Websites of organisations and people involved in field recording and sound, and of those devoted to London and its history. If you want your site to be included, please see the 'About' page for how to get in touch.
This provides access to some 16,000 sound recordings, digitised from various formats in the British Library Sound Archive. For copyright reasons, many are only available to those logging onto the site from universities and other institutes, but the above link takes you to a collection of 7,000 publicly-accessible sound files. They include the Survey of English Dialects, ethnographic wax cylinders dating back to the late 19th century, recordings of British wildlife, interviews with survivors of the Holocaust, and the Millennium Memory Bank oral history series.
Intriguing website full of photographs and recordings of some of the strangest musical instruments. Featuring the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, the wave-powered Sea Organ built into a promenade in Croatia, an optical theremin, and lots of things built from scrapyard junk. (Thanks to James Tugwell.)
A collaborative collection of Creative Commons-licensed field recordings made by people from around the world. SoundTransit is a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography. SoundTransit sprang from a soundscape exhibition in Germany in 2005, and somewhat modestly says it has hundreds of recordings for you to listen to; as of May 2009 it had over 1,600, with some nice ones from London. Well worth exploring.
A database and collection of thousands of Creative Commons-licensed sound recordings, run by the Music Technology Group of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona. Anyone can contribute and download sound files, but you need to register first to do either. The recordings make up an enormous variety, but with ambient noises, samples and sound effects in the forefront.
A collaborative database and collection of tens of thousands of birdsong recordings from all around the world. This technically impressive website has many features, such as generating sonograms on demand for selected files, mapping locations of recordings, displaying the ranges of different species, and more.
Santa Fe-based nonprofit organisation with a holistic take on understanding and appreciating natural soundscapes, and concerned with the impact of manmade noise on the natural world. Marine bioacoustics is also a recurrent interest. The website has an impressive array of articles by writers and recordists, and extensive links to scientific research organisations, mainly based in the USA.
Website for the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, an international umbrella organisation of affiliated bodies and individuals who share "a common concern with the state of the world's soundscapes". The Forum promotes education and research to raise awareness of the increasing impact of human activities on the sound environment, and of cultural shifts where natural sounds cease to be appreciated. The site has a lot of written resources, including its journal Soundscape, which can be read in PDF format. Kendall Wrightson's article An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology is worth reading first.
US-based organisation promoting field recording and sound archiving. One of its goals includes gathering field recordings from every country on earth to create a global sound map. The website has regular blog posts providing a good sampling of sound projects around the world. One initiative the WLP is involved in is the intriguing Synesthetic Plan of Chicago.
Chris Watson is one of the world's leading recordists of wildlife and natural sounds. He has worked alongside David Attenborough on several series, most recently Life in Cold Blood. The website gives biographical information and updates on his work for radio and television. There's also a downloads page where you can hear some fantastic recordings; click here to go straight to it.
Website of the San Francisco-based recordist and composer Aaron Ximm. Alongside his own field recordings and projects, Aaron's site has a one minute vacation series of soundscapes, numbering over 300 and sent in by people from around the world. There are also articles giving outlines of the phonographic and acoustic ecological approaches to sound recording, and some technical advice.
London-based arts radio station now in its seventh year. Programming is very diverse but favours avant-garde and obscure music and sound art. The website provides streaming audio and podcasts; the schedule is a good place to start.
Website for recordings by James Huckle, whose nicely-captured Whistling busker recording appears on London Sound Survey. There's a large collection of recordings of classic propeller-driven aircraft, the throaty, evocative sounds of which are a whole lot better than the dreary drone of modern-day commercial jet airliners. There's also some longer compositions too. Make sure to check out the updates on James's regular Digital sounds blog, which in addition to recordings has up-to-date equipment reviews.
Website of Midlands-based artist and designer Martin Paling, with a collection of sound recordings made in Wales and Catalunya, plus some railway sounds. The latter carries on a long-standing British sound recording tradition, with labels such as Argo releasing many steam engine records in the 1960s (the best title was surely 'Trains in Trouble'). There's also a number of useful articles, such as how to build your own windjammer, and an introduction to cloud hosting. Martin also has his Railway Sounds railway audio recording diary, which he's been keeping quiet about here, but Martin's relaxed and pleasant writing style would win anyone over. Plus if you like big ugly grimy useful locomotives, it's the place to go!
Neat-looking Canadian sound map project linked to Concordia University in Montreal. According to the website: "Soundmaps are in many ways the most effective auditory archive of an environment. We are aiming to create an archival database of sound recordings from all over Montréal." Navigation is made easy on this Google-based sound map through a tagging system.
German-based sound mapping project with nearly 5,000 recordings (as of late August 2009) from all around the world, with Germany and the USA perhaps featuring most often. Technically impressive and uses Google maps very effectively.
Nice-looking (and sounding) binaural recording blog from the well-travelled Ollie Hall, with freqeuent postings of recordings from Japan. Anyone fascinated by the sugar-rush auditory scenes found in amusement arcades will like this recording by him of a Japanese Pachinko parlour.
German producer of hardware and software for bioacoustical research. The website has some pages of useful technical information, but they're not always easy to find. A short tutorial on sound recording in the field provides comparisons of many makes of portable digital recorder. Another page provides more detailed microphone noise input results for different digital recorders, including sound samples to listen to.
Website for the US-based makers of the excellent Sonic Studios series of head-worn dimensional stereo mics, windshields, and pre-amps. The mics create a very lifelike stereo image which will have you looking around to see where the sounds are coming from. Binaural mics can involve the problem of the stereo image sounding very impressive through headphones, but noticeably less so over loudspeakers. Sonic Studios mics produce recordings which sound good through both. The site contains plenty of recording samples and useful technical information as well.
Blokeish, gadget-oriented American web forums mainly by and for hobbyists, with an emphasis on recording live music. Good for technical advice on mics and portable recorders, and it has a friendly atmosphere where newcomers' questions are readily answered.
Page on the Vermont Folklife Center's website linking to various field recording and research guides. These accessible guides are written mainly for those doing oral history and ethnographic research, but they have wider application. Topics include overviews of digital recording technologies, editing, and links to further resources on the preservation of audio archive materials.
Yahoo group/message board set up in 2000, and described as "interested in techniques, issues and general discussion of recording natural sounds. Topics include, but aren't limited to recording techniques and equipment, recording venues and discussions of various animal vocalizations and communication. Other natural sounds, such as water, weather and wind-generated sounds are also covered." Contains an abundance of technical know-how.
