Brackish Water

Listening to a conversation between my maternal aunt Suparapond Thongsong (Aunt Maew) and my mother Kannika Teerapunyachai, I became aware of a water situation they experienced while living in Amphawa.  The area had  no clean running water available and naturally has brackish water.

We observed during the transition between fresh and saltwater… We’d go collect water, at one or two in the morning, depending on when the tide came in. The water would be fresh when the tide first came in. 

– Aunt Maew

Water is the most essential resource for all humans yet we often take it for granted. Many nations today and historically had to work hard to get access to drinkable water.

Samut Songkhram, a small Thai province on the Gulf of Thailand, southwest of Bangkok, is also called “the city of three waters”, from the Mae Klong River and all the canals branching off from it. The phenomenon of brackish water happens when the sea tide rises during the first 1-2 hours, the salty water pushes the freshwater in the main river and its various canals back upstream, resulting in freshwater. After 3-4 hours, the seawater mixes significantly with the freshwater, creating brackish water. By the 5th-6th hour, the entire waterway becomes salty

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Samut Songkhram map

 

Not only does the freshness, salinity, and brackishness of the water vary, but the gravitational pull of the moon on the Earth also affects the water system; the water level rises and falls twice a day, with each cycle averaging about 6 hours. Additionally, the timing of the tides shifts approximately 48 minutes each day. The pattern of tides also changes with the seasons.

For example, in winter, the water rises significantly in the morning and falls in the evening, which locals call ‘Morning Water’. During the hot season before the rainy season, the transition period between seasons, the water levels in the morning and evening are equal. This is referred to as ‘Two Waters’ or ‘Two Jars of Water’. When the rainy season arrives, the water level in the evening rises higher or is greater than in the morning, known as ‘Evening Water’. As the season transitions from the end of the rainy season to the beginning of winter, it returns to being ‘Two Waters’ again.

 

Using this phenomenon as a starting point for this piece, I played around with various sounds of water. In the first section the dialogue is about collecting freshwater in the early morning.

 

Mom: The tide doesn’t come in at the same time every day.

Aunt Maew: Every month, there are lunar phases that affect the tides.

– The dialogue between my mother and my aunt Suparapond

I recorded various water-based sources such as water pouring into bowls and pots and shaking water bottles with different velocity and proximity in the studio; some of those sounds were transformed through post-processing techniques ( pitch, time stretch, eq ) while others were left untouched. I also used a combination of field recordings where I captured water in various locations such as canals, rivers, and waterfalls.

 

In order to convey a variety of water sounds evolving with the tides, I poured water on the stones in front of my house, attempting to recreate the sounds of tides rising/falling heard on the side of the canal.

I equalized some of those sources to create a variety of liquid textures. Automating a low pass filter, I could achieve sonic gestures where a liquid sound could gradually become darker or brighter for example.

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Shifting the frequency cut off point on the Fabfilter Pro-Q 3

 

Layering those sources and automating some of the parameters allowed me to achieve ever changing textures, conveying the constantly evolving flow found in  the “city of three waters”.  

In the section where my Aunt and Grandma discussed the collection of drinking water,  I used real rain sounds collected during my many field recording trips. I selected raindrops samples with more sharpened edges, and samples collected under a thin roof. In order to illustrate the living conditions that were very dependent on natural phenomena such as the monsoon and ecosystem, I used these rain sounds to evoke the natural atmosphere and the compatibility between human and nature.