What If You Could Listen Like A Fish?
Exploring five ways to learn to listen to the landscape, using sonic meditations to unwind, rest and reset.
Hello, how are you?
I've been thinking a lot lately about how rarely we actually listen.
Not just half-listen while scrolling. Not just hear.
But really, truly, stop — and listen.
When did you last do that?
I ask because I've been geeking out (surprise, surprise) over the work of the late, brilliant Pauline Oliveros. An American composer and sound artist who spent decades asking exactly that question.
She called it Deep Listening — and the idea is deceptively simple: that most of us spend our lives hearing sound without ever really attending to it.
Oliveros believed that learning to truly listen — to everything, all at once, without judgement — could change how we experience the world. Not just sound. Life.
“Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”
I've been sitting with that one for a while.
And it inspired what I'm bringing to you this May — a slow, curious sonic ramble through one of my favourite corners of the Peak District. Crowden, Longdendale. Up into the moorland, alongside the weir, through the trees. Four kilometres at whatever pace feels right.
The sound nerd backstory
Alongside running Feeling Sound, I work as an award-winning sound artist — which is a fancy way of saying I wander around with microphones listening to things most people walk straight past.
Last year I spent a summer working in the French Pyrenees at Camp.Fr — a rather extraordinary artist residency nestled at 750 metres altitude, 10km from the Spanish border, surrounded by snowcapped peaks, waterfalls and forests. I was there to study environmental sound recording.
Think: microphones in rivers. Recording the dawn chorus at altitude. Really learning to listen to a landscape. It was an experience that changed how I hear everything.
Also last year, I was commissioned by Coventry Libraries as part of a national Arts Council England project called Digital Spaces. I created an interactive audio experience using soundscapes collected from across the city — from birdsong to busy markets — exploring how deep listening can help people feel calm and connected. The project was called Soothing Sounds of the City and launched at Coventry Central Library in September. (You can still play our curatable calming web-based soundscape game, if you're curious.)
And for the Derbyshire Makes festival 2025, I plotted a sound map of Glossop and hosted an immersive sound tapestry developed in community workshops.
Walking around our town with people who'd never really stopped to listen to it before. Hearing it properly for the first time together.
We showcased 3 beautiful visualised film of our final work at Partington Theatre last April. It was one of the loveliest things I've done. (Still on YouTube if you wish to watch, and immerse yourself.)
All of which is to say: this is the work I love most.
And the sound walk in May is a chance to bring it into your world.
Five ways to hear a landscape
On the 10th May I'll be bringing a bag full of microphones.
But not just any microphones.
These are my sound artist tools that let you hear the world from perspectives that have nothing to do with being human.
Here's what we're playing with:
ZOOM H3-VR — BINAURAL & AMBISONIC RECORDER
Captures 360-degree spatial audio using four capsules. Listen on headphones and you're not just hearing Crowden — you're standing inside it. Sound coming at you from every direction, amplified and intensified. Slightly magical. I'm hoping we'll hear the curlews circle around us in the quarry!
GEOFON — EARTH CONTACT MICROPHONE
Press it against the ground, a rock, a tree root. Suddenly the planet has a voice. Rumbles and vibrations completely inaudible to human ears become an entire world of their own. The earth, breathing. This part of the world has so much history, what if we could listen in to a time gone by?
HYDROPHONE — UNDERWATER MICROPHONE
Drop it into a stream or the reservoir and hear what's happening beneath the water's surface. The acoustic world of water is utterly alien. It's one of those sounds that stops you completely in your tracks. And maybe, like our title suggests we can listen to water like a fish...
AEOLIAN HARP WITH CONTACT MIC — WIND AS MUSICIAN
The contact mic picks up harmonics resonating through the strings — shaped entirely by the wind, always changing, never repeatable. I first tried this practice last August on top of a ski mountain in France, having built by hand my own harp. Fortunately, the harp survived the journey home - now we'll listen to it on top of the quarry.
PLANTWAVE — PLANT SONIFICATION DEVICE
Attach it to a leaf, a flower or plant and it converts tiny electrical signals moving through the leaves into sound.
The landscape is already communicating. This just lets you hear it. Genuinely one of the most moving things I've ever experienced. I used it with Petra my plant at last week's somatic and sonic immersion event - soooo chilled!
The cool thing about this event is that you'll get to play with all of these microphones. No experience needed. Honest.
Taking time to pause
Along the way, we'll be journaling, pausing, and listening like Pauline told us to.
We'll be drawing on Oliveros' Sonic Meditations as we move — techniques for tuning into the layers of sound around us, for switching off the internal monologue and actually being present in a place.
I'll offer journaling prompts as we go. Nothing heavy. Just gentle nudges to notice what you're hearing — the difference between the sound of water, woodland, open moorland, and roadside. The way a landscape changes when you stop and pay attention.
We'll move slowly. We'll stop a lot. That is the whole point.
A remote chapel, a cup of tea, and a Wurlitzer
Our loop ends at St James Chapel — a beautifully restored stone building tucked into the hillside above the Longdendale valley. 360-degree views. Complete peace. It's one of the locations I've explored as part of my Longdendale Tales podcast series, and it holds a special place for me.
It's also now home to my nan's Wurlitzer organ.
Here we'll download our recordings, share what we heard, enjoy a final meditation — and have a well-earned cuppa.
The details
Date: Sunday 10th May 2026
Time: 9am – 1pm
Location: Crowden, Longdendale, Peak District
Distance: Approx. 4km
Level: Beginner — open mind required, nothing else
Spaces: 8 (it's intimate, by design)
Price: £40
No meditation or field recording experience needed.
Just comfy walking shoes, waterproof layers (it's Crowden — in May — in the Peak District!), and a willingness to be quiet for a bit.
I'd love to see you there. It's going to be a special one.
