Electronica, BBC, Nature scottishnatureboy
Force of Nature

Anyone who knows me will know that my admiration for the broadcaster David Attenborough knows no bounds; stretching back to the earliest years of my television viewing history, he has been a constant feature and an ongoing inspiration. If you haven't read his autobiography 'Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster', I thoroughly recommend it - his life in broadcasting with the BBC is a catalogue of 'firsts' - he launched BBC2, produced the first colour broadcast for BBC, the first live outside broadcast, etc. But it is his achievements in presenting series after series of world-class television programmes about wildlife and the natural world that earns my greatest respect. My own father, himself no mean professional interpreter of nature for the public, as Scotland's first local authority countryside ranger, was a great admirer and was always glued to the latest David Attenborough series on the BBC. They played a part in my own career path towards the study and subsequently the protection and conservation of our natural world.

And so, as a way of rounding off the collection of tunes I have produced on subjects relating to the natural world and our interaction with it, I have been thinking for some time about how I could pay tribute to David Attenborough and his amazing body of work. I have to say its been fun preparing it, watching online snippets from old shows and so on. I have incorporated sound samples from a range of David Attenborough's shows, such as the theme tune from his early Capricorn Quest TV series, some classic quotes about life on Earth, saying 'boo' to a sloth and, my all-time favourite scene - his encounter in a small boat in the open ocean, with a blue whale. And I managed to find a sound sample of him describing one of his beloved birds of paradise in Papua New Guinea. It's been a journey full of wonder!