Kent McFarland formatted the anabat bat call files from the MBR park using a shareware program called ‘anamusic’ and passed the files on to me. The raw sounds have a very ‘electronic’ feel and range from very simple clicks indicating basic navigation to complex squeaks and trills that happen during feeding. So, I thought I would experiment with turning these calls into beats. I cut basic rhythmic sections out and stretched and pitch shifted as needed. I didn’t add any resonance, but you will hear in the final mix that there is something like a ring modulation happening with some of the sounds. These bats were recorded at a big lake here at the park known as the Pogue.

The first two sounds in the podcast below ‘loop3′ and ‘loop2′ are a couple seconds each demonstrating the kind of building blocks used to create the final 8-minute experiment, ‘bat_beats’ using nothing but bat calls. Apologies for some awkward moments in the mix, just getting a sense of how this could work (if at all…).