The sounds of America from Maine to Oregon, captured by bike

In the summer of 2021, producer Charles Van Kirk rode his bicycle 3,900 miles across the US from the Atlantic coast in Maine to the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. He packed a Zoom H6 in his handlebar bag and recorded sounds over the two-month-long journey through fourteen states.

In Part 2 of this series, we gathered highlights of these recordings for a monumental two-part Splice Explores release. Each pack features hundreds of sounds that make up the diverse and beautiful soundscape of America—sounds from the side of the road like trains crossing the South Dakota prairie and thunderstorms crackling over Iowa cornfields. There are sounds from national parks: bison grunting and geysers erupting in Montana. There are sounds from inside a tent: rivers rushing and coyotes howling in the middle of the night.

In addition to natural mixes of the field recordings, this pack includes expertly crafted musical loops made with instruments derived from the source material. Charles used Sensory Percussion sensors to perform grooves on his drum set with these custom instruments to create otherworldly rhythms and one-of-a-kind layers. The resulting loops are full of texture and tone unique to these sample packs. Dive into this pack and explore the truly vast palette of sounds that America has to offer.