The Wind

This episode was created entirely by Matt Bunk. You can find Matt’s work at @AllAroundCowboy_Loops on Instagram, and at https://bit.ly/MattBunkArtist  To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Part of a series featuring recordings of Aeolian Harps. Each will occupy it’s own place in the Wind RSS feed for 5 consecutive posts.Photos and videos: https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harp•••Name: Snake of Truth Wind HarpRecording: Recorded on dry lake bed, Summer 2021Construction: Designed and Built by Eleanor Qull. Large rectangular design of heavy scrap wood. Snake carved into face, intersecting circular hole. Rebar support through center, large bridge, unique hardware and ceramic bowl/bulb built into back panel.Mix: EQ for wind noise, Hint of Reverb. Second recording same, but at half speed with slight panned phaser.Notes: This harp was built by Eleanor Qull at the beginning of my fascination with Aeolian Harps. It originally was strung with steel, but would not sing easily. We replaced the steel string with nylon and it now is sensitive to wind, with a rich and rounded tone. It’s also quite heavy, which keeps it from blowing over.•••This is the final Aeolian Harp in the series. Thank you for listening. To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Part of a series featuring recordings of Aeolian Harps. Each will occupy it’s own place in the Wind RSS feed for 5 consecutive posts.Link for photos and videos: https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harp•••Name: Mary Blair Harp (Alt: Sunflower Harp)Recording: Recorded on the edge of Snake Valley, near Baker and Great Basin National Park.Construction: Built by Michael Corbitt. Rectangular design, larger than Eureka Harp. Sunflower shaped hole on face. Single String.Mix: Heavily Effected - 2 additional tracks run through saturation, reverb, Pre-amp, compressionNotes: This harp featured a large interior resonating body, and is fairly sensitive. Current location: Salt Lake City, Utah.••• To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Part of a series featuring recordings of Aeolian Harps. Each will occupy it’s own place in the Wind RSS feed for 5 consecutive posts.Link for photos and videos: https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harp•••Name: Eureka HarpRecording: Recorded at New Pass Road, Nevada, off of Highway 50.Construction: Rectangular with clover hole on face. Pine wood. Two Strings. Constructed with Michael Corbitt.Mix: EQ for wind noise, Hint of Reverb.Notes: This harp was built for my friends Luka Starmer and Michelle Rebaleati. It features a pyramidal black rock on its crown, collected from a deposit on the edge of Eureka, Nevada. Takes a decent gust to sing, but I enjoyed the 2-string tone. Current location: Reno, Nevada.••• To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Part of a series featuring recordings of Aeolian Harps. Each will occupy it’s own place in the Wind RSS feed for 5 consecutive posts.Link for photos and videos: https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harp•••Name: Obsidian Sky Wind Harp (alt: Mountain Lion Harp)Recording: Recorded in Sierra Nevada, Summer 2025Construction: Triangular prism design with 3 holes in face. Pine wood. Single String. Constructed with Michael Corbitt and Eleanor Qull.Mix: EQ for wind noise, hint of reverb.Notes: This harp was built specifically for the episode “Those Who Feast with the Mountain Lion”. It is a fairly small body with a small interior chamber which I believe is why this harp is so quiet. It needs a strong wind to start singing, and does not resonate long when the wind ends. Stained black, referencing the dark desert skies in remote northern Nevada and the obsidian found around Peehee mu’huh.••• To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

