Bernie Krause

Bernard L. Krause (born December 8, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American musician, author, soundscape recordist and bio-acoustician, who coined the term biophony and helped define the structure of soundscape ecology. Krause holds a Ph.D. in bioacoustics from Union Institute & University in Cincinnati.

Biography

Bernie Krause was born in 1938. Somewhat of a musical prodigy, by age 3-1/2 he studied violin and by age 4 classical composition. He performed on a variety of stringed instruments (cello, bass, viola, harp) but fell in love with the guitar. He was disappointed when in 1955 not a single music school to which he applied would accept him with guitar as his primary instrument. Krause went on to work as a studio guitarist on jazz sessions and, occasionally, on early Motown sessions. He also worked as a recording engineer and producer in Ann Arbor while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. He joined The Weavers in 1963, replacing Pete Seeger and stayed with them until they disbanded a year later.

Electronic Musician

After the breakup of The Weavers in 1964, Krause moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to study electronic music at Mills College, a time when avant-garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pauline Oliveros lectured and performed there. It was coincidentally also the beginnings of the synthesizer, with Don Buchla and Robert Moog experimenting with putting electronic circuits together into all-purpose modular musical instruments. During this time Krause met Paul Beaver and formed Beaver & Krause. They played Moog synthesizer on the Monkees recording, "Star Collector" (1967), one of the first pop recordings to feature synthesizer. In 1968 they released The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music which was part instructional and part a demonstration of the capabilities of this new instrument. They went on to perform on hundreds of sessions for some of the biggest names in music, including The Byrds, The Doors, Stevie Wonder and George Harrison. In November 1968 Krause was asked by Moog to demonstrate the synthesizer for Harrison, who was visiting California. An unauthorized recording of Krause's concept and performance became the basis of "No Time Or Space", one side on Harrison's Electronic Sound album released the following year.

Beaver & Krause also provided synthesizer and/or natural soundscapes for dozens of Hollywood films including Rosemary's Baby, Apocalypse Now, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Performance, Love Story, and Doctor Dolittle. Because of their extensive studio work in Hollywood, New York, and London, the duo are credited with helping to introduce the synthesizer to pop music and film.

Between 1967 and 1972, Beaver & Krause released five albums together, effectively defining the beginning of both the New Age music and Electronica musical movements.

After Beaver's death in 1975, Krause found himself more interested in soundscapes than synthesizers. At the age of 40 he returned to school and completed a doctoral degree in Creative Arts with an internship in bio-acoustics.

Soundscape Pioneer

Beaver & Krause's album In A Wild Sanctuary, recorded in 1968 and '69, had been the first to incorporate natural soundscapes as an integral component of the orchestration, and to address the theme of ecology (coincidentally it was also the first album to be encoded in quadraphonic sound and surround sound).

Since the completion of his degree, Krause has concentrated on recording and archiving pristine sound environments from around the world. These recordings are commissioned as works of art and science by museums in many countries for their dioramas and sound installations, as ambient tracks for numerous feature films, and as over 50 downloadable field recording albums from the world's rare habitats. The Krause Natural Soundscape Collection now consists of more than 4,000 hours of recordings of over 15,000 species, marine and terrestrial. Sadly, it is now estimated that over half of these habitats have been destroyed or so compromised by human intervention that Krause's recordings are all that is left of their original diversity.

In Fall of 1985 Krause and a colleague, Diana Reiss, helped lure Humphrey the Whale, a migrating humpback who had wandered into Sacramento River Delta and apparently got lost, back to the Pacific Ocean. They used recordings of humpbacks feeding, recorded by two graduate students from the University of Hawaii .

Krause's 1988 CD album, Gorillas in the Mix (Rykodisc), is composed entirely from samples of animal sounds, played from sampling keyboards.

In 2007, Krause demonstrated at the O'Reilly Media Where 2.0 Conference a KML layer to Google Earth and Google Maps that makes it possible to listen to the soundscapes from all over the world. He plans to make part of his sounds collection available via this add-on and is currently seeking an academic home for his archive and related soundscape programs.

Dr. Krause and his wife, Katherine, live in California.

