A New Way to Walk With Me - Ambient City Sound-Scapes - South Station to Boston Common

The city really has a music of its own.

Any place does, if we listen closely enough.

On Wednesday, I left the headphones in the bag as I walked to work from the train station. For some reason, passing between two massive idling diesel train engines, among hundreds of shuffling people, and then clearing into the more open spaces of the station proper, I was overcome with the sort of spine-tingling reaction that occurs with some of the more dramatic ambient music of Ben Frost or Tim Hecker.

I started listening more closely. As I passed the busker outside the station and crossed Atlantic Avenue, I feel in behind a woman with loud, heavy heels on her shoes. And I chased that rhythm for half a mile, listening to the timbre change with the surface of the sidewalk and the echoes of the different urban canyons we passed through. (I kept a polite distance, though. I didn't want her to think I was stalking her for any creepy reason.)

Suddenly I was obsessed with all the sounds around me. The fragmentary bits of conversation. The endless baseline rumbles of so many diesel delivery trucks. Surprisingly many birds. The squeak of subway cars beneath the sidewalk. I thought, I have got to find a way to record some of this.

And then at lunch I realized my cell phone has microphones. Not only that, it turns out it records in Stereo. So I made a few test recordings and played them back.

I'm really impressed with the sound quality. The way the different noises fade in and out as I walk, the jumbled ambient busy-ness of the sound, where you can focus in on one detail or give yourself over to the overall experience, even the timbre of the voices that come through, in many different languages, or with the typical Boston accent - it's amazingly clear for on-phone microphones and pre-loaded recording software. And the perceived motion from the stereo microphones is almost spooky.

And it's weird how playing back the recording actually cements the details of a walk in my memory.

I'm experimenting with Audacity to perform some basic sound editing.

Mostly I wanted to cut out the parts of the recording where the wind blew against the mics and ruined the sound. (These recordings are, for the most part, going to be a fair-weather activity.)

And I'm not entirely pleased with the reduction in quality that comes from converting the phone's file format to Flac (which Audacity can use) to mp3 (which YouTube can play). Some of the ambient noise loses it's "crispness," and sounds more like typical audio compression artifacts. I may find a way to reduce this effect as I learn more about this.

Anyway, I'm really excited to share my first Audio Walk With Me.

Listen with headphones, if you can.

Here's some of the highlights, if you don't feel like listening to a full 13 minute walk. (Although honestly I find this kind of restful to listen to as background music while working.)

• I begin recording on the coach. You can hear the hiss of air circulation, squeaking brakes, and hundreds of shuffling feet and distant conversations as we disembark.
• Around 2:00, a conversation about vacation plans, an elderly mother, and shuffleboard, ending with laughter. Cross feeding into a conversation about video game controllers.
• At 3:00, announcement for an Amtrack Train departure to Newport News.
• 3:40 street performer on Atlantic Avenue.
• 6:10 - Diesel engines and birds.
• 7:30 - Squeaky brakes and pedestrian crossing signals. (I love how this two-tone chirp becomes a recurring theme in these recordings.)
• 10:20 - a man tells his child how to cross the road
• 10:30 - a green line trolley rumbling beneath Boylston street.
• 11:30 - birds chirping in the Old Burial Ground
• 11:40 - men with Boston accents talking about a boat.
• 12:50 - I leave Edgar Allen Poe square and check in at work.

I hope you enjoy this new approach to #WalkWithMe!

Thanks as always to @lyndsaybowes for starting the tag. I hope this recording is a worthy addition to the tradition. I'm really excited to make more of these recordings, both in the country and the city, now that I've caught the bug of ambient sound.

And I think it's a fun way to share and experience new places.