Written by Elise de Bres
Sounding Nature: Rain & Thunder wasn’t designed in a studio. It was recorded in the field, in real weather, in real places across Northern Italy and the Netherlands. What you hear when you press play is what was there. Or better to say we were there.
This is the story of where it came from.
Why we started with rain? Rain was the obvious first release, not because it’s easy to record (it isn’t), but because it’s one of the sounds people reach for most. For sleep, for focus, for background while working. And because most of what’s available is often loops. The same few seconds are repeated, processed, and smoothed until they barely resemble actual rain. And we have to say in the Northern part of Italy, and especially the Netherlands, there is no lack of rain. It’s also why we have so many words for rain.
We wanted to make something different. Long, continuous recordings (10 min each) that capture how rain actually behaves, the way intensity shifts, the way thunder builds from a distance and recedes, the way a specific place sounds when it’s raining.
What’s in the recording
The album has 8 tracks and runs 80 minutes. Each track is a single continuous recording from a specific moment and place. The dynamics you hear are real: rain getting heavier, a pause, the texture of water on different surfaces, thunder moving through at different distances. Nothing was added. Nothing was smoothed out. Sometimes it’s very gentle, sometimes it’s strong.
The microphones we used are ambisonic spatial microphones (Zoom and Zylia). They capture sound in all directions simultaneously. That’s what makes these recordings feel like you’re inside the rain rather than in front of it. The spatial information was captured at the time of recording. It can’t be added in post-production. You either record it or you don’t.
What you’re actually hearing
When you put on headphones or your immersive home theater and press play, the rain is above you, around you, behind you. The thunder rolls in from a particular direction because that’s where it was.
For a deeper explanation of why this spatial quality changes the listening experience neurologically, we wrote about it here: Why Nature Sounds Feel More Real in 3D. And if you want to understand what rain sounds specifically does to your nervous system, this covers the research: Rain sounds for sleep: why they actually work.
The album is available on the Sounding Nature: Rain & Thunder page. Preview tracks are there — it’s worth hearing what a long, unlooped spatial audio recording of real rain actually sounds like.
Sounding Nature is recorded by us for you. Your brain on nature sounds: what the research actually shows. It is a good place to start.
