The London Sound Survey collects the sounds of everyday public life throughout London and compiles past accounts to show how the sound environment has changed. This page explains more about the site's purpose.
For any matter where the comments pages aren't up to the job, please contact the London Sound Survey by emailing:
A D M I N [ a t ] S O U N D S U R V E Y . O R G . U K
I HOPE YOU enjoy listening to these field recordings made in and around London, and enjoy reading the historical accounts of how London sounded in past times. If this website helps encourage someone to make field recordings or start a line of research of their own, that'd be even better. Drop me a line if you do.
Amongst the daily urban hubbub there's information about who lives here, what their agendas are, how they enjoy themselves and what they believe in. Sounds come in fashions from singing canaries and windchimes to boomboxes and car horns that play Colonel Bogey. They reflect developments in technology and trade, the growth of the city, and social change. They tell us of shifts in the make-up and scattering of London's wildlife.
Stereo sound recording and playback is the first and still only really practical immersive electronic medium. Listening to a recording of the sounds of a place or event gets the imagination working and recreates some of the sense of being there. Sharing such experiences feels like a worthwhile end in itself.
The London Sound Survey isn't funded and it isn't commercial. It's a hobby. One day, touch wood, it might offer a useful account of what public life sounded like in early 21st-century London.
IT'D BE NICE to hear from anyone who'd like to share their recordings with the London Sound Survey. If you already have some sound files on the internet, there's no harm in finding an additional home for them here. The site has a SoundCloud dropbox, which makes uploading easy. The upload link appears on the home page as well; the full URL is:
http://soundcloud.com/london-sound-survey/dropbox
A Creative Commons licence (Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported) applies to all recordings on the site by default, but they remain your sounds nonetheless.
The licence means people can use them for non-commercial purposes, but they must state who made them, under what licence conditions they've been reproduced, and provide a link to the London Sound Survey home page. If you prefer, you can specify a different licence of your own choosing, and do feel free to include any website URLs you'd like to appear alongside your recordings.
IM Rawes, London, May 2009
