Category Archives: Uncategorized

The New Mundane

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The New Mundane – Eryka Collins

There are so many sounds that pass you by every single day, but do you hear them? Having this be my first year at the University of Vermont, I hear a lot of sounds in my new everyday life here. As I listen back on them, it’s interesting to really hear things that I don’t really pay much attention to. It’s like when Schafer mentions in, “Open Ears”, that we don’t have lids for our ears, but we don’t hear every single thing either. In my podcast, I focus on the mundane sounds of my life here at UVM. And although they are mundane noises, some of them were not apart of my life prior to coming to UVM. The sounds in this take you through a day in my life here, allowing you to almost picture it with each sound that happens.

I start my podcast off with the sound of my alarm going off. It starts the majority of my mornings here, and with that, I found it fitting to start my podcast off with it. Next, I follow my morning routine with walking to the bathroom and taking a shower. After that, I started recording more of my morning. The next sound is walking downstairs in my dorm’s stairwell. This sound frequents my day, as I travel up and down these stairs multiple times in one day. Walking down the stairwell you can hear other residents of the building. Although this is now a norm for me, its quite different from my average life back home. Walking down the stairs at my apartment consists of silence except for my feet stomping down the stairs. Now, it consists of my feet stomping down the stairs and the noises of people’s conversations. After I walk downstairs, I walk over to my bike and ride it to my classes. I ride my bike everywhere and it is my main source of transportation on and off campus. Next in my morning, I usually stop and get coffee at Henderson’s, which has become my new home. Coffee is the reason I can get through my long days here at UVM. The next sound is the swirling of iced coffee, which is what I get whenever I buy coffee, no matter the temperature outside. The sound of the iced coffee is something that I hear almost everyday. After coffee, I start my classes. My favorite class this semester, so far is music theory, so I recorded a small part of the lecture. Once I’m finished with my classes for the day I walk back to my dorm to do my homework. The sounds of people walking past me as I walk back to my room after classes are something that is in constant background of my new reality here at UVM. Its something that I realized I tune out. After listening back on it, there are a lot of sounds that are around me that I never really realized that are there. Listening through the microphone from my phone made me realize how much more there is to listen to and allowed me to listen with new ears like what English says in their article called, “The Sounds Around Us”. In it, English says that microphones don’t have the capability to tune things out like human ears do, so it gives you a new aural experience. Once I’m back in my room, I start doing homework while listening to music, which explains my next sound which is me typing and my music playing on in the background. After a long day of classes and studying, my day ends with dinner in the dining halls with my friends and that is also what is the last sound on my podcast. Although things like these sounds are apart of my everyday life, some of them are still new to me and my new world here at UVM.

Work Cited:

  1. English, Lawerence. “The Sounds around Us: An Introduction to Field Recording.” (2015)
  2. Schafer, Murray. Open Ears. Print.
  3. Wild Horses – The Rolling Stones

Converse Style

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The Day in the Life of a College Student: Converse Style
By Lindsay Chaplin

Hearing is an ability that we all take advantage of; we consider the slight rumbling of trucks and mechanical hums of a heater to be a nuisance, when in fact they’re a blessing in disguise. Within Sound and Society, various texts such as “The Voice of the Grain” by Barthes, and “Open Ears” by Schafer have open my eyes (and ears) to how sound has impacted my daily life. In fact, my perspective now has caused me to become more appreciative of all vibrations. With this new-found perspective, my classmates and I have the task to record ten prominent sounds here at the university and explain not only the significance of the sound, but also to contextualize it with our readings from class.

Waking up in the frigid rooms of Converse, nothing sounds more appealing than a nice hot shower. Just by reading the word “shower,” you can already imagine the sound of the hissing water panging against the floor. Similarly, the tapping of footsteps, a creak and lock of a door and the murmuring of voices in a library are all something that we are familiar with; it’s just a matter of how much we pay attention to it. In Hudspeth’s “The Energetic Ear” he states: “Moreover, like many manmade feedback systems, the active process exhibits gain control: it can be turned up or down as circumstances dictate,” (Hudspeth, p. 50). This leads to the idea that despite the ability to focus on particular sounds, we won’t always have the ability to isolate ourselves from sound. As I write this paper I can hear people locking their doors, the bass of music through the floors, and murmuring voices in the background all at once. Yes, it can be an annoyance, but without those sounds my life would be filed with unbearable silence. We all have to face it: we all want what we can’t have. There will always be a constant battle between what is considered to be “noise” or “sound,” and it all has to do with how you decide to perceive it.

