Sound Recordings

Listening to Britain

THE UK SOUNDMAP has now reached the end of its intended one-year gathering period. This post describes some of the patterns of time, place and subject which have emerged from among all the recordings we've received.

Everyday sounds from around the country

The UK Soundmap was launched in July 2010, asking people to record the sounds of their environment, be it at home, work or play. Since then, over 2,000 recordings have been uploaded by some 350 contributors.

Recording locations on the UK Soundmap

The map above shows a good distribution of coverage from the Shetlands to the Channel Isles. Changes in recording density generally reflect differences in population density, which are also correlated with mobile phone signal coverage.

Around 80% of the UK Soundmap's recordings have been made using mobile phones. The other 20% involve a range of devices with handheld digital audio recorders being the most popular. Some others consist of very realistic-sounding binaural stereo recordings made with tiny microphones that fit inside the ears, a few have used industry-standard equipment, and there's one recording made with the help of an ultrasonic bat detector.

 Number of UK Soundmap recordings added each month

The number of successful uploads for each month, as shown in the graph above, suggests a possible cycle of seasonal variation. Fewer recordings were received when the weather was poor and the days short. Around 90% of the UK Soundmap's recordings were made during daylight hours.

If there are such things as successful uploads, then it's reasonable to wonder about the unsuccessful ones and how they came to be so. Around 7% of all uploads failed to make it onto the UK Soundmap. The most common reason was because a recording location hadn't been set by the contributor. Instances of deliberate exclusion on my part as editor included recordings which may have raised copyright issues, for example by having lengthy excerpts from pop songs in the recording's foreground.

Others were ruled out because of very poor audio quality, with excessive wind noise being the most common problem. A handful had strong swearing on them. This might seem fussy and decorous, since swearing is part of everyday speech, but we had no way of forewarning listeners of any particular recording that contained strong language.

But, overall, the low rejection rate underlines the great effort and goodwill shown by the contributors towards the project.

Where you recorded

An important part of the job of UK Soundmap editor has involved listening to every recording from start to finish and keeping detailed records for where and when each recording was made, the recording device used, and what the recording is of. Doing so has made it possible to compile descriptive statistics summarising the contents of the UK Soundmap.

 UK Soundmap recordings categorised by geographical setting

The pie chart above shows how built-up urban areas have been the most common geographical setting, followed by a category combining residential suburbs and villages. Recordings came from seaside towns and more remote parts of the coastline nearly as often as they did from inland rural areas.This partly reflects how much coast Britain has relative to its area. More significantly, it shows how many of our contributors simply like the sounds of the sea or have wanted to share the sounds they've enjoyed hearing while on holiday.

 UK Soundmap recordings categorised by location type

This pie chart shows a more detailed summary of the kinds of settings our contributors were recording in. The category of 'street' conceals some interesting variation within it, with a disproportionate number of urban recordings made in pedestrianised streets, plazas and squares. That is, places where road vehicles can't go and traffic noise doesn't overwhelm every other sound. Here buskers can be heard playing their instruments with varying degrees of skill, proselytisers hold forth for religious or political causes, charity tins are rattled, and snippets of conservation pass by to dissolve within the universal hubbub of voices.

The popularity of the 'transport hub' category, which mostly consists of train stations, and that of 'libraries, museums and colleges' (this also includes art galleries), may partly reflect an attraction towards the particular sound qualities of echoes and reverberation. When there's been nothing happening to evoke them, some recordists have, fortunately, given in to the urge to call out or knock something to hear the resulting echo.

Slightly surprising was the comparative rarity of recordings made in the workplace. Most of these feature office environments. Few recordings were made in industrial workplaces and, partly due to limits on mobile phone coverage, few also came from moorland, forests or mountainous areas.

What you recorded

The human voice is the most common sound type, appearing in around half of all recordings. It does so in forms ranging from normal conservation, through cheering and singing, to amplified announcements over PA systems, and in radio and TV broadcasts heard in the background. Traffic noise appears in a fifth of the recordings. Birdsong is heard in 16%, footsteps in 15%, sirens, beeps and bells in 11%, and live music in 8%.