This is part of a series featuring recordings of my Aeolian Harps. Each will occupy it’s own place in the Wind RSS feed, for 5 consecutive posts. Link for photos and videos: https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harp•••Name: Stovepipe Wind HarpRecording: Recorded on dry lake bed, Fall 2025.Construction: Made of a metal stovepipe: 4 strings, diamond shaped hole cut into face. Stovepipe salvaged from house fire.Mix: Mostly Dry. EQ for wind noise, Hint of ReverbNotes: This was my 2nd harp, and first to work well. I built it at the end of the episode “How to Build an Aeolian Harp.” Since initial construction, I added a string and have experimented with tunings. I’ve found that the sound has mellowed out over 3-4 years, sounding less distorted or ‘buzzy’. I hand cut aspen plugs to place inside the stovepipe, which is how the hardware is fastened to the body. Will sing pretty easily with a light breeze.••• To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Pictures and videos will be available here:https://thewind.org/episodes/how-to-make-an-aeolian-harpFor the next 5 episodes, I’ll be playing audio of Aeolian harps (built by myself, Eleanor Qull and/or Michael Corbitt). The episodes will not include introductions or narration, so they’ll just be harp sound, with detailed information in the episode descriptions.•The first harp sound will drop tomorrow, and then they’ll drop in every day this week.Thanks for being here, and I hope you enjoy listening to the wind harps. To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Extra Extra!! From the banks of the Reese River, a newspaper that propped up a honest-to-goodness LIARS CLUB, no lie, and a story from the city who built itself on such falsehoods. The secret history of bitcoin? The Toiyabe Mole Man in the mines of ERN, NEVADA? The TRUE story of TOTAL LIARS and the history they invented for themselves, and for us. Links/Images: https://thewind.org/Subscribe/Follow: https://thewind.org/subscribeSupport: https://patreon.com/thewindA story about lies, hoaxes, squibs and narrative foundations poured directly on top of rock-hard truth in some places, yet in others, onto the shaky ground of an earth pocked with tunnels and holes To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Folks of many religious persuasions have ways of doing it, sometimes around or between temples, sometimes encircling specific mountains, like the Kora of Mt Kailash in Tibet.In the 1960s, poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Allen Ginsberg began annual circumambulations of Mt. Tamalpais in the SF bay area. Snyder learned the practice from Zen Bhuddists in Japan, and the three explained their walk as “opening of the mountain.”Though there is at least one Tibetan group that calls for a counter-clockwise direction, most clearly denote the clockwise movement an important directional distinction, to avoid throwing order into chaos.So as the sky illuminates to the East I head clockwise, down the mountain.Thank you to Michael P. Branch who read the Mark Twain passage (Highly recommend his book How to Cuss in Western) Mark Maynard, Eleanor Qull, Scott Mortimore, Mike Corbitt and all of the folks who’ve helped support the show this year, there are too many to list.MUSIC:Two tracks from Haana Lee’s new album called TexturesEmily Pratt, who makes music as Howls RoadFriend of the show Yclept Insanand a few tracks from the Public Domain through Free Music Archive.Further reading: The Way Around by Nicholas Triolo • The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane • The Living Mountain by Nan SheperdThank you for being here, and keep listening. To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org

Subscribe | Patreon | WebsiteI’ve been thinking about the radioAbout the towers on the mountainAnd the people far away who choose what’s on them.Some Scared and angry and building bunkers, the men who own the ways we communicate,  all just a line item somewhere in the lowest dustiest corner of a spreadsheet. Some of this thought path has been paved — the short postcard form of this program is now on a dozen terrestrial stations and counting. Though these are of course of the public radio variety, with different gate keepers. Though the gates abound, it seems that swinging them open is more likely than pleasing the algorithms: the response controlled, non-human machine-learned attention-eating beasts that have snuck into our dining rooms, our living rooms our bedrooms, the place where I stack mybooks. But the place where my desk is, out in the mountains, still feels a bit untethered, even as I tether it with my presence. Likewise it is Not untouched, as there is no such thing, as it’s all touching each other all the time. Here by default, the sound is an archive. The artisan well and all the willows that the out of place water has fostered, how the long grass it’s grown moves in the wind. The missing limbs and branches of trees long felled, the planes and cars and whirring of snow makers on distant but earshot mountains. All the story of the place in wave form This year I’ve been digging into my own archives, examining the sounds I’ve collected, and assembling them in new ways. As the access to information feels increasingly precarious, flooded, owned, bent…I’ve been imagining new networks of distribution, looking for some that others have built; networks that flow both ways. I’ve been examining my own archive of ideas and audio and, somewhere on the edge of the landscape that the algorithms can just barely reach, I keep a folder of sounds it could never understand. What does wind —or a wind harp—or an idea that can’t quite be explained, what does that sound like to an artificial ear? Probably nothing. But to us, it can sound like everything. I’m Fil CorbittAnd this is year 6 of the wind To support The Wind, become a patron at www.patreon.com/thewindSubscribe at thewind.org