In our upcoming Brownstone concert, Metropolis will employ a remarkable collection of audio samples from the BBC Nature Sound Effects Library, thanks to our friends at Pro Sound Effects, effectively transforming a Brooklyn home into an electro-acoustic swamp, filled with frogs, insects, and violins. Over the years, the BBC has collected an extraordinary database of recordings that find their way into film and television, including the popular BBC programs Planet Earth and Life, both narrated by David Attenborough and winners of multiple primetime Emmy awards. The library itself is distributed on an external hard drive and includes over 18,000 sound effects that span the world, from ambient environmental tracks to specific animal calls recorded in nearly every major ecosystem. Not only can you search the database for individual sound files (as you would search the internet), but each file is actually embedded with unique metadata to help pinpoint specific moments in each sound effect. Listen to these samples from the library: Metropolis composer Jakub Ciupinski describes how he plans to use this incredible collection in the Brownstone concert:
“The electronic soundscape will fill halls and stairways creating a rhythmic and colorful sonic tapestry, blending with the various instruments in different ways depending on your location. The source material for the electronic music layer will be derived from the BBC Nature Sound Effects Library. There are no synthesizers or other samples: only original recorded animal sounds, transformed into music by pitch shifting, time stretching, and other audio effects.”
We hope you will join us to experience the BBC Nature Sound Effects Library in this site-specific composition… and to ask yourself: “what would a house sound like if it could sing?”