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Crosscurrents

Audiograph's Sound of the Week: The Bagpiper of the Financial District

All week long we've been playing you this sound, and asking you to guess what exactly it is and where exactly in the Bay Area we recorded it.

This auditory guessing game is part of our new project, Audiograph, a crowd-sourced collaborative radio project mapping the sonic signature of each of the Bay Area’s nine counties. By using the sounds of voices, nature, industry, and music, Audiograph tells the story of where you live, and the people who live there with you.
Every Thursday, Audiograph producer Julie Caine will reveal the origins of that week's sound on Crosscurrents, and here in weekly blog posts. Did you have time to listen? Read on for the answer...

JULIE CAINE: It's a sound you can hear floating through the air all over the Financial District. It seeps in through windows, and hangs in the air in the cavernous streets. And it's coming from the corner of Sansome and Pine, from a man in a kilt standing right at the foot of the Old Pacific Stock Exchange building. 

BEN JOHNSTON: I've been playing bagpipes for about 15 years. I picked up the pipes from when I was about 18-years-old, my grandfather was a piper. It's been very much a part of my family tradition growing up and something I always wanted to do when I was young. Now I'm living the dream, and playing music and hopefully I can carry on the tradition. It's one of those instruments that kind of draws people in, cause they hear it from a distance, so it kind of brings together the masses. Down here, it's good, sometimes a bit echo-y. For the most part I think it tends to resonate pretty well around here with all of the old buildings. I love the uniqueness of the instrument. The pitch and the tone, it's been referred to as an instrument of the angels. 

Congratulations to this week's winner, Sunil Paul. We'll have a new sound for you to guess, and a new prize, next week. 

In the meantime, is there a sound from your life that should be featured on Audiograph? Call at 415-264-7106 and tell us about the sound of where you live.

Check out our Facebook, Twitter and Soundcloud pages to hear more from Audiograph. 

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