Sounds of the City

Perhaps even more than the rich visual details that the city has to offer, sound invades our experience of public space, yet this blog has rarely explored this city’s soundscape.

Fortunately someone else – in fact a whole bunch of folks – has done exactly this and have recently released the Montreal Sound Map.

From wailing sirens sirens and hollering frat-boys, to stomping neighbours and the incessant drone of tires on concrete, the sounds of the city tend to get a bad rep. After all, how often are the urban wanderer’s ears piqued by beautiful or intriguing sounds? I do not ask this question facetiously. Perhaps it is simply a matter of paying attention (just as I have seen more beauty in the city since I began seeking out images for the Photo-du-jour column).

Max Stein, an electroacoustics student who launched the Montreal Sound Map with his brother Julian, says one of their objectives is “to get people to listen to their environment with more attention.

“The sounds on the map are unprocessed recordings taken from the environments in which we live, so it shows us that there are interesting sounds all around us if we listen out for them” he writes.

Listeners are invited to submit audio recordings from around the city along with photographs of the location. By tagging tracks with information such as the date, time, weather (for instance rain or wind) and subject matter, the Montreal Sound map creates a searchable archive of audio information about the city.

“I would be really interested in hearing the difference in the recordings uploaded today versus those uploaded ten years from now,” Stein says.

So far, the Sound Map has a few dozen points that are beginning to compose an idea of the city. Natural sounds can found by those who pay attention (roaring river, gushing rainwater, twittering birds), and our own voices and languages mingle in the streets and shops. Public art is represented in a couple recordings of buskers and outdoor festivals. And, just as Montreal’s landscape is in constant, even accelerating flux, the soundscape is overrun with noises of construction and transportation, from a squeaky escalator to the crashing of a freight train. If you listen closely, each type of train wagon thumps out its own, unique beat.

Audio track: Cello performance in Berri-UQAM metro station approaching the Saint-Denis exit. Recorded October 9th 2008 by Max Stein.