My guitar teacher once told me, “don’t rush your mornings. If you rush your mornings, you rush your day, and if you rush your day, you rush your life.” I stand by those words, because too often mornings are a constant scramble to get things done and get out the door. At the end of the day, it’s a “thank god that’s over,” but that should never be your mindset. From this, I acquired a sort of “morning ritual,” in which I make an effort to take my time in the morning with whatever I am doing, exercising a sort of calmness and intention that I try to carry with me throughout my day. This time for myself in the morning plays a tremendous role in clearing my head and setting a tone for how I feel throughout the day.
Though my sounds may seem standard of any daily routine, they each hold meaning in the flow of my mornings. I wake up to “Free” by Mission South, a local band who are alumni from my high school. The sounds of my coffee machine (not peeing), keyboard, and printer account for my morning coffee while finishing homework. The wall shaking alarm is the exit door next to my room that sounds if you hold it open for more than 10 seconds, something people manage to do all the time. Showers are always essential for washing away the grogginess, and the crunching can be attributed to the most important meal of the day, mini wheats. I say good morning to my parents, I play guitar without the worry of bothering my suite mates, and I’m out the door and on with the rest of my day.
I am usually alone in my suite in the mornings, and so I think of it as peacefully quiet. Relatively speaking, it is quiet. Yet, as I recorded these sounds, I found that my environment is not at all quiet; my morning is filled with constant subtle sounds that I regularly tune out. I let my mind wander and the sounds around me go unnoticed. These sounds have been woven into my routine, serving a background to my thoughts. They lack significance, and thus blend into what I would consider background noise.
As I gradually recorded my ten sounds, I became increasingly aware of this background noise. Not solely the sounds featured in the podcast, but my soundscape in its entirety–the buzz of the refrigerator, the door closing down the hallway, and the pipes in the room next door. This demonstrates writer Shelley Trower’s idea in her piece “Senses of Vibration,” in that these sounds, or amalgam of vibrations rather, exist everywhere even though we are not always conscious of them. The constant humming that accompanies my morning provides an example of the persistent vibrations that exist within our society, yet are often so discreet that they are deemed meaningless and ignored entirely.
I also found that my mood greatly effects what I listen to and what I tune out. For instance, if I wake up in a bad mood or I am stressed, it seems the undesirable noises around me are amplified. Though it’s not actually true, my mental state is reflected in what I am hearing, and all of the unpleasant sounds around me I begin to perceive as “noise,” rather than sound. The coffee machine is amplified, the pipes next door are excessively irritating, and the printer is suddenly louder. This change in consciousness ties into the idea entertained by Lawrence English in his article “The Sounds Around Us: An Introduction to Field Recording.” English writes that “what we hear is not always what we listen to,” meaning that our hearing is never objective and our mind and body are deeply interconnected, an idea that is strongly rooted in the sounds of my morning (English 3).
The sounds that accompany my mornings are subtle, yet play a large part and are vital to the start of my day. Whether it’s the strum of my guitar, the stream of coffee, or my dad’s voice, they are all sounds that I did not give attention to before but now attribute great significance to.
Mission South. Free. 2013. MP3.
Trower, Shelley. Senses of Vibration: A History of the Pleasure and Pain of Sound. New York: Continuum, 2012. Print.
English, Lawrence. “The Sounds Around Us: An Introduction to Field Recording.” The Conversation. 8 Feb. 2015. Web.
After listening to your podcast and reading your essay, I’m so jealous of how chill and calming your mornings are! The change of pace in this podcast is so refreshing and after listening to it I myself felt calmer. Although most peoples, including myself, feature a lot of their morning routines, yours is very different and unique. Comparing it to my mornings, mine are rushed, chaotic and noisy as I force myself out of bed at the very last possible minute before class. I like what you said at the end too about how stress forces you to hear some noises or makes them more annoying. Its cool to think about how objective our hearing really is!
I very much agree with Lindsay’s comment. Your podcast and essay reflect your relaxed personality. Listening to your recordings brought forth a zen not found in the other podcasts, which I found to be noisy. I attribute this zen to the “grain” that your recordings carry. I also found it especially unique that you only recorded morning sounds, which offered a coherent theme and ultimately contributed to the grain of your audiography. I wholeheartedly agree with what you said about stress amplifying the unpleasantness of certain sounds, turning them into utter noise. I also enjoyed your guitar-playing. Overall, fantastic job conveying your morning ritual and articulating your thoughts.
I wish my mornings were more like yours! I love how calming your podcast was and how all your sounds, like you said, didn’t seemed at all rushed or forced. Like you, I’ve noticed that when I’m in a bad mood all the little annoying sounds that I usually wouldn’t notice seem to be extremely more persistent. I also liked how you put the door alarm in your podcast, because even though it’s not a sound you intentionally have in your morning routine, it’s definitely a sound that you’re aware of and that impacts your mornings.
McKenna,
I think your podcast and essay fully illustrate who you are as a person: laid-back, personable, and unique. One of most interesting parts about this project is that within each podcast, although it is just pure audio, I can easily picture the objects or people that are making the sounds. In addition to this, I thought an interesting point that you made was how our mood can affect how we perceive sound. Similar to what you said in your essay, if I find myself in a bad mood, I do perceive some background noise as an annoyance rather than something that is just there. This illustrates that hearing is just not something we do with our ears, but is the full body experience that Hudspeth and many other authors have pointed out. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed your project and I think you did a fantastic job!
I really enjoyed this and the theme of mornings is a very relatable topic, especially rushed mornings. I like how you talk about the flow of your mornings and how the seemingly standard sounds are essential to the outcome of your day. That reminds me of Schafers “Open Ears” and how he talks about sounds that are always glossed over are usually very important sounds. I also thought your last choice to end the sounds with a door closing was a good one because it sounded sweet.
Mckenna,
I found it very interesting that you chose to isolate one part of your day for this project. I really appreciated you focusing on the sounds being produced in the morning and letting the reader and listener fully be aware of what sounds happen just in that time frame, rather than throughout the entirety of the day. I thought it was really interesting how you chose to do your morning routine, yet later in the essay, you explained how sounds can change depending on your mood. That made me think of what I hear in my daily audio field and what different sounds are more frequent to hear when feeling a certain way. I related completely when you stated in your essay that, “If I wake up in a bad mood or I am stressed, it seems the undesirable noises around me are amplified”. I think it is so fascinating how an emotional state can effect our interactions with our surrounding audio field.
This was a great podcast. The quote you started with was very interesting. The fact that this personal mantra of yours directed the sounds you used was super cool. I love that you confined the sounds to only your morning. It gave the piece a more focused theme. Love that song you used for your alarm also! My favorite part of your essay was when you said that your mood affects the music you listen to. I think this is true of most sounds, and an important idea to remember. Sounds are often directly related to mood. This isn’t something people always think about.