City Life Los Angeles

City Life: Los Angeles is a collection of Sounds recorded in downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach, and some of the surrounding areas around LA.  The focus was Ambiences, Vehicles, Horns, Sirens, and more of the grittier / vibey sounds that can really add to a Soundscape when working with Backgrounds in Film Projects.  This library consists mostly of Exterior locations and with Vehicles and sounds without People , but there’s some Interior / Exterior Public Places mixed in with Walla and more Movement.

The idea for this library started a couple years ago.  I thought it’d be cool to take the recording gear and really explore the Downtown LA area.  There’s quite a lot going on from a sound perspective, whether you’re on a busy Street in the Historic Core with Cars and Motorcyles revving away, or hanging out above the City on Bunker Hill, on a Parking Garage Rooftop with the constant City Fill, or roaming the streets of Chinatown.  The idea was to try to capture some of the sounds in spaces that are particular to not only LA, but also a lot of busier Cities.

25 miles South of LA is Long Beach.  It’s a smaller Big City, but one that has a lot of character sonically.  For those recordings I mostly recorded in a neighborhood on a rooftop just outside of Downtown.  With these you get more of a distant perspective.  A few of the other recordings took place in some of the surrounding Cities.

Vehicles (These are Singular Individual Sound Files)

Bus (9 Files) – Close, Bys, Away, Brake Squeaks

Cars (19 Files) – Close, Medium, Distant, Bys, Revs (Think less generic and more Engines with a lot of character)

Freight (8 Files) – Close, Rattle Bys, Garbage Trucks

Motorcycles (10 Files) – Close, Distant, Revs, Bys, Aways

Truck (6 Files) – Low Bys, Aways

Sirens (9 Files) – Close Medium, Wailers, some Fast Doppler Bys

Horns (16 Files) – Close Medium

Ambiences 

Birds (2 Files) – Seagulls, Crows

Construction (5 Files) – Larger Busy Worksites

Public Places / Walla (9 Files) – Mostly Interior, Chinese Cafe, Library, Park, Street Vendors

Traffic / Transportation / Urban (15 Files) – Parking Garage, City Fill, Traffic Bys, Under Bridge, Industrial

Miscellaneous

Helicopter (5 Files) – Circling and Bys

Recording perspectives varied throughout this library.  Sometimes I had a full rig set up and other times I opted for the more stealth route with hidden mics attached to a backpack.

The Gear

Sound Devices MixPre-6

Sony PCM D-100

Mics

Sennheiser MKH 8040 and MKH 30 (Decoded to MS)

Sennheiser MKH 8040

Sennheiser MKH 8020

DPA 4060

Sony PCM D-100

Metadata

All the files have detailed Descriptions, along with UCS.  For some of the files I’ve included the words Downtown and Rooftop along with city locations so with a quick search it’s easy to navigate to the different perspectives and areas.  Photos are included to give a bit of a sense of where they were recorded.