Discography

• 1967 Beaver & Krause - The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music (Nonesuch Records) (Revised and repackaged with new material by Bernie Krause in 1980)
• 1968 Beaver & Krause - Ragnarok - Electronic Funk (Limelight Records)
• 1970 Beaver & Krause - In a Wild Sanctuary (Warner Bros. Records)
• 1971 Beaver & Krause - Gandharva (featuring Mike Bloomfield, Ray Brown, Gerry Mulligan, Gail Laughton, Ronnie Montrose, Howard Roberts, Bud Shank and others) (Warner Bros. Records)
• 1972 Beaver & Krause - All Good Men (Warner Bros. Records)
• 1975 Bernie Krause - Citadels of Mystery (Takoma Records/Chrysalis Records)
• 1986 Bernie Krause - Equator (The Nature Company)
• 1987 Bernie Krause - Nature (The Nature Company)
• 1988 Bernie Krause - Distant Thunder (The Nature Company)
• 1988 Bernie Krause - Mountain Stream (The Nature Company)
• 1988 Bernie Krause - Gentle Ocean (The Nature Company)
• 1988 Bernie Krause - Jungle Shoes/Fish Wrap (CD Single, Rykodisc)
• 1988 Bernie Krause - Morning Songbirds (The Nature Company)
• 1988 Bernie Krause - Sounds of a Summer's Evening (The Nature Company)
• 1989 Bernie Krause - Tropical Jungle (The Nature Company)
• 1989 Bernie Krause - Gorilla (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 1988 Bernie Krause & Human Remains - Gorillas in the Mix (Rykodisc)
• 1990 Bernie Krause - Natural Voices/African Song Cycle (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 1990 Bernie Krause - Green Meadow Stream (North Sound)
• 1990 Bernie Krause - Woodland Journey (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 1990 Bernie Krause - Dawn at Trout Lake (North Sound)
• 1990 Bernie Krause & Philip Aaberg - Meridian (The Nature Company)
• 1990 Bernie Krause - Amazon Days Amazon Nights (North Sound)
• 1991 Bernie Krause - Ocean Wonders (North Sound)
• 1991 Bernie Krause - Tropical Thunder: A Rainstorm in Borneo (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 1991 Ruth Happel with Bernie Krause - Loons of Echo Pond (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 1991 Bernie Krause, Bob Dorough, Janis Lawrence & Jeff Kohler - Wild Times at the Water Hole (Creatures 'n' Kids)
• 1994 Bernie Krause - Mata Atlantica: A Rare Brazilian Rain Forest (North Sound)
• 1994 Bernie Krause & Ruth Happel - Desert Solitudes (North Sound)
• 1994 Bernie Krause - Ocean Dreams (North Sound)
• 1994 Bernie Krause - Midsummer Nights (North Sound)
• 1994 Bernie Krause - Nature's Lullabyes: Ocean/Rain/Stream (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 1994 Bernie Krause - African Adventures (North Sound)
• 1994 Bernie Krause & Philip Aaberg - A Wild Christmas (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 1994 Bernie Krause - Whales, Wolves & Eagles of Glacier Bay (North Sound)
• 1995 Bernie Krause & Louis Sarno - Bayaka (Ellipsis Arts)
• 1995 Bernie Krause & Rodney Franklin - Rhythms of Africa (Miramar Records)
• 1995 Bernie Krause & Rodney Franklin - Ocean Odyssey (Miramar Records)
• 1995 Bernie Krause & Rodney Franklin - Rain Forest Dreams (Miramar Records)
• 1998 Bernie Krause - Kalimantaan: Heaven Before Time (Miramar Records)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - African Safari: Zimbabwe (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Alpine Meadow (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Autumn Day in Yellowstone (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Carolina Woods (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Costa Rica: Hidden Treasures (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Galapagos (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause & Lang Elliott - Prairie Winds (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause & Jack Hines - Sequoia High Country (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Sonoma Valley Sunrise (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Spring in Corkscrew Swamp (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Sumatra Days, Sumatra Nights (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2002 Bernie Krause - Winds Across the Tundra (Wild Sanctuary Communications)
• 2006 Bernie Krause, Kevin Colver & Martin Stewart - Voice of the Arctic Refuge (Wild Sanctuary Communications)

Bibliography

• Notes From the Wild: The Nature Recording Expeditions of Bernie Krause with companion CD (Ellipsis Arts, 1996, ISBN 1-55961-385-8)
• Into A Wild Sanctuary: A Life in Music & Natural Sound with companion CD (Heyday Books, 1998, ISBN 1-890771-11-2)
• Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World with companion CD (Wilderness Press, 2002, ISBN 0-89997-296-9)
• "Anatomy of a Soundscape: Evolving Perspectives," J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 56, No. 1/2, 2008 January/February
• The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places, Little Brown, due for publication in March 2012 (ISBN 0-316086-878).

External links

• Bernie Krause biography at Wild Sanctuary
• Google Earth
• Bernard Krause at the Internet Movie Database