The Sounds of Burning Man

Dear Burners,
You've come to a place where you can download an hour of sound from Burning Man 2003. This work contains dialog, music, art sounds, etc.; anything with an audio signature that communicates something or tells a short audio story about being at Burning Man.

This work is divided into 15 themed tracks. Listen to a sampler track containing a 30 second clip from each track, or listen to each of the sampler's clips individually. Download the entire piece when you are ready. There is a track guide to help you identify sounds within each track. If your audio player supports "Lyrics", you will find a subset of the track guide as lyrics.

This is a gift to the Burning Man community, not a commercial product, so it is free. The liberal copyright encourages wide spread copying, distribution, and presentation of this work. If you are motivated to support the audio artist, please feel free to donate to this cause. Reciprocal gifting of other types of media from you would be fun, too.

Thanks you for being part of the Burning Man community. You all mean a great deal to me. Let me know what you think or if I can include links to other Burning Man audio related projects.

After you have downloaded the entire work, find a quiet room in which you can spend an hour, don some headphones, close your eyes, and be prepared to be transported back to Burning Man by way of the magic of sound and your own memories.

Sincerely,
Sound Man
(aka Steve Evans)

The Tracks

Click on a Listen link in the table below to hear a 30 second sample from that track. Alternatively, you can hear the entire collection of track samples merged together. Please keep in mind:

The samples are of lower audio quality than the fully downloaded work. They are in mono, not stereo. They will sound tinny and a bit hollow. The downloaded work with full tracks will sound much better.
Check out the listening tips. This type of recording can not be enjoyed in a noisy environment.
Click on the Listen link that corresponds to the audio player that you have. If you don't know which audio player you have, the MP3 column will most likely to work. There is help available to get you through this.

#	Track		MP3	30 Second Sample Contents
1	Traveling	Listen	Listen	Gate crasher check; Greeter
2	Building	Listen	Listen	Hammering; Dance floor; Cardboard folding
3	Fun	Listen	Listen	Spanking; Freaks; Kissing instruction
4	Primitive	Listen	Listen	Drumming; Balinese Monkey Chant
5	Spiritual	Listen	Listen	Reverend Billy; Amazed at the Eyes of Gawd
6	Wind	Listen	Listen	Wind driven bell; Chimes in the night
7	Water	Listen	Listen	Egeria fire on water
8	Fire	Listen	Listen	Thermokraken; Burn platform
9	Partying	Listen	Listen	Art cars
10	Hanging	Listen	Listen	A Place to Stand; Twirlly hat; Dancing lyre
11	Warring	Listen	Listen	Military jet circling; Death Guild parade
12	Lamplighters	Listen	Listen	Procession
13	The Burn	Listen	Listen	Heart Beat of The Man; The Burn starts
14	Temple Burn	Listen	Listen	Grief; Chant
15	Exodus	Listen	Listen	Burn platform; Bye

Track Sampler

Here you can access the entire collection of track samples merged together (7 minutes listening time). The merged samples are of a slightly higher audio quality than the individual samples, but not as good as the full tracks. Please observe the listening tips described in the previous section. You may:

Click on a Listen link if you are going to listen just once. If you have the latest version of your audio player, you are likely to hear the track quickly by way of streaming audio.
Download the file if you think you might listen to the track more than once. Doing so will also ensure that your listening experience is not interrupted by network bufferring delays. In Internet Explorer, bring the menu up while over the Download link, chose the "Save Target As ..." menu item, and follow the instructions to place the file on to your computer. After download is complete, then go to that file and double click on it.

What		MP3	Contents
Track Sampler	Listen or, (Download via menu action)	Listen or, (Download via menu action)	See last column in above sample clip table

Track Guide

The Sounds of Burning Man can be enjoyed by simply listening to it. However, a detailed guide to the contents of each track can add depth to your listening experience. And there are informative links within the guide, as well. There are instructions within this page about how to use it to print a CD insert for a The Sounds of Burning Man audio CD, should you decide to burn one!

There is also an non-interactive track description embedded within the Lyrics of each track. If your audio player supports showing lyrics, check it out during playback of the downloaded full tracks!

Copyright Information

While I retain the copyright to this work, I grant permission to copy, reproduce, distribute, and present this work without gaining written permission from me. I’ve even provided a CD label to print and apply to any CD that you burn of this work! The only restrictions are:

You may not sell or present this work as a commercial product for a profit.
On any instance of this media that you produce, or presentation you give, you must include the title The Sounds of Burning Man, the website www.TheSoundsOfBurningMan.org, and the copyright notice © 2004 Steve Evans on or in association with the media.
For any public presentation of this work, please contact me, pre or post event, so that I may track and publish notice of these events. And if you are a radio station, I'd love to help you design a program utilizing this media to educate people about Burning Man.

