Freesound Forums

Hi,

I remember funny sounds coming from the tracks of a London Underground station as a train was approaching. None of the sound files here seem to have captured an example of it -- I'm sure I've heard the sound several times at different stations. I found an FX file on my computer that was suitable for modifying into an approximation of the sound and posted it here (HTTP):

myweb.tiscali.co.uk/tiscaligh/my_BLITTERI_01[london_underground].wav.

Does anyone recognise it? Has/would anyone capture it and post it here?

Yours,
Gazza_11.

can't find the website...are you sure the url is correct?

Hi,

Click on this link:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/tiscaligh/My_Strange_Sound.html then click on the link on that page. HTH.

Yours,
Gazza_11.

Hi,

You can hear the sound between the 4th and 5th, then 6th and 7th seconds of the following video playing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5yn1JL966Q, however, closer up to the sound, it sounds like my FX file.

Yours,
Gazza_11.

Hi,

This represents a much better example!

At 2, 3 & 3.5 seconds of video play (1 'pair of sounds' at each time):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYAE3jrNvSE.

Yours,
Gazza_11.

aaah, it's the resonance of the electrical wires...

I know a great way to reproduce this:

First of all, get a *metal* slinky:
http://images.google.com/images?q=slinky

Then, push a microphone into contact with one end, and let the other end drop to the floor. Instant sweesh sounds.

Alternatively, you could go to Robin Whittle's site (creator of the infamous Devil Fish modification for the TB303):
He created the world longest slinky (a.k.a. sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinky)
http://www.firstpr.com.au/slinky/

and he's got some recordings which sound a lot like what you want:

http://www.firstpr.com.au/slinky/audio/

- bram

Hi,

Thanks, bram.

Brings back memories of childhood, talking of the Slinky toy! Like to try your suggestion.

Some of the parts of the sounds on Robin Whittle's site seem idential to the sound I'm after. I've been wondering how hard it would be to create an identical sound from scratch, starting with analysing the sample to get the frequencies then mixing up pure tones of those frequencies. Or would it be better to try to just extract the sound and filter out the harmonics I don't want?

Yours,
Gazza_11.

the second idea would probably be a lot easier.
filtering out is in general easier than adding missing parts.
this is probably the main reason why additive synthesis was never so popular as substractive synthesis...

- bram

I recorded years ago something very similar. I stood about 50m away from a friend near a high tension farm fence. He ran a piece of metal pipe along the single continuous wire on the top. I recorded it with a minidisc player and a condenser mic, the result was somewhat like a strange laser with even stranger resonance and modulating pitch... Don't know where the hell those files are though... In the backup abyss of a million discs...
Easy to do though....