My initial interactions with music and sound were via my soundesign cassette recorder that I got for christmas (little did my parents realize where it would lead me) when I was about 6 years old. I especially liked the sounds it would make if I pressed all of the buttons down at the same time - rewind, fast forward, stop, play and record.......
Such was my entrance to the world of ambient location recordings. Since then, I've gone on to make recordings for documentaries, television shows, web sites, exhibitions and what not. I've often thought of an interactive map oriented interface to listen and geographically plot and link sonic events, but have never seen anything like this until now.....
I recently was introduced to a trio sites (thanks Ali!) that treat location recordings in an interesting and interactive way.
Folksongs for the Five Points allows you to access various street recordings from Manhattan. Recordings range from a leaky fire hydrant to the 2nd ave train to a chinese restaurant to a street busker and beyond. Very cool.
Another related site is
Manchester Peripheral, which is similar, but focused on Manchester, UK. Here, sources range from a printing machine to the buzzing of a bee to an acapella by Owl. Very cool.
The third and final related site is
Soundmap - Cinco Cidades, which is also similar, but focuses on 5 different cities in Portugal. This seems to be slightly more oriented toward music and spoekn word, but still has ambient recordings as well Very cool.
On all of these sites, you can listen to multiple sources at the same time and adjust their respective volumes to create your own unique mix. You can then save your mix to share with others as well as to browse and listen to other listeners' mixes. I found it particularly interesting to have all three sites open at the same time to create a multi city version. Very cool.
Labels: folk songs project, location sound