Of the four elements, water exerted the greatest fascination for contributors, and is represented on the UK Soundmap in all its common states. On the map you can hear the sounds of ice cracking on frozen ponds and people trudging through snow. Water can be heard sloshing about in sinks, rushing in fountains, canal locks and streams, falling as rain onto canopies and pavements, and crashing onto sand and shingle beaches. As steam it shrieks from coffee machines, sounds the whistle on singing kettles and pushes steam engines into motion. Fire meets water when a barbecue sputters beneath a bank holiday downpour, and the sounds of bonfires and fireplaces were added in the autumn and winter months.

Investigating all possible pair-wise correlations might sound intriguing, but for the most part it only yields some rather obvious findings, such as birdsong being heard in rural locations or how the cries of children and zoo animals usually go together. However, there is a slight increase in the likelihood that the recordist will speak whilst in what many might consider a pleasant or tranquil setting, and it is nearly always to express pleasure at what he or she can hear. The racket of machinery is also quite often recorded from people's gardens. Sometimes this seems to be a veiled complaint against a neighbour wielding a power-tool on what ought to be a peaceful afternoon.

Stored for the future

As I write, the process of storing all the recordings for posterity in the British Library is well underway. Soon they will form a permanent and accessible collection giving an idea not just of how Britain sounded in 2010 and 2011, but also of how its contributors wanted it to sound.

It has been a great pleasure working on the UK Soundmap. Many thanks to all of you who have added to the Soundmap and so made it possible.

Ian Rawes

 hashtag: uksm

Binaural stereo on the UK Soundmap

Internet users reputedly love lists of the ten coolest or ten worst kind. A regular favourite is ten most amazing optical illusions, featuring diverse arrays of motion aftereffects, waterfall illusions, impossible staircases, and Kanizsa triangles.

Less familiar are auditory illusions. The University of California psychologist Diana Deutsch is responsible for discovering many of the more recent ones, and she's given them intriguing names like the titles of Robert Ludlum thrillers, including the Tritone Paradox and the Cambiata Illusion.

One auditory illusion which is now so familiar that it's taken for granted is stereo sound reproduction. Slight differences in the sound played by two speakers spaced apart conjure up what's appropriately called the phantom image, giving the listener the impression they're hearing a continuous soundfield curving in from the sides.

The stereo experience was once considered exciting enough for Count Basie to perform the piece Stereophonic, and for Cole Porter to write the song Stereophonic Sound for Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the 1957 film Silk Stockings:

If Ava Gardner played Godiva riding on a mare
the people wouldn't pay a cent to see her in the bare
unless she had glorious Technicolor, Cinecolor
or Warnercolor or Pathecolor or Eastmancolor
or Kodacolor or any color
and stereophonic sound
and stereophonic as an extra tonic
stereophonic sound

Stereo uses differences between its channels to create the illusion of spatial sound. These can include timing, frequency and loudness, although not necessarily together. One technique which combines all three to produce vivid and realistic stereo images is binaural stereo, and some UK Soundmap contributors have been using it.

The phantom image of a good binaural recording is like the glass in Philip Larkin's poem Water in which 'any-angled light would congregate endlessly'. It envelops the listener to create a strong sense of being present at the recording itself. Individual sounds seem to come from precise locations all around.

To record in binaural stereo, a tiny microphone is placed either inside or at the entrance to each canal. In this way they're well positioned to capture the differences which off-centre sounds will present to each ear.

Sound waves from a dog barking to your left will be slightly less intense when they reach your right ear compared to your left ear. They'll also arrive at your right ear up to half a millisecond later. How the brain is able to detect such a small time lag is impressive, especially since even the fastest nerve impulses are propagated at less than a third of the speed of sound.

Lastly, the mass and shape of the shoulders and of the head itself, and the convolutions of the ear lobes, will all produce subtle changes in the frequencies reaching each ear. Our hearing of the world is never disembodied.

