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: TQ 5608 8826
Grid square: Emerson Park, Upminster
Duration: 1:00
Recorded by: IM Rawes
Recording date: 14/3/2009
Time of day: 3.30pm
Location: A field south of the Southern Arterial Road, near the Ingrebourne river.
Description: A light aeroplane drones briefly at the start of the recording, faint birdsong, distant sound of traffic from the Southern Arterial Road, shouts and cries of children playing in an adjacent field.
Technical guff: Head-worn stereo. 2 x Shure WL-183 mics. Olympus LS-10 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.
