In London, near Kings Cross railway station, there is this huge red brick building. Let's
have a little look at it. There it is, but what is it? And what is inside? Well let's
find out. We'll open the door and we will step inside the British Library. Now the British
Library is one of the biggest libraries in the whole world, and it has lots and lots
and lots of books. But today we have not come to read books. No, instead we're going down,
a staircase of the British Library. And there, underground, we see this. Shelves and more
shelves and even more shelves. What is on all of those shelves? It is not books. It
is not pictures. No, on those shelves, there are lots of... Sounds.
The sound of a Robin singing. The sound of a river. Music. You see, we have gone to the
British Library Sound Archive. A very special place with millions and millions of collected
sounds. Now some of the sounds were collected more than 100 years ago and some of the sounds
were only collected recently. But wait, stop. How do you collect sounds?
To collect sounds you first need to record them. How do you do that? You need a microphone.
I'm recording my voice right now, but you could of course record anything you like.
You could record a musical instrument or you could record the sound of orange juice.
Or you could record a plastic bag. Let's see if you can guess what I'm recording next.
I'm going to snap my fingers and your screen is going to go black so that you can't see
me. And then I'd like you to try to guess what I'm recording. Okay?
Your screen should be black. What am I recording now? Have a guess. And let's have a look.
It was my guitar. Let's try another one. I'll snap my fingers. The screen goes black. What
sound do you think this is. Again, have a guess. Okay. Let's find out. It was a bouncing
ball, bouncing table tennis ball. I don't think I would have been able to guess that.
I recorded all of these sounds right here in my living room. But now I would like to
know what you can hear where you are. We are going to do a little challenge. I would like
to see if you can spot three sounds where you are, in about 10 seconds. I want you to
listen to the sounds that are all around you. See if you can spot three different ones.
Okay, are you ready? We're starting now.
And stop. What did you hear? Maybe birds? Cars? Airplanes? Maybe you heard some sounds
outside or maybe you heard people talking. I actually heard some sirens of an ambulance
in the distance. This is a brilliant game that you can play at home, when you're in
the park or anywhere else. So great work. But some sounds you cannot find at home or
in the park or even in London. To record some sounds, you have to travel far, far away.
And at the British Library Sound Archive, we have lots of amazing sounds from around
the world.
The first around the world sound that I would like to share with you comes from the Savannah
in South Africa. And it sounds like this. What Animal do you think that is? It is a
growling lion. I don't think I would have been brave enough to record that sound. But
our second sound comes from underneath the warm Mediterranean sea, right here. And it
sounds like this. It's quite a strange sound. I'll give you a clue. This is actually an
animal, an animal that loves to jump out of the water. It is, the clicking sound of a
striped dolphin.
The last around the world sound that I'm going to share with you was recorded by a man called
James Kippen. He flew in an airplane all the way to India with his microphone. And he recorded
this sound. Do you recognize this instrument? It is drums, Indian tabla drums. This is actually
one of my favorite sounds to listen to. What's your favorite sound?
So these sounds you just heard, they were recorded quite a while ago. But some of the
sounds of the British Library Sound Archive are very very old. And before I say goodbye
to you, I would like to show you one of the oldest sounds that we have. To do that, we
need to travel in our time machine.
We're going back in time. Back, back, back, back, back. Now, that does sound very old.
It's noisy. It's crackly. Have a guess, how old do you think this sound is? Well I'll
tell you. This sound is 120 years old and it was recorded on one of these, a brown wax
cylinder, an ancient piece of equipment. And the sound you're hearing is that of a violin.
So compare the sound you're hearing right now, to the sound of my violin recorded today
in 2020. Which one did you prefer? The old one? Or the new one?
Well, in the last 10 minutes, you have listened to the oldest sound you've probably ever heard
in your life. And you have listened to recordings from all around our world and you've paid
close attention to the sounds that are around you all of the time. So I just wanted to say
thank you so much for watching this video about the British Library Sound Archive. I
hope you had fun and until next time. Bye bye.