Drawbacks inherent to the technique have prevented binaural recording from being widely used. The apparent realism of the stereo image is degraded when played back over loudspeakers. Binaural recordings are best listened to using headphones. With that last caveat in mind, here are some binaural sounds from the UK Soundmap.

One early contribution featured Sheffield's tram system:

Sheffield tram

The county of Suffolk has yielded some good recordings, including these two by contributor ermine. First, the sounds of a game auction at Campsea Ash:

Campsea 

Next, the twittering of zebra finches at Stonham Barns:

Zebra finches

Binaural microphones are relatively cheap, with some pairs priced at well below £100. Although one giant electronics corporation registered several binaural patents in the 1970s, the needs of hobbyists are met by a cottage industry mainly based in the United States.

However convincing it might sound, it is a mistake to assume that a binaural recording must be an accurate reproduction of the original soundscape. It is an illusion, but with enough of the right cues for the brain to construct a familiar-seeming perception of another time and place.

Ian Rawes
Editor, UK Soundmap

hashtag: uksm

Sound recording beyond the smartphone

The UK Soundmap currently displays over 1,300 recordings from all over the country. Of these, some 80% have been made with smartphones. The rest have been produced using a wide range of purpose-built sound recording equipment.

This post outlines some ways in which you can make the transition from mono smartphone sound to high-quality stereo, with reference to what UK Soundmap contributors themselves have been doing.

Between smartphones and pocket-sized digital sound recorders lies the half-way house of the stereo mic which can be attached directly to an iPhone or iPod. They range in price from around £30 to £70 depending on their make and model. It's worth checking first to see if they're compatible with your phone. A small number of recordings on the UK Soundmap have been made this way, and they sound pretty good.

A digital sound recorder, however, offers greater versatility and quality. With one you'll be able to make recordings and then transfer them to your computer for editing. Intense competition among manufacturers in recent years has produced a slew of reasonably-priced and capable machines starting from as low as £120. The majority of the UK Soundmap's non-smartphone recordings have been made with such machines.

As the prices rise, so too does the quality of the machine's construction, on-board microphones, and internal electronics. More expensive recorders produce less hissy and more full-sounding results, and this becomes noticeable with recordings made in quiet settings.

The recorder's specifications should include the ability to record in WAV and MP3 formats, and an external mic socket which can supply plug-in power of 5-9 volts for driving small external condenser microphones, should you wish to follow that route.

Many digital recorders are also supplied with open-cell foam windshields to fit over the on-board mics. These are fine for dealing with indoor draughts or preventing ugly wind noise that may arise from you waving the recorder around, but they aren't much use outdoors except on fairly still days. A windjammer can be fashioned from fake fur if you're a dab hand with the sewing machine, or you can buy ready-made ones to fit your particular make of recorder at around £25. Either way, it's worth having one.

Sound-editing programs, also known as 'wave editors', begin with freeware that offers basic feature sets. These are worth trying out since all wave editors work in fundamentally similar ways. What you learn with the freeware can be transferred to a £50 program offering more functions and a slick user interface.

Making good-quality stereo recordings is an easy hobby to begin, and it can start at a cost comparable to that of a digital compact camera.

Ian Rawes
Editor, UK Soundmap
British Library

hashtag: uksm

Social media award win for the UK Soundmap

Last night in Manchester the UK Soundmap won the some comms award for best public sector use of social media. There was some tough competition, including Sussex Safer Roads' superb public information film Embrace Life.

Several people at the British Library have been involved with the UK Soundmap in various ways, either laying the groundwork long before it went online, or else beavering away behind the scenes to keep the website functioning.

Above all, many thanks to all of you who have taken the trouble to record the sounds around you and add them to the UK Soundmap.

Ian Rawes
Editor, UK Soundmap

hashtag: UKSM

Seasons on the UK Soundmap

The UK Soundmap has now entered its six month and is heading towards 1,200 contributions. Those early recordings from Sheffield in July seem to come from long ago as trains are cancelled and the pavements are packed with snow.

