SUBMIT A SOUND

Submit your sounds

We’d love to have your submissions to Cities and Memory, wherever you are in the world.

It’s a completely open project that is only possible thanks to the wonderful contributions of more than 2,500 field recordists, artists and musicians across dozens of countries.

You can send us a field recording, a reimagined sound or both – please follow the simple submission guidelines below.

Still have questions? Read our FAQ page. 

Submitting a field recording

If you’d like to submit a field recording to be reimagined by our network of artists around the world, we need the following:

Essential:

1. The field recording sound file as a WAV, between 1 minute and max. 20 minutes in length

2. The precise location where the recording was taken. This would preferably be by latitude and longitude coordinates, but a precise location like street address is also OK.

3. A title for the sound and a brief description of what the sound is, what we can hear, any extra context that would be useful or interesting. This can just be a sentence or two, or more information if you have it – this is really valued by our listeners and on our podcast especially.

We are unable to accept recordings that do not fit these essential criteria – we can also only accept recordings via the submission form, so that they enter our database properly.

Optional:

1. An image of the recording location that we can use to accompany the sound. Please only use a photograph you have taken yourself or have permission for – do not use photographs taken from the internet.

2. If you have never contributed to Cities and Memory before and would like to be added to our contributors page, please let us have your full name, where you are from (city/country).

You can submit field recordings directly using this link.

Note: 

We cannot accept sounds that do not fit the criteria above, and reserve the right not to use recordings if, for instance, the sound quality is too poor.

Your field recording will not be added to Cities and Memory’s sound map immediately – we do not upload sounds until they have been reimagined by an artist.

We have quite a large bank of field recordings, so it may take a little while before a submitted field recording can be reimagined by an artist!

Reimagining a sound

If you’d like to reimagine a field recording from our database of sounds from around the world, just get in touch using the form below.

We’ll send you a link to our database of available sounds, where you can choose a field recording to work from and then submit your finished piece.

A reimagined sound must contain the original field recording, or some element or part of the original recording, in some form (cut up, processed, manipulated or transformed are all fine, and so is using the “natural” recording).

Otherwise, it’s a blank canvas for your interpretation of the source sound and how it informs your final piece, which can of course contain other sound sources too. You can add other sound sources, instruments and so on.

You cannot use more than one of our recordings in the same composition – this makes it impossible to tie your composition to a specific location on the map. You can add in your own field recording samples if you’d like to, though.

Please DO NOT use AI of any kind in creating your response – Cities and Memory is a project founded on personal, emotional and human responses through sound, and we do not feel that AI-generated responses deliver this.

As above, the reimagined piece should be a WAV, maximum 20 minutes in length.

You can reimagine a sound for Cities and Memory at any time – the project is always open for submissions.

Submitting a field recording and a reimagined sound

If you have both an original field recording and a recomposed piece based on that recording, you can send both through using the two different forms. Simply include the details specified above for the field recording, and for the reimagined piece, and let us know that you’ve submitted both.