The noise of Norway

Cities sound so different. All sound editors know that it’s much easier to sell a location if you have the right ambience sound. I often work on projects that are shot in Oslo or other cities in Norway and I’ve had a need for good ambiences many times. A while ago I decided to go out and record a lot of ambiences around the city since there aren’t many (or any) usable libraries out there that cover Oslo or Norwegian cities. The only one i know of is pretty old and the sounds of the city change as time goes by.

Instead of keeping all the sounds to myself, I’ve decided to release them to help out my fellow sound editors and designers. I started the sound effects label Norsonant a while back, but I soon found out that it takes time to run a sfx site well. When Sonniss was launched I figured that it is better to let them do that part of the work while I concentrate on recording and editing sound. I will keep my own site as a hub for information and details about my sound collections.

Edit: Oslo city ambience is now available on Sonniss and A sound effect.

Well, enough with the sales pitch. Let’s talk about the sounds and the process. It’s actually been about two years since I recorded the sounds. Time flies. I have recorded sound effects for a long time, but mostly for my own use. The Oslo sounds were my first attempt at doing this properly with detailed records of every location, pictures and detailed metadata for others to use. I would like to thank Paul Virostek and Tim Prebble for providing invaluable advice and resources through their blogs and Twitter feeds. It’s been very, very helpful to read their their thoughts about recording, sound libraries and metadata. You should really check out their blogs if you haven’t already.

Paul’s blog: http://www.creativefieldrecording.com/
Tim’s blog: http://www.musicofsound.co.nz/blog/

I spent a lot of time on research to find good locations. First I took a few trips around the city to listen to locations. It’s easy to map out a route using Google maps, but going out and listening to the locations before bringing your equipment can really save you some time. Oslo is a relatively quiet city compared to other cities, but it still has many of the same problems, like music from stores and street musicians. My recon trips helped me avoid the worst sound pollution and find the best times of day to record.

Oslo has some signature sounds that I really had to capture, like the bells of city hall and the heavy Italian trams that transport people through the city. When I traveled around and really listened I realised that birds are a big part of the sound of Oslo. One of my recording days was a Sunday. Then I realised how many churches there really are in Oslo and that most of them have loud bells that they’re not afraid to use.

I think I went to around 60 locations to record. The final collection ended up with about 45 locations. Even though I tried my best to find the right time of day to record every location, many locations were ruined by street musicians and music from stores. I did revisit key locations to get clean recordings later. Other locations were too hard to get and I just had to cut my losses.

Recording locations in the final collection:

The editing process was a long one. I’m not a big fan of looping ambiences and I’ve often been frustrated because the ambiences in my libraries were too short. Before I started recording this collection i decided I was going to do loooong takes. This made for an incredible long an tedious editing process. I also had a hard time deciding what should be kept in and what should be cut from the recordings. For example, when are the footsteps of a pedestrian part of the usable ambience and when are those footsteps ruining the recording? There’s a fine line between those two. I ended up doing several editing passes where the first one was a very light clean-it-up-without-removing-every-little-noise pass. Then I left that recording alone for a while and later came back to listen again and do more editing, if needed. When you have ambiences that are up to ten minutes long, all the editing passes add up.

After the editing was done, it was time for metadata. I had taken a lot of notes while I was on location, so much of the information was already there. After all the files were edited and I did my final listen through, I took extra notes and added these to the metadata. It was an extra challenge to find the balance between adding enough info for Norwegian editors with local knowledge and not adding too much clutter for international users.

After doing all the work, I was exhausted, but still felt good. I let a few colleagues test out the collection and when they gave me the thumbs up, I knew it was ready. I hope you like it too.

Check out the 30 second previews below and take a trip around Oslo.
Equipment used: Sound Devices 744T, Sennheiser MKH 416, Røde NT-4