Recordings of background atmospheres and incidental noises from all over London. Many form part of a sound grid series recorded at evenly-spaced points across the city, each marking the centre of a square on the map below.
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Above: graphic based on a daytime satellite image courtesy of the Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. Each red grid square is 2.5 miles or 4 kilometers across.
File name: Pymmes Brook Cockfosters
Grid square: Oakwood, Cockfosters
Duration: 1:00
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 23 December 2011
Time of day: 1.30pm
Location: Immediately south of Monken Haldey Common, Cockfosters.
Description: Loud trickling from Pymme's Brook, a train passes in the distance, a woodpigeon coos, faint traffic.
Technical guff: Headworn stereo. 2 x DPA 2006C mics, Sound Devices MixPre-D preamp, Sony PCM M10 recorder.
Additional notes: None.
File name: Pymmes Brook Oak Hill Park
Grid square: Oakwood, Cockfosters
Duration: 1:00
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 23 December 2011
Time of day: 2.20pm
Location: By the side of a footbridge in Oak Hill Park, north London.
Description: Constant and slightly reverberent noise of Pymme's Brook as it flows over a ledge beneath a footbridge, faint birdsong in background.
Technical guff: Headworn stereo. 2 x DPA 2006C mics, MixPre-D preamp, Sony PCM M10 recorder.
Additional notes: None.
File name: TQ 2835 9584
Grid square: Oakwood, Cockfosters
Duration: 1:00
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 21 April 2009
Time of day: 11.30am
Location: Gloucester Gardens, near Cockfosters Road.
Description: A broad residential street with large houses. To the north, sounds from workmen renovating a house, with intermittent drilling and hammering. A van drives past, airplane drone and background sounds of traffic passing along Cockfosters Road.
Technical guff: Head-worn stereo. 2 x Shure WL-183 mics. Edirol R09-HR digital recorder.
Additional notes: None.
Sound map recordings fall into two kinds, shown by the filenames they're given.
A sound grid recording has a filename beginning with the letters 'TQ', followed by eight digits. These are the Ordnance Survey co-ordinates for where the recording ought to be made. Each is part of a regularly-spaced series of recordings covering London. More about them, including graphics showing the resulting city-wide patterns of sounds, can be found on this page.
Other recordings have more descriptive filenames and these are simply of curious or distinctive sounds heard in different places.