AMB58 Greenland: Ice Caves

DESCRIPTION: 

• In Greenland: Ice Caves, get a collection of cave ambiences from deep inside glaciers. Hear sharp polyrhythmic drips and eerie creaks as the crevasse widens. Hear cracks that gurgle like alien languages and massive crevasses the roar like motorcycles. Hear ominous droning pitches as water resonants large icy spaces and massive bubbles pulsing like the breathe of a sleeping dragon. 
• This library offers you the sounds of a natural wonder only heard in rare glacial conditions. The bellies of glaciers sound like giant organic spaceships and it was astonishing to hear. I hope you enjoy them too. Thanks for listening.

KEY FEATURES:

• Massive air bubbles pulsing like sleeping dragons
  
• Ominous drones
  
• Airy singing pitches
• Polyrhythmic drips
• Melodic gurgles like alien languages
• Large crevasses roaring
• Eerie creaks as crevasses slowly expand
• Tranquil and resonant drips
• Soothing distant water

RECORDING STORIES:

• In summer, glaciers are constantly melting. This meltwater carves ice caves with fascinating acoustic properties. 
• I hung my mics down deep into crevasses and rappelled down myself. I'd make stereo bars out of selfie sticks, attach the mics and recorder (in a dry bag), and then drop the whole thing 25 meters down into a crevasse on a rope. 
• I realized that glacial crevasses actually sing! I thought I was hearing things at first, but then I realized that the water was sometimes resonating in ice caves to create a collection of droning pitches. These could be light and airy or very deep and ominous. 
• I found one large crevasse near the calving face of an unnamed glacier that sounded like a sleeping dragon. While exploring the area, I started to feel this pulsing bass in my chest. I searched for a few minutes until I could find the source, a deep jagged crack that was home to what I called the "breathe of the glacier". I large moulin (a waterfall inside the glacier) was creating large air bubbles in the sub-glacier river. These bubbles would burst out every few seconds and the sounds would resonant up through the crevasse like a sleeping dragon. It was wild. Hear it at 0:10 in the demo. 
• Under rare conditions, ice caves are created on the side of glacier. One way these can form is when a creek has a perpendicular flow to the movement of the glacier. The creek cuts a hole in the side of the glacier and sometimes there is enough space to climb inside yourself! The stunning blue colors you see in photos for this library are in one of those caves. The ice is thin enough at the edge of the glacier that those miraculous blue hues filter through. 
• When you leave a drop rig in a crevasse for 24 hours something magical happens. The glacier falls asleep and then wakes in the morning with a dawn chorus, but like everything with glaciers it is in slow motion. The sun doesn't set in Greenland in July, but if the glacier is in a steep fjord it can still have a day and night cycle as the sun moved behind the mountains. A single crack can go from a torrent of melodic gurgles in the afternoon, to nothing but a few resonant drips at night, to a slow build of a 4 hour dawn chorus as the sun returns. I was incredibly surprise at just how much sonic variation you get from single crevasse over 24 hours. Three factors are at work that contribute to the sonic variety: the ebb and flow of meltwater with the movement of the sun, that same meltwater carving new shapes in the ice, and the movement of the glacier itself. The first time I looked at a spectrogram of the long build, I realized that glaciers wake with the rising sun, just like so many of the bird choruses I've recorded at sunrise around the world. There is one 60 minute glacier dawn chorus in this library. I hope you enjoy listening.

FILE LIST:

• View larger version or Download CSV.
• A spectrogram is included for each audio file. Double click on the photo in the file list to enlarge.

LIBRARY INFO:

GEAR USED:

• LOM Usi
• Micbooster Clippy
• Sony D100
• Sony A10
• Cinela LEO20 Blimps
• Bubblebee Wind Bubbles