Here are a few recordings from the UK Soundmap which mark the passing of the seasons. The rules can be bent slightly by allowing in one made before the project began, and which was later shared with us by the contributor Wild_Soundscape. It's of a dawn chorus with the intensity typical of late Spring:

High summer brought many seaside recordings, ranging from the blowsy pleasures of piers and amusement arcades to footsteps on shingle beaches and, of course, the sound of the surf. This example was sent in by ermine from Minsmere in Suffolk. The binaural method of recording used makes it particularly rewarding to listen to over headphones.

But the good weather wasn't to last. A couple of contributors provided mute and rueful commentaries on the great British August bank holiday as garden barbecues sputtered out under the inevitable downpours. The autumn winds struck up a bleak song as they roiled through a metal gate in the Shetlands, courtesy of rockscottage:

Fireworks rasped and popped in November, and several people have recorded footsteps stirring piles of fallen leaves. More footsteps have recently begun creaking through snowdrifts, a sound that seems to be felt as much as it is heard. Long-standing contributor sc_r shared this recording of a garden bonfire, the thought of which is now welcome.

 

Ian Rawes
Editor, UK Soundmap

Hashtag: uksm

CD prizes for the UK SoundMap's 1000th recording

The 1000th recording on the UK SoundMap is fast approaching, and to show our appreciation we'll be giving away three different British Library wildlife CDs to whoever provides that magic millenary upload.

The first CD is Dawn Chorus: A Sound Portrait of a British Woodland at Sunrise. It's a beautiful hour-long ambient recording without any commentary to interrupt it.

 

The second CD is Vanishing Wildlife: A Sound Guide to Britain's Endangered Species. This features over thirty different animals, including adders, capercaillies, and recordings of bat sonar.

 

Finally, a copy of Secret Songs of Birds: The hidden beauty of birdsong. This innovative CD has the songs of 24 different species, with original recordings being played alongside digitally mastered versions where the natural speed has been altered to reveal the subtle intricacy of each song.

 

The winner will be announced here, on Twitter, and by comment on the winning entry's AudioBoo page. Good luck!

Update: the winner of the 1000th upload prize is long-standing SoundMap contributor sc_r, with his recording of the bells of Hull City Hall.

Ian Rawes

Editor, UK SoundMap

hashtag: uksm

The decline of whistling

In Dennis Potter's drama series Pennies from Heaven, Bob Hoskins played a hard-up sheet music seller. While on his rounds he tries to enthuse a sceptical music shop owner:

It’s a great tune, everyone’s gonna be whistling it!

When you did last hear anyone whistle a tune? Out of around 900 recordings on the UK SoundMap so far, whistling is heard on just one or two. As Lauren Bacall said, all you have to do is put your lips together and blow. Yet tuneful whistling appears to be on the way out.

Once, workplace whistling was common enough for high-class establishments to put up signs forbidding tradesmen and staff from whistling. One can still be seen round the back of the Savoy hotel. The only people allowed or expected to whistle were the doormen, who had the knack of putting two fingers in their mouths and blowing a very loud whistle to hail taxis.

Despite the disapproval of hotels and their guests, whistling had a popular image, symbolising cheerfulness and, sometimes, calculated nonchalance. The English singer-songwriter Roger Whittaker launched his career with songs such as Mexican Whistler, Irish Whistler, and Whistling Swagman.

The entertainer and bird impersonator Percy Edwards, who died in 1996, could imitate by whistling the songs of hundreds of different bird species. His example spawned imitators. Sounds from Smithfield meat market were recorded in 1993 and added to the British Library's Archival Sound Recordings collections. The recordist noted that it was "initially spoilt by silly whistling from a porter". But on listening, it's clear that the porter was an accomplished whistler in the Percy Edwards mould, evoking the spirit of at least a 'dickybird', if not any particular species.

