If you live in Boston, we need your sounds to make Soundscape:Boston a success!
- What sounds are important to you?
- When you leave your community, what sounds seem different or altogether missing?
- Are the sounds around you changing? (What did your environment sound like a generation ago?)
- Do you know of a collection of local sound recordings you would like to share?
Here's how you can contribute to Soundscape:Boston
- Make recordings using the best equipment you can.
- Flash recorders, hard-disc, Minidisc, and cassette are OK. Please no cell-phones, voice-recorders, microcassettes, etc.
- Need advice on field-recording? Take a look at the excellent guides at Transom.org and the Vermont Folk Life Center.
- Choose the best parts of each sound and save each as a separate file.
- Need editing software? Try Audacity, an open-source project for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh.
- Please no more than 5 minutes per track.
- Your sounds will loop when played within our software, so fade-ins and fade-outs are discouraged.
- It's best to save them as uncompressed files like WAV or AIFF.
- Upload your sounds to the Freesound online database.
- Freesound is a database of Creative Commons-licensed sounds. The sounds you upload are available to others.
(You will see a full explanation when you join.).
- Freesound is a database of Creative Commons-licensed sounds. The sounds you upload are available to others.
- Go to the registration page and create an account.
- After a confirmation email, your account will be active and you can start adding sounds using the Contribute to Freesound page. (A moderator reviews your sounds so it may take some time for your new file to be accessible to others.)
- Describe and tag your sounds
- Tag each track with the keyword soundscapeboston. This step is crucial! If a file isn't tagged, we have no way of knowing that you want to add it to the project.
- Geotag your tracks. (Geotags are special tags that specify where a track was made. We will use your tags to compile a map in the exhibition space with pins for each of your sounds.)
- We will download your sounds before the exhibition begins and periodically during the show.
- You will be credited for your contributions.
Feel free to contact us directly if you would like to contribute sounds without using the Freesound database.