And for the record, I have a strong claim of fair use for the sounds associated with this work; its a technical copyright thing ;-)

Reviews

Most of the Burners who have listened to this work have thoroughly enjoyed it, even those who didn't attend the 2003 Burn. Check out what others think about The Sounds of Burning Man.

Download

Here is where you can download the entire high fidelity The Sounds of Burning Man work. The file that you download is a package that contains the 15 tracks, plus a few other non-audio files. It is a big download. If you are on a slow or dialup phone line connection, please read this information about making sure that your computer's connection will stay up during the entire time of the download. If you don't, you are asking for a great deal of frustration. Please, please, please read it!

Assuming that you have followed my warning and are confident that your connection will stay up for the duration of the download, we can proceed:

Find the type of audio media format you want by looking down the first column. If you have multiple audio players, pick the one with the smallest download size. If you might burn a CD of The Sounds of Burning Man, consider what formats your CD burner program accepts; they all accept MP3.
Make sure you are prepared to have your computer running and connection open for the time period that your download will take. The expected download times are listed under each Download link. If you are not prepared for that length of time, or even a bit longer, consider the following:
1. Do you have another Internet connection available to you that is much faster? Say, at work, after hours? Consider using that.
2. Do you have a Burner friend with a better connection and a CD burner? Maybe you could cooperate and get them to download the files and burn you a CD?
3. Should you come back and try the download overnight, say, just before going to bed?
Look across the row and click on one of the Download links and follow the instructions to download the file. Make sure you Save the file, not Open it! The EXE format is best if you are on a Windows PC. The SIT format is best for the Apple Macintosh. The ZIP format is best for Linus and UNIX computers.
Whatever happens, Don't Panic or get frustrated. If the download is proceeding, but is slow, please let it complete. If, heaven forbid, the download appears to be being dropped from my end, come back in a few days and try again. It could be that there is too much load on my website right at the moment. If you are a dialup connection, make sure you have read this.
Double click on the downloaded file and extract the files and put them onto your disk. If nothing happens, find out about programs to handle the type of file format that you downloaded.
Enjoy! And tell a Burner friend!

Audio Media Format	Self Extracting .EXE (Windows only!)	StuffIt .SIT Format (Common on Macs)	ZIP Format (Other operating systems)
	Download (Size: 30 MB) 28.8 Kbps dailup: 4 hours 56 Kbps dialup: 2 hours Slow DSL: 30 minutes Fast Cable: 5 minutes	N/A	Download (Size: 30 MB) 28.8 Kbps dailup: 4 hours 56 Kbps dialup: 2 hours Slow DSL: 30 minutes Fast Cable: 5 minutes
MP3	Download (Size: 60 MB) 28.8 Kbps dialup: 8 hours 56 Kbps dialup: 4 hours Slow DSL: 1 hour Fast Cable: 10 minutes	Download (Size: 60 MB) 28.8 Kbps dialup: 8 hours 56 Kbps dialup: 4 hours Slow DSL: 1 hour Fast Cable: 10 minutes	Download (Size: 60 MB) 28.8 Kbps dialup: 8 hours 56 Kbps dialup: 4 hours Slow DSL: 1 hour Fast Cable: 10 minutes

Listening Tips

You are probably used to just popping in a music CD and listening to music in your car, on your home stereo, on your portable listening device, or sitting at your computer. Well, listening to field recorded sound requires, at the very least, a quiet listening environment. If you listen to it in your car while driving, the road noise will likely combine with the background noise on the CD to create too much noise to pick out the juicy dialog. If you listen to it where it is noisy (at home babysitting the kids, in a café, while exercising, at you cubicle at the office next to the photocopier, or where ever), the same will happen. So, make sure it is quiet or use good headphones to block outside noise. And make sure that the volume is turned up and not on mute!

About the Project

Dismayed at what I considered the under representation of audio media used to portray Burning Man, I started thinking about what I would like to hear in an audio CD length format that would transport me back to the Burn long after leaving the Playa. This was the genesis of the project. I sought and received permission from the Burning Man organization to pursue this effort. You can read more about the project.

Gifting

Part of the fun of giving gifts is sometimes getting gifts in return. Not being on the playa, it makes it hard for you to gift me back. None-the-less, contact me if you have something you would like me to have. Also, I’ll update this web site with my 2004 Playa Plans in mid August if you would like to contact me at the next Burn.

Donation

The most direct gift possible is money. So if you have a credit card (you don't need a Paypal account) or Paypal account, I’ve made it easy for you to show your support for me and this type of work. Keep in mind, any payment can in no way be interpreted as payment for the gift of The Sounds of Burning Man. Your support for me as an artist/audio documentary producer is completely separate. Click here to donate. And thank you for any support; producing and hosting audio media for download to thousands of people is not cheap.