When I was a boy, I had half a dozen LPs or (for those under 50) Long Playing records.
One of my favorites was BBC Stereo Sound Effects Volume 7, which featured a selection of noises, some familiar, some less so. Side one included a jet plane taking off and landing, a thunderstorm with heavy rain, children on a playground, an orchestra tuning up and – a familiar sound in the 1970s, though less so now – “picketing strikers”.
Side Two had too many trains for my taste: a passenger train, an electric train, a freight train, and so on. But the animation was lively towards the end, with a section called 'Bangs and Crashes' that featured 'man knocking out a window' and 'heavy machine gun fire'. 'Traffic Atmosphere' included sounds of a highway, a main road and a busy street.
Armed with a tape recorder, my friend Charlie Miller and I spent many afternoons creating dramatic comedies around these various sound effects.
For example, a train traveling in the rain could be hit by heavy machine gun fire. We would take on the role of enthusiastic reporters on the ground – 'Oh no! I can't believe it! Full of machine gun fire, the train swerved and crashed into a passing orchestra just as it was tuning!
Craig Brown: 'When I was a boy I had half a dozen LPs or (for those under 50) Long Playing records'
'One of my favorites was BBC Stereo Sound Effects Volume 7, which featured a selection of noises, some familiar, some not so familiar'
More than half a century later, the BBC has released its complete archive of sound effects, online for free to anyone with a) a sense of fun and b) time on their hands.
My old LP contained just 15 different sound effects, the BBC archive features 33,066, from 'fish fried in a frying pan' to 'reindeer grunts' and 'Arabic voices in a camel racing crowd'.
It goes without saying that some sounds are more welcome than others.
Only someone with nerves of steel would type the word “Dentist” into the search engine. The six sound effects in this category are 'working on a filling', 'polishing teeth', 'mouthwash', 'low speed drilling', 'high speed drilling', 'dental suction tube'.
On the other hand, playing these sounds at full capacity can be a godsend for a lazy dentist who wants everyone in the waiting room to think he's working hard. Most of the sound effects are unexpectedly uplifting. If you search for 'laughter', a choice of 82 comes up: hysterical laughter, heartfelt laughter, audience laughter in a theater, laughter in a cabaret, and jovial laughter and conversation at parties. Some categories of laughter are wonderfully specific: I particularly like “girls’ high school laughter.”
And there are birds galore: 2,334 different bird sounds in all. My favorites are the 204 different parrot contributions, including an Amazon parrot that mimics a human cough.
The African gray parrot community is exceptionally talkative. One says: 'Oh that's funny, ha ha', while another shouts: 'Can I kiss your back?' One of the most talented African grays brilliantly duplicates the sound of a human being sipping tea. Then he asks, 'What is this? Cup of tea.
Some sounds from just decades ago have passed into history: typewriters, for example. When was the last time you heard the sound of a typewriter? The archive offers a choice of 52 typewriters, from 'Electric Typewriter: Fast Typing' to 'Medium Distance Office Acoustic Typewriter, Manual'.
Thanks to the BBC Sound Archive you can revisit 30 raucous machines from times gone by
The archive offers a choice of 52 typewriters, from 'Electric typewriter: fast typing' to 'Medium distance office acoustic typewriter, manual'
There are even half a dozen fax machine sounds, once so common, now a distant memory. Relive those golden beeps and burrs of 80s office life! 'Fax Phone (Samsung SF40) – rings, detects fax and receives it.'
These days, cash registers and cash registers are eerily quiet, but thanks to the BBC Sound Archive you can revisit 30 noisy machines from days gone by, from a cashier on the counter of a Philadelphia deli to a cashier in a hardware store in Greece , complete. with distant traffic.
The electronic buzzes and beeps of early computer games now seem as old as Stonehenge. For me, two minutes and 51 seconds of Space Invaders' trump-trump-squooch/trump-trump-squooch is as evocative as Vera Lynn's sound was to my parents' generation.
How quickly everyday life turns into nostalgia!
It's strange to think that, 50 years from now, 'See It.' Say. Classified in an updated archive will evoke remembered blue hills for our grandchildren.
