Sound maps are in many ways the most effective auditory archive of an environment, touching on aspects political, artistic, cultural, historical, and technological.
The Montréal Sound Map is a web-based soundscape project that allows users to upload field recordings to a Google Map of Montréal. The soundscape is constantly changing, and this project acts as a sonic time capsule with the goal of preserving sounds before they disappear.
Soundmapping promotes focused listening. This website offers an interface for users to explore and listen to the city with a purposeful and special attention that is rarely given to the sounds of the environment. We aim for people to continue this attentive listening and experience the complexity and lure of the soundscape firsthand. This promotes a more optimistic approach to acoustic ecology, encouraging listeners to lend a musical ear to the soundscape.
The tag words used on the site are an extension of R. Murray Schafer's soundscape classification system found in his 1977 book Tuning of the World.
We are currently accepting submissions and plan to do so indefinitely. To upload a field recording, click the Contributions link at the top of the page.
We have implemented a Creative Commons Share Alike Agreement.
This license deems the recording free to be copied, distributed, transmitted, and also adapted under the following conditions:
Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (you must give credit to the author of the work).
Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar licence to this one.
Uploading is temporarily down. Please check back soon!