Photo taken by archer10 (Dennis), found on Flickr

To one of the Maritime provinces of Canada, we’re stopping by a smaller city today for SoundCloud Local. This week, we’re focusing on Halifax, Canada, and checking out what they have in store for us!

Christina Martin
Folk singer-songwriter Christina Martin has been on an extensive musical journey for nearly a decade now. Not only did she record her debut album in Austin, Texas, but she’s also opened for Wilco in the past! She’s a frequent performer in the café/bar circuit in Halifax. Don’t forget to follow her on the ‘Cloud!

soundcloud.com/christinamartin-1

Long Long Long
Long Long Long is an experimental guitar surf pop band from Halifax! A listen to them will make you imagine you’re on the beaches of California (or wherever you prefer to surf). They’ve had five releases in total and you can hear some highlights from each one below!

soundcloud.com/long-long-long

Chad Hatcher
Roots & Folk pop singer-songwriter, Chad Hatcher, likes to blend elements of Blues, R&B, Soul, & Reggae with some Hip Hop influence. His music has the ability to appeal to every demographic. To hear what this Halifax-based singer is all about, click the link or listen to the grey player.

soundcloud.com/chadhatcher

Natasha Duchene
Looking for a range of genres? Here are some abstract field recordings from SoundCloud user, Natasha Duchene. She also has some piano-based jazzy tracks with vocals. From sound art to emotional piano melodies, Natasha’s SoundCloud page is a great listen no matter what you’re feeling.

soundcloud.com/nduchene

Amir-
It’s about time we had some metal, right? Amir doesn’t just stick to one genre though, he also makes hip hop and electronic music as well. Fun fact: he has time-lapse footage of contrails (or chemtrails, whichever you prefer), which is very cool — you can watch it here!

soundcloud.com/amirsounds

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Looking for more? Check out more tracks from Halifax: citysounds.fm/halifax

If you’re in Halifax, please join the SoundCloud Local group and submit your tracks!

The next Global Meetup Day is happening on May 25th! Check out Meetup.com to see if there’s one scheduled in your area yet. If not, start your own! Halifax, Canada: here’s yours!

Check out all our SoundCloud Local features to see if your area has been featured yet.

Found Sounds is a new SoundCloud community feature focusing on some of the most weird and wonderful sounds that can be found on SoundCloud. Count on new installments with some of our favorite sounds each Tuesday!

Few things are so satisfying as the feeling of banging a drum. Drums (and their machine counterparts) can serve as much more than just the backbone of a track, too — they’re a great source of some crazy and cool sounds. In this week’s installment of Found Sounds, we’re taking a look at some unusual drum sounds on the ‘Cloud.

Our first drum sound is a straightforward military snare drum cadence recorded by SoundClouder KarmaDrums, who frequently records and releases drum patterns and loops under a Creative Commons license for other musicians to pick up and use. These snare cadences were recorded in live in a theater, and the reverb is phenomenal.

Military snare drum cadence @ 92 bpm: unplugged, live, lo-fi, theater location by karmadrums

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The next Found Sound this week was recorded by Tom Williams on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. The drums from a street parade off in the distance were picked up from a cottage window using the Olympus LS-10 recorder he had with him. The barking dog in the foreground adds even more atmosphere. Nice catch, and a great sound, Tom!

Drums in the night by Tom Williams

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For our final Found Sound this week, we found the user Kall Binaural Audio, who took a very deep look at a drum kit. Using the KU-100 “dummy head,” which is a model of a human head with a mic placed at each ear. As a result, the recording is binaural, and really rewards listening with headphones. You can close your eyes, and really feel the acoustic color of the drums surround you. Especially great is the last track in the set, which takes a closer look at the cymbals.

Jon Bailey 3D Drum Demos by Kall Binaural Audio

That’s all for this week’s Found Sounds! Tune in next week for more crazy sounds from the ‘Cloud.

photo: snare drum by Vladimir Morozov

Last week was busy, so hopefully you didn’t miss anything! Just in case you might have, here is a recap of what went on at our Tumblr blog. Check it out:

Monday

• If you have an iPad, you probably noticed we switched on OnSwipe, to make this blog look like a magazine, sort of like Flipboard.

Tuesday

• Our newly launched project TakesQuestions is all about social audio in the form of Q&A. The concept was first conceived and tested at Midem Hack Day with Imogen Heap, with a great response so far with a real range of personalities from Diana Vickers to The Maine to The Blackout! You can even check out what SoundCloud’s own Alex has been up to!

• After the success with iELECTRIBE and iMS-20, KORG has teamed up with the Gorillaz to create a new dedicated beatbox for the iPad: The iELECTRIBE Gorillaz Edition.

• Demolished Thoughts, the Beck-produced new solo LP from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, is out May 23rd on Matador. Moore is streaming a cut from the record using one of our lovely artwork players over at demolishedthoughts.com.

• Converse once again brought together a mix of talent as part of their year-long campaign to represent the thriving British music industry. With their track ‘Desire’ they’re doing some really cool stuff with animated fire engulfing the waveform when sharing it to social sites.

Wednesday

• Our Marie Elliott’s doing a regularly occurring segment now, Deutsch Dienstag:

• My Chemical Romance are giving you the chance to see them headline the main stage at the Reading or Leeds festival! Create your own remixed version of “Planetary (GO!)” and drop it off.

• The Howard Jones ReWork project gives music producers, both rising stars and old hands alike, the chance to remix/recreate/ReWork some of Jones’ finest records. Head here for updates on the project.

• Remix Mike Nichol’s ‘Durado’, ‘Like’ Infrasonic Recordings on Facebook to download the stems, mix your track and submit it to their SoundCloud Dropbox!

• Edward Burns’ upcoming indie film Newlyweds is looking for a song for placement in the film. You can submit your track to Edward via the submissions page here.

• Win a day in the studio with the godfather of garage (the Artful half of Artful Dodger) ArtfulMark.

• The new film from the director of Kidulthood “EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE” hits cinemas on MAY 6th, here’s your chance to remix the title track by Fearless feat. Sonna Relle.

• Burn Studios/Plastikman ‘Ask Yourself’ remix contest came to a close and the winning remix came from Oblique Industries, congratulations!

Thursday

• Check out MobileRoadie’s slick video from the MusicTech Meetup at SXSW. Appearances by Songkick, Topspin, SoundCloud, last.fm and other usual crowd!

• Fake-Arnold popped up on Takes Questions. He wants to know who’s your daddy and what does he do?

Saturday

• Saturday would have been Roy Orbison’s 75th birthday and wished him a Happy Birthday! His page’s got a rare interview, so check it out.

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Don’t forget to keep a look out for what’s going on this week at our Tumblr blog!