Ruth, the phenomenon is called dispersion of sound waves. The high frequencies of sounds in an ice sheet are transmitted faster than the deeper frequencies, which reach the listener with a time lag. Therefore you hear this chirping effect, what other people call the laser gun effect or star wars sound. Whether you skip a stone over the ice or the ice makes some tension sounds, cracks and such things by itself, all these sounds are also transmitted through the body of the ice sheet and you will hear a certain dispersion effect. It is depending on the thickness of the ice, not the shape of the body of water, as far as I know. You can find an original underwater recording of sound dispersion here and I collected some more links about the phenomenon here. Best, Andreas
Hello, Andreas, and thanks for your reply. I did some more work on this, and called the state park where I heard the ice sounds. Talked to a woman who was familiar with what I described, and she suggested that I google singing ice + Lake Superior, which I did. Here is the url for one of the url’s shown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4RQG0_Vy_o&NR=1
The last sound on the recording has the same sounds that I heard. In fact, I think that recording might have been made at the very beach where I heard it, at least it looks that way, and that beach and the state park are well known in that part of Minnesota. The state park is Split Rock State Park, the beach is called Pebble Beach.
You sure never know just what you may stumble across on the net! And there may well be other recordings out there and I am just not using the right terms for googling.
Best wishes to you–it is neat stuff you are doing.
Ruth
I love your blog, and think this idea is so fascinating. Your post has been very helpful in creating my poem, Audible (which is about the sounds of icebergs). You can read it here:
http://thestorialist.blogspot.com/2010/05/audible.html
Hi Hannah, great poem – it’s good to see that the sounds can inspire works in other artistic fields. I will follow your site, all the best, Andreas
Every time I go ice skating on lakes that are newly frozen (5-10 cm) you hear this sound constantly. It’s fantastic.
An example:
(starts 0:17 in to the film)
Hello Andreas!
Thanks for the information and the fantastic recordings. I got interested in this just today. I was at Big Almaty Lake, near Almaty in Kazakhstan (where I live). There the ice was making some incredibly eerie and beautiful sounds – sounded like a combination of sub-sonic growls and high-pitched electronic pulses. Listening to this, I found myself completely transfixed, and also rather muscially inspired! So I came home tonight, listened to some of your work and read the explanations.
Thank you again!
Wondered if you recommend to me what kind of sound recording equipment I’d need to get a good recording of these sounds. (They’re clearly audible on the shore of the lake, btw.)
Thanks for your wonderrul posts! My 2 year old daughter and I were walking along several frozen ponds this morning and started hearing noises I had never heard before. As we got closer to the water, we realized that it was actually the ice. Each pond is slightly different and each made a slightly different sound. Beautiful and fascinating. I told my little girl that we would look up the sound as soon as we got home. We found your post! I plan to write a post myself aobut the experience as it relates to taking your babies out in nature – I write a baby brain development blog. http://www.babydevelopmentnow.com We will be including a link to your fantastic post. Bet you never thought you would be mentioned in a baby development page! Thanks, again! I’ll send a link when the blog is done.
Hi Deborah,
thanks for your nice comment, that is a nice and surprising idea to approach it from that perspective! Can’t wait to see how my little son (17 month) one day will respond to such experiences. But always keep in mind: those frozen ponds and lakes are always dangerous when they make noises. You never know if there is an area of thin ice somewhere. So always have someone with you and be careful.
Looking forward reading your post!
Hi Andreas,
Thanks for the note back and your thoughts. I have been walking with little AJ around these ponds almost every day since she was born and she knows to hold mommie’s hand and stay back from the water/ice. The post is live – check it out http://www.babydevelopmentnow.com – I have added you to my favorites and will be checking back regularly. Blessings to you and your little boy. I can only imagine the beautiful things he will be learning with you.
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I m lookin for deep long sounds that may be heared from many miles, i usually hear them in winter nights … not much of theese on the internet .. accidentally i stumbled upn this: http://www.maxior.pl/film/168625/dziwne-dzwieki-pekajacego-lodu .. its quite interesting
Hi Very interresting audio source. I am looking for CC (creative commons) Submarine audio recording of Iceberg sound, glaciar cracking, frozen lake cracking, and antartctic earless seal vocalizacion. It s for an digital handdraw animation project (student project). We are using Opensource software. Krita, Opentoonz, Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, Openshot, and Ardour for audio editing. It will be very clever to help finding or sharing me some audio file 48k stereo PCM audio file. , off course creator will be credited. Thk s a lot a nd best regards. Armor Le Bihan. armor.lebihan@ut.edu.co http://tropisme.wordpress.com