We thought is was time to publish one of our ideas that will be on the upcoming ALVENRAD album “Habitat”.

A while ago, Mark came up with the idea for an ALVENRAD song called “Woudakoestiek”. The lyrics were about the acoustics of the woods, where sound behaves in a wonderful way. I immediately saw possibilities for the actual recording of the wood acoustics Mark had wrote about.

For all of you who haven’t heard of Impulse Response or Convolution Reverb, I will briefly explain these principles: You can record the acoustics of a certain space by creating a sound impulse (like a starter pistol or balloon pop) and recording the response that is the effect of this impulse. Shortly said, you can apply this (in most cases after tweaking the sample a bit) to any sound source in your music production by using certain software.
Thus, it sounds as if the sound source is actually in the forest (or at least sounds a lot like it).

Armed with audio gear and balloons we went into the woods of the Veluwe to try this for ourselves. Balloons are not the most accurate sound sources for these recordings, but it can be sufficient and it is the easiest method when you are on location, without power.
So after setting up the gear it was time to pop some balloons.

The reverb of the forest was wonderful! Sound is reflected by the boles of trees and the gentle slope we were looking at. As it was slowly turning dark, the atmosphere of the forest became gloomy and perfect for reverberation.
You can experience this yourself by going to the woods and clapping your hands.

The results of these reverbs will be used on the upcoming album “Habitat”, especially on the song “Woudakoestiek”
For all who are curious how this wood-reverb sounds, I have played a very short piano sample to which you can listen (the louder you listen, the more reverb you hear):