1. Walk about

One sunny midmorning, some day in 2013 or 14, Nairobi. Waiting to cross the road at one of the newly remade intersections with the fancy traffic lights (Chinese! Chinese!) is more distressing than usual. It’s the new lights. More accurately, it’s how the new lights sound. They beep loud and jarring, with a shrill, digital tone, adding to the impatient hootings and revvings. Nobody driving or walking seems sure what the signals mean or who they are for. Ten minutes down the road and walking steady, the racket is still in your ears and thoughts.

One twilit evening, 2013, Berlin. Waiting to cross a busy road not far from the famous TV Tower. Seems like rush hour, but does not feel like it. That’s when you notice it. The absence. If you closed your eyes, you would hear only the purr and whoosh of passing vehicles. You remark to your friend about it.

Another sunny midmorning about a year later, Nairobi. You are walking with a friend down a neighbourhood street that used to be lined with old houses from the 70s or 80s. Today it is clattering with jackhammers and chisels and all the familiar staccato of rapid construction. Passing by a rising residential block hidden behind gunny cladding, you wonder what used to be here. Hardly a year.

Nairobi, visiting a friend who lives in another new apartment block (reminds you of a great grey termite mound or nest of wasps) you notice the cacophony at the main entrance on the ground floor. The incessant beepings of the new KPLC pre-paid digital meters, like a noisy classroom when the teacher is out. A sound you are hearing more and more where there was only discreet neighbours before. You talk about these new sounds and a changing world.

2. Talk and procrastinate

You talk about sounds you no longer hear. The long-travelling low frequency rumble of an old-school KBS around the corner. The thump-thump of the sub-woofers in a number 23 several blocks away heading into the CBD from Westlands (out of sight but we all know where it is). You remember hearing the first ringtones in a matatu or on the streets. The fascinating novelty of an SMS notification. Nokia people. Kenyans and nostalgia. But what about history?

You start recording sounds around you. Some people use Zooms, some use their phones and even an expensive studio mic dangling out of a studio window, capturing the street below. You talk about possibilities. We could make something with these sounds. Nobody has any experience with sound art but it’s now a frequent topic. The conversation grows from what we can do with these sounds to what we can learn from them.

You sketch and doodle on your notebook(s). Share ideas by email. Plan to meet but when? Some people go to school others back to work and career and two or three years later we have all more or less disappeared. You add more notebooks to the heap, a decade’s worth of sketches and doodles. Your own archive – more like a personal landfill – of never ideas.

3. Seek help

Your friend who went back to school is back. Two years spent studying and practicing some of the things you used to talk about. In that meantime you have been dabbling in DIY sound and art. You revisit your conversations, digging in the notebooks. The idea of an aural record of Nairobi still makes sense. The idea of resourcing a nascent sound art scene feels timely. You have a friend who’s great with data tech. He is game and knows a guy who’s good with UI/UX. Work begins.

It is not a legit archive of the city if all it explores is the tiny street corner of your personal experience. The streets are many. Plus, the whole exercise is more fun when more people are involved. All this needs more people, time and money than you have on your own. So, reach out.

Approach friends and organizations willing and able to support. In addition to material and logistical support, you’ll get a huge boost of energy and goodwill. And you will make new friends along the way.

4. Launch and then party

Organize a sound exhibition and invite the world. Hand everyone a set of good headphones. They will love the immersiveness of the first recordings, because you used binaural microphones – realer than dolby. “Immersiveness” is a real word BTW.

Make a good party on the final day. Play music made from the archive.

5. After the party 

-> “How To Maintain Your Sound Archive For Like A Century” – coming soon.

How do you write about something when often even talking about it is a challenge?

I often find my self struggling when I want to talk or write about sound. I speak German and English mainly and with both I am struggling likewise with that excercise. Because the only way to talk about sound seems to describe the action or object that causes the sound: Like the sound of a revving engine or the sound of a Matatu horn.

But what about the sound itself? I can think of just a few words that have made it into my English vocabulary: “beeping”, “banging” for example which describe the sound itself. “Swooshing” is another one, if that is a commonly known word and not made up. Because then that is what come up with: should I just invent new words? Maybe with the methods of ornithologists who transcribe the sounds of birds. These strings of letters seem so weird but actually when you take them in your mouth something great comes out.

Today’s episode is on recording techniques. This is a very complex and wide field and there are thousands of blogs and tutorials online about how to record which sound and what equipment is best, what the best tricks are etc. So the best advise is: Have a look online about specifically what you want to know. The end.

Just kidding! Needless to say, there are specialists out there who know much more, but none the less I would like to speak today about the recording technique and equipment applied when SON recordists go out on recording sessions through the city, like for the City Walks workshop or the Sounds Like A Pandemic? project.
I will also propose an app for your phone which has some awesome features for recording and sharing great audio.

Most of the recordings on the archive are sourced from sound walks which have been organized by the SOUND OF NAIROBI team. For these exercises we use a special kind of microphone: the binaural microphone.

In our case we use the Soundman OKM II Microphone.
It looks like this: