About the Sound
An audio recording of Denmark Street's ambience
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So, I'm guessing you were probably listening to the background sound on an episode of the Murder Mile true-crime podcast and thought "hmm, that sounds like a real city street, but is it?". Well, yes, it is.
What you're hearing is the actual sound of the real location itself, recorded by myself using a small condenser mic' and a smartphone (thank God for technology), as each street has a very specific sound and I feel it gives you as the listener a real sense of its history, space, architecture and the people who live/work there, as well as some interesting little audio-nuggets which aid the story, such as people talking, traffic noise, sirens, construction work, weather and even those odd little moments of silence which seem odd - but do happen - in a bustling city. In places I have mixed various tracks together, but only because it's it's impossible to give a true sense of a street in one take. |
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For example, if you click on the grey audio player, you will be able to hear a small sample of the original recording I made of Denmark Street, including "someone" attempting to play the guitar.
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Unfortunately, as all of these murders happened in the past, I'm unable to use authentic sounds from the incident itself, and I won't cheat you by pretending the recreate the moment, but what I aim to do is to give you a flavour of the location (to aid your experience of this audio guided walk) and tell as honest-a-story as possible, using sound.
As for the narration, I record this in the privacy of my little studio, where it's nice and quiet. Originally I tried recording it live from the street itself, but as a self-conscious, slightly shy dylsexic who is easily distracted, I quickly decided it was safer to record the audio in private. One day I'll release my out-takes as a one-off episode and you'll hear why I need privacy - I swear at myself for fluffing a line every six seconds. |
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Occasionally, there are some specialist sounds which I'm unable to re-create accurately, so I use a fabulous website called Freesound, onto which keen eared sound-designers upload their own sound effects for use under the Creative Commons agreement, and (in accordance with this) I have listed every sound used on the transcript page for each episode in my blog.