Whistling and birdsong have much older associations, and perhaps whistling first arose in deliberate imitation of birdsong while hunting wildfowl. The discovery of another rich historical link was described by the retired Thames lighterman Dick Fagan, in his book of memoirs Men of the Tideway. The lighterman's job was to steer cargo-laden barges or 'lighters' to their destinations using only the current and huge wooden paddles. After Fagan completed his apprenticeship, he was given charge of his own lighter:

One of the things I learnt to do, this may surprise you, was how to whistle. I ought to explain that every lighterage firm had its own kind of whistle – the sound, I mean, because all the whistling was done with the mouth and not with any instrument. Whistling was a way of identifying yourself across distances, especially at night, with other men working for the same company. Very useful. Getting it right was a work of art though.

On a day-trip to the countryside with his girlfriend, Fagan learns the origins of the firms' various whistles:

Finally we were sitting on a fallen tree trunk just dreaming. Then it happened. A loud shrill whistle, very close. My firm’s whistle [. . .] It had just come to me that the whistle I’d been using for many years was part of a bird’s song.

After a bit I spotted the bird as large as life up on a nearby tree with its beak open and the familiar notes pouring out of it as though it had been a lighternan all its life. In Bermondsey we only had sparrows. Who’s ever heard of a whistling sparrow? Then another bird started up with a different tune, after that another, and another.

I listened to them in amazement because I could connect each one’s song with the lighterage firm that had converted it into its own whistle. Soft green grass, graceful trees, peace, love – yet because of the birds’ song it was all connected with the hustle and struggle of river and dock life.

The whistles of watermen must have been invented long, long ago, when London’s river was still close to open country, when all these birds were singing in Shoreditch and Wapping, in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, when the largest ship wasn’t much bigger than the barges I now rowed every day.

The modern decline of whistling is probably because most pop songs no longer have whistlable melodies. There's also a general trend away from public voices relying on unaided mouths, vocal cords and lungs, towards loudspeakers, recorded announcements, and voice synthesisers.

Teabreak teaser: How many pop songs can you think of which have whistling in them? Otis Redding’s Dock of the Bay is too easy, and Ennio Morricone film scores don’t count.

Ian Rawes

Editor, UK SoundMap

hashtag: uksm

Some early statistics from the UK SoundMap

With Autumn officially beginning next week, now seems a good time to take stock of the UK SoundMap's progress so far.

As of September the 17th, we've received and cleared nearly 650 recordings from around 220 contributors. The median or mid-way number of recordings per contributor is two. The mean value is higher at just over three, because some contributors have uploaded two or three dozen recordings each.

Under duress, one could draw a weakly predictive stereotype of the typical UK SoundMap recording. It would most likely be made during the daytime, in a built-up urban area, in the street, with one or more voices present, and the sound of traffic in the background.

But this would do no justice to the great variety of sounds which have been captured. More than 90% of all recordings have indeed been made during the day, and half of them were in cities and large towns. 27% were also made in villages, small towns and suburbs; 12% in the countryside; and 11% by the sea and in seaside resorts.

Within these broad geographical categories are more precise settings. The street accounts for 21% of recordings; fields, footpaths and towpaths 13%; homes and gardens 12%; railway stations, airports and other transport hubs 8%; 8% were also made inside road and rail vehicles; pubs, cafes, restaurants, and shops 7%; parks, playgrounds and playing fields 6%; 5% were made on or by a beach; and 5% in museums, libraries and art galleries. Smaller numbers have come from settings as diverse as boats, offices, hospitals, places of worship, shopping centres, street markets, outdoor festivals, fens and woodland.

The voice in some form is the most common sound, appearing in over half of all recordings. In 40% it consists of a single voice (other than that of the recordist) or several voices, and in 10% a hubbub of many voices. 9% include the sound of an electrically amplified voice, including loudhailers, PA or tannoy systems, radios and televisions. A disproportionate number of street recordings are made in pedestrianised areas too, where the speech of passersby can rise above the background growl of traffic.

In another 9% of recordings the recordist's own voice is heard, often describing the scene for the benefit of the listener. But this rarely occurs in built-up areas. More often the recordist speaks at home or when in the countryside, sometimes with humour, sometimes to express pleasure at what they're hearing.

