Take an audio tour of the city with no name, and if you like, I can be your guide. You can thank an assload of my free time over the latter part of this week and the weekend, and a whole host of people over at freesound.org, without whom this would not have been possible in any way, shape, or form. They are as follows:
Spandau, dobroide, icmusic, A43, sdfalk, martypinso, stomachache, Heigh-hoo, Marec, acclivity, Walter_Odington, markystar, massi_1130, eyecandyuk, morewaves, shewbox, audiblepie.com, Capuchin, reinsamba, fabe, ingeos, abinadimeza, mystiscool, jakeharries, Humphries, pcaeldries, patchen, mr chips, decembered, cognito perceptu, and duckyboy80.
I can guide you with words and let you know what you're hearing, but do feel welcome to just kick back, absorb the sounds, and build the world in your own head as you go along. Or enjoy the white noise just for the sake of it.
This basically started as me messing with some sound effects hoping to create a few good rain loops. I love the sound of rain, and we got none this year. Northern California is pretty much in a drought right now, and we're all on water restriction. But as I began realizing just how much more really incredible stuff is on
The Freesound Project now, I thought maybe I could do a little better than just that. And as I went, a whole different idea came into my head, which is what you're now hearing. I also have ideas for it that could extend beyond just this, but you know... a step at a time.
This MP3 clocks in at just over a half hour and was built from the ground up from samples, 100% recorded material supplied to me by the freesound.org community (and a few others I hacked together on my own from other sources). Ultimately, 54 samples from freesound.org were used, which resulted in more than 130 individual files that were used to construct the soundscapes of various "scenes", including background chatter, music, bits that were entirely atmospheric or tonal, and most importantly, the various and ever-changing textures of the rain as it collides with concrete, metal, and earth. After all was said and done, the burden gifted my hard drive a database of almost 5GB of raw audio data.
So, if you have any desire to just zone out for a while,
take the tour. This isn't action-packed, mind you, because it isn't meant to be. It's more or less a tool I'm using to help myself get centered within a project, so it might be a little too "zen" to be of interest to some of you.
00:00 -
Back to the wall of a small cafe on Haake in Little Ireland, which comprises roughly one third of the city's downtown area. A garbage truck is doing its rounds at all hours of the night, waking up everyone the way it always does.
00:50 -
Moving west down the street, passing a variety of small shops and cafes.
02:00 -
A lot of closed hotdog stands and newpaper stalls which are locked up for the night. Not much going on in this part of town, as this stretch of Haake is relatively dead (unlike further east, where you can find the Polish Ambassador and Warsaw Reclamation Hall).
04:50 -
The Brendan Stout, a quiet enough bar. Not a lot of punks hang out there despite it being in a somewhat lackluster part of town right across from a train yard where they repair some of the city subway trains. It's warm and the drinks are worth what you pay for them. The bell from the clock tower rings eleven.
06:30 -
Hollis Street. Drunks are everywhere this far north on Hollis as there are lots of good bars. A man playing an accordion walks by, and trust me, you don't want to talk to him. He doesn't speak English anyway. A block or two down Hollis, heading south to Little Ireland Drive, and we can go west again, past the back of the hospital. Then we can pass Third Street, moving diagonally across to the southwest.
8:00 -
There's trash strewn about. Mucking around behind some buildings gets us into Fuse by the back way. The subway goes by, which isn't so far above us. Through some soft ground and a tree-lined walk nets us Fuse, a decent place for billiards if you don't go the main club. But the billiards room isn't the best place for a drink unless you like your bars anonymous and dark enough to hide in. West out the side door, brushing past a drunken Brit playing 8-ball, and we're on the street again.
Crossing Kumiko and winding quickly around Ume Street gets us out of the heavy rain.
12:20 -
Miyazaki, a noodle joint, is at the end of the street. The place is pretty dead at this hour, but there are a couple of drunk Asian girls chatting amongst themselves. What else do you come to Japantown for, anyway? The rain comes and goes.
16:45 -
Southward again, crossing Hououji via a covered crosswalk. The rain has died down a little. Once across, the fish market, which is in full swing despite the late hour. One of the more popular sellers has a counter full of extremely enthusiastic employees. Doubling back north again past some busier cafes and the ever-popular House Kitsune, we then cut north through Kitsune's alley, across Kumiko, and north again past Spiegel Market. From here we can get to the Roman Cancel, the only place around to feature pachinko, and the only real arcade left in the city.
21:30 -
The elevated subway train rolls to a stop overhead, prematurely. Probably a problem with the track. It isn't an uncommon occurrence. The Roman Cancel, then a neighboring cafe that's part of a little covered strip mall. It's a humid night, so all the doors are open everywhere.
26:00 -
Down through the strip mall, passing another lively place, and then walking past the Crater on our way southwest, a leviathan of a vertical structure that sits just across the street, extending high up into the sky along the side of the even-taller Mount Shigeru, and far below into the geographical anomaly from which it got its name. Several of the bars and restaurants that cling to the skeletal structure cast their noises across. Eventually, we find the elevator that will take us to the nearby elevated subway platform. A short ride up, then into the train.
So there you have it. No idea if anyone else will find it worth listening to, but I thoroughly enjoyed making it.
