For your listening pleasure: over three hours of music, and a little Greek commentary, from the Voice of Greece. Recorded on November 26th, on 9.42 MHz.
In the last half of the recording, after an adjacent station went off the air, the audio fidelity is simply amazing–especially for a station over 5000 miles from my receiver.
Click here to download the MP3 of the recording, or listen below:
Need more Voice of Greece music in your day? Click here for more.
We’ve mentioned Myke Dodge Weiskopf before on the SWLing Post, he’s a radio producer, historian, broadcast artist, multi-instrumentalist, sound recordist, and composer based in Los Angeles, CA.
Myke travels around the world with his trusty Eton E1 and recording equipment in tow to capture both sounds from the ether and live performances. He then makes them available on his website, Myke.me.
He’s now planning a recording trip to isolated island of Socotra and needs your help. He has a Kickstarter campaign which outlines plans for his trip. Watch the video below and consider helping him by contributing to his goal of raising $3,500 US.
I’ve always believed that, over time, the process of listening through static to hear a distant shortwave broadcast, has been good for not only increasing my listening skills in general, but has been healthy for the grey matter. Seth S. Horowitz, auditory neuroscientist at Brown University, has just substantiated this belief in his NY Times piece, The Science and Art of Listening:
[…]Hearing, in short, is easy. You and every other vertebrate that hasn’t suffered some genetic, developmental or environmental accident have been doing it for hundreds of millions of years. It’s your life line, your alarm system, your way to escape danger and pass on your genes. But listening, really listening, is hard when potential distractions are leaping into your ears every fifty-thousandth of a second — and pathways in your brain are just waiting to interrupt your focus to warn you of any potential dangers.
Listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.
And yet we dare not lose it. Because listening tunes our brain to the patterns of our environment faster than any other sense, and paying attention to the nonvisual parts of our world feeds into everything from our intellectual sharpness to our dance skills.[…]
Read the full article in the NY Times. Thanks, David, for passing this along!
Credit: Photo by Hitomi Kai Yoda / Rex Features (1876064b)
London Underground circuit board radio
(Source: DailyMail.co.uk)
Underground radio stations have a rich history in the UK – but this device gives the term a whole new meaning.
A designer has created a fully functioning radio, which has the entire London tube map built in as its circuit.
The impressive 45cm by 45cm contraption is accurately labeled with each of the 270 stations and took three months to make.
(Photo: Radio Philately)
The owner of Radio Filatelia (Radio Philately) sent a link to his impressive online gallery of radio and broadcast related stamps.
It is a comprehensive collection which he intends to add to over time.
You can see the main listing of countries on this page: http://radiofilateliadx.
Diamond Jubilee at Buckingham Palace (photo: BBC)
Ten years ago, my wife–then fiancée–and I lived in the UK, and were fortunate enough to attend The Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebration on the vast lawn at Buckingham Palace. It was without doubt the largest party I’ve ever attended, packed to the gills with the British public–a thoroughly amazing event, featuring a who’s who of past-and-present British musicians and personalities, encouraging attendees to join them in their bit of fun–and, of course, God save the Queen.
Yesterday, I re-lived the energy of that party as I heard (and recorded) the follow-up event these ten years later–The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, on the BBC World Service–as heard from remote Ascension Island.
When hearing live events like this on shortwave–especially ones like this that celebrate national heritage–I know I’m listening to history in the making. The crowds applauding and cheering in a live broadcast over shortwave reminds me of a former era when British Expats across the globe relied on the BBC World Service to connect them with ol’ Blighty.
Ascension Island, marked with an "A" (image: Google Maps)
I recorded these broadcasts from my home in the southeastern US, hearing the BBC World Service relay station on the tiny, isolated Ascension Island in the South Atlantic. The broadcast was heard at first on 15,400 kHz, then moved to 9,915 kHz coinciding with their normal broadcast schedule. The broadcast, while completely intelligible, is weak in the beginning, but gains considerable strength by the end. There are summer static crashes heard as storms moved through the southeast US. I divided the broadcast into two parts, coinciding with my shift from one frequency to the other.
I also included a BBC WS news broadcast in Part 2 which followed the end of the show.
Either use the embedded Archive.org audio player below, or simply click here to download the mp3 files for Part 1 and Part 2.
I used the WinRadio Excalibur to record both of these segments. Its synchronous detection helped deal with fading (QSB) present at the beginning of the recording.
Once again, history is made…and archived on shortwave radio. Enjoy!
Myke Dodge Weiskopf, who we’ve mentioned on the SWLing Post for his shortwave radio recordings, has informed us that he will be hosting a long-form radio show May-19-20th, showcasing live radio recordings from Mali. You can listen to the show online, or live (if you live near Cambridge, MA, USA).
Details from Myke:
I’ll be producing and hosting another long-form radio broadcast on the music and sounds of Mali for WHRB 95.3 FM, Cambridge, MA (USA). The broadcast is part of the biannual WHRB Orgy® tradition.
Mali is perhaps the most popular and influential hub of African music. This continuous, 22-hour-long broadcast will feature rare live recordings from more than a dozen of Mali’s finest homegrown musicians and bands, as well as extensive folkloric and regional music from the libraries of Malian state and community FM broadcasters. Recordings were made in January 2012 during a three-week overland journey ranging from the country’s capital, Bamako, to the legendary Saharan city of Timbuktu. Fans of Malian music, African community radio, and world folklore should consider this required listening.
Available via terrestrial FM (95.3 FM) or streaming online at www.whrb.org.
The details in short:
FROM HERE TO TIMBUKTU: The WHRB Mali Orgy®
WHRB 95.3 FM (Cambridge, MA) or www.whrb.org
START: Saturday, May 19 (1800 UTC / 1 PM EDT)
END: Sunday, May 20 (1600 UTC / 11 AM EDT)Further details will be posted soon at www.maliorgy.info.