The sounds of water occur in nearly 15% of recordings, including rain, dripping taps, fountains, the guttural noises of drains, and the sound of the sea. Water in its gassy state is represented with nearly a dozen recordings of steam-driven vehicles, and the sounds of coffee machines and whistling kettles. Perhaps this winter we'll hear the sounds of cracking ice and snowball fights, too.

As more contributions come in, so the data set will grow richer, and more in-depth statistical explorations will become possible.

Ian Rawes
Editor, UK SoundMap

hashtag: uksm

Women's voices call the shots in recorded announcements

In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, controlling unrest is very different to the ‘With a loud voice command’ of the 1714 Riot Act:

Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart, “My friends, my friends!” said the Voice so pathetically, with a note of such infinitely tender reproach that, behind their gas masks, even the policemen’s eyes were momentarily dimmed with tears, “what is the meaning of this? Why aren’t you all being happy and good together? Happy and good,” the Voice repeated. “At peace, at peace.”

The Voice is a sexless ‘it’, but in the 1930s when Brave New World was published, nearly all voices ordering or informing adults were those of men. As described in Anne Karpf’s book The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent, women’s voices were judged to be too ‘shrill’ and lacking in gravitas for public announcement.

By the 1970s, however, women announcers had become common in supermarkets and department stores. Actress Stephanie Gathercole provided the efficient-sounding lift voice for the opening credits of the BBC sitcom Are You Being Served?:

Ground floor perfumery, stationery and leather goods, wigs and haberdashery, kitchenware and food. Going up. First floor telephones, gents’ ready-made suits, shirts, socks, ties, hats, underwear and shoes. Going up. Second floor carpets, travel goods and bedding, material, soft furnishings, restaurant and teas.

Lift voices informing you of what's on each floor are one of those features which no longer seem to exist in department stores, although one survives at the British Library.

Going by recordings on the UK SoundMap, women’s voices are now the preferred option for recorded announcements. They outnumber male voices 5 to 1 in settings as diverse as buses, train stations and supermarkets. It’s a significant change in the public sound environment compared to just a few decades ago.

Ian Rawes

Editor, UK SoundMap

hashtag: uksm

Sound categories and finding subjects to record

The British Library's UK SoundMap offers some suggestions to help contributors get started, and these are couched in general terms because the choices people make will be informative.

Even so, someone setting out for the first time to record environmental sounds faces problems of choice more daunting than those confronting the novice photographer.

The photographer can look for ideas from the vast and unavoidable body of work compiled by other photographers, and in which popular themes can easily be detected. The most common tags on Flickr include staples such as 'sunset', 'winter', 'cat', 'flowers' and 'beach'.

In urban environments especially, visual means are used to broadcast information much more commonly than auditory ones. This discrepancy has likely increased over time as literacy has become more widespread and the background noise level of traffic has risen. Photographers have architecture, industrial design, fashion and advertising to draw upon.

Fortunately, a good stock of mental categories for sounds can make the recordist's life easier. Jean-Francois Augoyard's 2006 book Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds provides descriptions of over eighty everyday acoustic phenomena, including echo, vibrato and anticipation.

R. Murray Schafer's influential 1977 book The Tuning of the World contains a classification of 'sound objects' which is worth reproducing:

Natural sounds: creation; destruction; water; air; earth; fire; birds; mammals; insects; and the seasons.

Human sounds: the voice; the body; and clothing.

 

Sounds and Society: rural soundscapes; town soundscapes; city soundscapes; maritime soundscapes; domestic soundscapes; sounds of trades; professions and livelihoods; sounds of factories and offices; sounds of entertainment; music; ceremonies and festivals; parks and gardens; and religious festivals.

Mechanical sounds: industrial and factory equipment; vehicles; aircraft; construction and demolition equipment; mechanical tools; ventilation and air-conditioning; and farm machinery.

Quiet and Silence

Sounds as Indicators: bells and gongs; horns and whistles; sounds of time; telephones; warning systems; signals of pleasure; and indicators of future occurrences.

 

These categories are worth considering as a catalyst for the recordist's local knowledge and experience of sound, for which there is no substitute.

 

Ian Rawes

Editor, UK SoundMap

 

hashtag: uksm