Soundways

Aug 28, 2022

To mark the TTC’s centenary and Toronto’s Year of Public Art, a new app turns your commute into a sweet soundscape “Seeing the same stretch of the city two times a day can be a real mental challenge,” says Joseph Shabason, co-creator of the A more Beautiful Journey app. “But getting to see it set to different pieces of music really helps change the way a commute can feel.” Sun., Aug. 28, 2022timer3 min. read It’s tempting to use earbuds to tune out your commute. But this fall, the new augmented-reality (AR) smartphone app A More Beautiful Journey wants to help citizens tune in to the joys of the passing cityscape, via music custom-created for more than two dozen TTC routes. The project began with an idea dreamed up by musicians Dan Werb and Joseph Shabason. “We thought it would be cool to get ambient composers to write site-specific compositions that could play in their local subway stations. Unfortunately, there were a ton of barriers and that idea kind of just died on the vine,” Shabason says. “But then we met Amy Gottung and together talked about a way in which we could make it happen.” Gottung, who recently worked on the all-ages pay-what-you-can music-and-art series Long Winter, signed on to become the creative producer. “I don’t know if I could have survived years on the Dufferin line without a pair of headphones,” Gottung says. She knew a smartphone/app/headphones combination could be the key to making the project work, so she asked audio solutions company Soundways to make an AR app that could create what Shabason describes as “an ever-changing sonic backdrop for your commute.” “Seeing the same stretch of the city two times a day can be a real mental challenge,” Shabason says. “But getting to see it set to different pieces of music really helps change the way a commute can feel.” Twenty-seven acts, featuring more than 50 musicians, offered compositions in a variety of genres, including ambient, jazz, hip-hop, psychedelic rock, reggae and R&B. “Equity was a priority,” Gottung says. “We wanted the artist roster to reflect the incredible diversity of Toronto, its neighbourhoods and music scenes, with a focus on underrepresented communities.” The bus and streetcar routes with accompanying soundtracks span the city, including the 509 Harbourfront, 504 King, 94 Harbord, and 72 Pape. (Night buses, too, including the 320 Yonge, 312 St. Clair, and 927 Highway 27 Express). The app launches Sept. 1 with a series of live concerts at five streetcar loops across the city, as part of the experimental Intersection Music and Arts Festival, and will be available through Dec. 1. Artists were paired with lines that had personal significance to them, according to Gottung. “They are bringing deep familiarity, and myriad associations, to their process,” she says. After designing the pieces, they mapped the music files — or “sound zones” — to GPS coordinates. Chelsea Stewart, for example, provides ultra-smooth dubstep for an Eglinton ride through Little Jamaica, while Felipe Sena adds Brazilian beats to the Dufferin route. Some of the artists incorporated field recordings from the areas they covered. Stefana Fratila used snippets captured in Roncesvalles and High Park in her College streetcar car soundscape, so listeners can hear the popcorn machine as they pass near the Revue Theatre, or birdsong when they finish the route in the park. Craig Doyle Henry, a.k.a. CDH Live! and multi-instrumentalist birthday boy’s pieces feature oral histories from residents of the Sherway and Bathurst Street neighbourhoods, respectively. And Community Music Schools of Toronto in Regent Park wove in students’ vocal samples. These sound zones appear as little coloured bubbles on a 2D map in the app so users can also navigate visually through the route. “The first work I tested,” Gottung says, “was for the 501 Queen streetcar, from Bay to Parliament, with a stretch of rousing live recordings of the All Nations Juniors, a drum group from Council Fire Native Cultural Centre. “I got chills hearing those first beats come in.”