I’d gone for a walk and was listening to an audiobook, one that is largely set in London. I’d been alternating between reading the book and listening to it. Now I was walking through San Francisco while my head was in London, a different sort of alternating. At one point in the audiobook, I heard something, the sound of a violin, and I thought that was an interesting creative choice on the part of the recording’s producer or director. Except the sound wasn’t a violin, nor was it part of the audiobook. The sound was a buzz saw from a construction site, a residence half a block away. I paused the audiobook and took a few recordings of the buzz saw until I got one with the minimum of wind, chatty passersby, and traffic. This is on a clear, quiet day, no planes overhead, and the wind pretty chill, if not entirely still. The more I listened to the buzz saw on its own, the less it resembled a violin, but it was never any less musical than when I’d first heard it.
Recorded around 11:15am on an iPhone 17 Pro on Thursday, January 22, 2026, in San Francisco. Posted to SoundCloud and Freesound. This post is part of an ongoing series of field recordings that generally last for roughly 30 seconds and are collectively titled #30s.