2024 Redwoods Climbing Expedition
IN COLLABORATION WITH GENELEC:
Redwood Resonance: Listening to the Tallest Trees on Earth
I am very excited to share a project 2 years in the making. It's called Redwood Resonance. I hauled some Genelec speakers into a Redwoods grove and did some really fun experiments. Here's an excerpt from the blog post:
I was using contact mics to record the internal vibrations of the tree when I heard something unexpected – a raven call. At first, I thought I’d accidentally switched to the external mics. But no. The raven’s low, powerful call had caused the tree itself to vibrate, and the mics had captured that. I realized I was hearing the forest not just through the air, but through the wood. It was a revelation. The tree became an instrument, a filter, a resonator. It reminded me of a cello – deep, warm and mysterious. I tried the same technique with owls and other birds. When conditions were perfectly still, you could hear wildlife not just in the forest, but through the forest. The tree felt the sound.
That led to the heart of the project: the feedback loop. Using a pair of Genelec 8010 monitors positioned near the tree’s base and contact mics in the bark, I began feeding sound back into the tree itself. For example, I’d record an owl hoot in the Grove, then play it through the monitors into the tree, and re-record the vibration. Then I’d do it again – and again. With each loop, the sound transformed, taking on more of the tree’s tonal character. A kind of sonic alchemy. By the end, the original sound had evolved into a deep, haunting drone – the resonance of ancient wood.
Here's the full mini-documentary and nature album:
And if you'd like to hear and read more:
- Blog Post – Redwood Resonance: Listening to the Tallest Trees on Earth
- Redwoods Resonance - Short 1
- Redwoods Resonance - Short 2
In Collaboration with the Sempervirens Fund
In October 2024, I achieved a boyhood dream of climbing into the canopy of an old growth Redwood tree. I used to climb 50 ft into this old post oak tree in my backyard as a kid...and dream of going even higher into a Redwood. It was a long road to make this happen...more people have climbed Everest than have climbed into the canopy of an old growth Redwood. It is extremely hard to get access for all sorts of reasons. After years of research and failed attempts to get this project off the ground, I finally found a privately owned grove of old growth redwoods that were protected by a conservation group called the Sempervirens Fund. I pitched the project and we worked together to make it happen! We will be sharing 3 mini-documentaries about the recording adventures in the next few months. This first episode focuses on recording on the forest floor in March 2024. Episode 2-3 will be about climbing into the canopy in October!
- Listen to all the sound libraries from the Redwoods
- Read more about the project in a Sempervirens Fund blog post
- Learn more about the sounds of Redwoods and fog
- Watch all the expedition videos in this YouTube playlist
Leave a comment