Ambient Scotrail Beats – Relax to Scottish train announcements over low-fi beats

[samwillis]

https://www.matteason.co.uk/scotbeats/

[matteason]

I made this! Thanks for posting it, I'll gladly answer any questions.

The samples are available here on GitHub: https://github.com/matteason/scotrail-announcements-june-202...

...and here on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/172W6sXnvlr7UcNLi...

We crowdsourced transcriptions for all the clips and Simon Willison built an interactive dashboard to explore them: https://scotrail.datasette.io/scotrail/

The announcements are read by voice-over artist Alison McKay: https://www.alisonmckay.com/

[jcynix → matteason]

Nice, but neither produces any output in Materialistic (Hackernews reader on Android) nor the Duckduckgo browser. Does play in Google Chrome. All on Android 11.

[noSyncCloud → jcynix]

Works fine in Glider (HN app) in WebView on Android 12

[pingiun → matteason]

do you sync up the announcements with the music? it kind of sounds like it's synced somewhat

[matteason → pingiun]

No, it's completely random! After each announcement ends there's a random delay of between 0 and n seconds, where n is 15 by default but adjustable with the 'frequency' slider. I think you just end up with bits that sound synchronised because they happen to fall on the beat

[teh_klev → matteason]

This is excellent Matt. Have been following the activity on Twitter this week and it's been a lot of fun.

[matteason → teh_klev]

Thank you!

[skruger → matteason]

This will be the new soundtrack to my life. Many thanks, Matt

[samwillis]

Info here: https://mobile.twitter.com/MattEason/status/1560772439713452...

The gist is someone submitted a FOI request for the audio of the Scotrail announcements, it was published, now someone made this with it. Love it!

[reaperducer → samwillis]

Interesting that he had to FOI the audio.

Tokyo Metro sells its station jingles and announcements on a CD in its gift shop.

I loaded a bunch of them into my iPhone and use them for ringtones.

[bobthepanda → reaperducer]

actually sampling them and distributing them would be another matter entirely.

even public entities aren't always super carefree about their trademarks. Transport for London and New York's MTA are two public agencies that vigorously defend their trademarked and copyrighted design materials.

[_HMCB_ → reaperducer]

Can they be bought online?

[bobthepanda]

Yukika, a Kpop artist, recorded something similar: All Flights Are Delayed

https://youtu.be/aHjPBWJKJyM

[simonw]

I have been having SO MUCH fun playing with this today. I just published a detailed write-up of my experiments so far: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Aug/21/scotrail/

[_HMCB_]

Every now and then life rewards you with something unexpected and perfect. This is one of those times.

[wrycoder]

soma.fm sf 10-33 ambient music + San Francisco scanners [0]

[0] https://somafm.com/sf1033/index.html

[throwaway888abc → wrycoder]

This! And also Mission Control ♥♥♥

Cool project anyway!

[mjmasn]

Very soothing. Now I'm wondering how common "a supermarket trolley on the track earlier on this train's journey" is in Scotland that they needed to pre-record that audio.

https://scotrail.datasette.io/scotrail/announcements/0923

[FujiApple]

My new favourite “Reason”:

Sheep on the railway (1067)

[ThePadawan → FujiApple]

I'm fascinated that these (ostensibly internal) reasons are actually broadcast.

Coming from Germany, I'm used to the reason for a train delay being announced as one of

- "people near the tracks"

- "waiting for another delayed train" or

- "operational issues", which ...yeah that includes everything else

It's kind of charming that delayed Scottish people get to bond over yesterday's theft of overhead line electrification equipment.

[3dbrows → ThePadawan]

We also have a lot of infuriatingly tautological explanations, for example:

“We apologise that this train has only 2 carriages today. This is because the additional carriages failed to enter service.”

Well, yes.

[robocat → FujiApple]

All the reasons: https://scotrail.datasette.io/scotrail?sql=select+*+from+ann...

Playing many of them simultaneously is soothing.

[mhd]

I'm getting a "Dr Blair, Dr Blair, Dr Jay Hamilton, Dr Jay Hamilton..." vibe.

[amaccuish]

Now all that needs to be done is make this into a radio station for Sonos. Sunday sorted.

[Dr_ReD]

LOL! The first time I tried it, there where no announcements Because U-Block was blocking something, and I waited, and I waited... :)

Much better now though, with the announcements. Very soothing.

The only thing missing is the thick Scottish accent I was expecting. ;-P

[CamperBob2]

Awesome. Sounds like the Sons & Daughters lead singer, but more, well, ambient.

[kratom_sandwich]

Reminds me of youarelistening.to which is ambient music + police radio

[opan]

On mobile if I change app focus away from my browser, the train samples continue, but the YouTube part stops.

[matteason → opan]

Yeah - unfortunately YouTube really, really want you to pay for YouTube Premium so they don't allow videos to continue playing in the background. Sorry about that, I know it's annoying. There's nothing I can do about it for YouTube but I'll look at adding alternative music sources like SoundCloud

[kadoban → opan]

In Firefox there's a browser extension to stop youtube from doing that.

[vocram]

Why can’t I play it in background?

[matteason → vocram]

Please see this reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538369

Sorry, I know it's annoying. It does work in the background on desktop.

[xbar]

Sweet Matt.

Maybe a master volume slider soon?

[motohagiography]

This is hilariously perfect.

[martinald]

Hahaha. Excellent.