In the piece, “Senses of Vibrations: A History of the Pleasure and Pain of Sound,” Shelly Trower discusses the idea that hearing is not just one sense, but a full body experience for individuals. Looking from this perspective, many vibrations can be a pleasant experience. For an example, listening to ringing of the phone until a loved one answers is a comforting moment as they greet us with a warm “hello.” A particular song can also cause a swelling of emotions, whether that is of happiness or sadness. Within my Podcast that I created, I used the theme song from Scrubs because, although it is short, it brings me joy knowing that I can relax and unwind to a great comedy. In addition to this, “The Grain of the Voice,” by Roland Barthes, the idea of “the grain” illustrates the presence (or lack thereof) technicality, uniqueness, and mind and soul of the performer in their piece; each individual can experience a sense of pleasure or emptiness towards music, it is just a matter of having a connection. The song “Hello, I’m in Delaware,” by City and Colour, is a song that I would consider to have “the grain” regardless of when or where I listen to it due to the numerous emotions it evokes.; it grabs my attention, the singer relaxes me with his soothing voice, but yet my mind wanders from a distance thinking about my past in relation to the lyrics.

Each of the examples that I have presented all hold value to me, regardless of how small the sounds are. Similar to Schafer’s ideas in terms of how our history has been influenced by both opened and closed ears, as students at University of Vermont, we have the power to not only change how we view vibrations as a whole, but impact how our peers view campus sounds.

 

Citations

Trower, Shelly. “Introduction: Hearing Vibrations.” Senses of Vibration: A History of the Pleasure and Pain of Sound. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 1-12. Print.

Hudspeth, A. J. The Energetic Ear. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 50. Print.

Scrubs the Complete Season Seven. ABC, 2007.

Barthes, Roland. The Grain of the Voice. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.

City and Colour. Hello, I’m in Delaware. 2005. MP3.

Isolating Sounds Associated with Physical Actions

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Our audio field is constantly being stimulated around us, what we choose to listen to is for us to decide.  This project brought me to the idea of isolating the sounds and enjoying the auditory experience without experiencing actions associated along side. For this project, I focused on sounds in my everyday audio field that are identified with a personal action. These sounds tend to go unnoticed and become obsolete when linking the action to routine physical responses. The first few sounds (alarm clock song, fan, flushing of a toilet, and closing door) all signify the start to my morning. Each sound, whether that be the hum of the first few notes to my alarm or the rush of water into the drain from the flush of a toilet, all signify aspects of my morning associated with an action. The actions include waking up all the way to leaving for class in the morning. Interestingly enough, whenever I hear my alarm clock song at any point of the day, my body almost routinely tells itself to wake up even when already awake showing the physical effect that a single sound has on my body. This physical auditory connection can relate back to Murray Schafer’s article “Open Ears” in the section “The Ear in the Imagination” whens stating that, “Most of the sounds busy people listen to are the signals of activity.” (38) I find it interesting how linking sounds with specific actions become skewed if one appears without the other. Thus the reason to focus this project on sounds associated with an action, is to isolate the audio field and make us listen to the sounds alone that are commonly paired with an action.

The next sounds in the line up (a backpack zipper unzipping, the buzzer at Simpson Dining, the silverware disposal, a friends laugh, the unlocking of my buildings door, and finally the typing of keys) all relate to actions that typically happen at night, whether that be the buzzer at dinner signifying the action to eat or the typing of keys on a keyboard representing the action of homework. The particular sounds that stand out to me that are affiliated with an action in this line up happen to be the sounds of the silverware disposal and the laugh of a friend. Both of these sounds are often overlooked. We recognize the sound of silverware, and react (both verbally and physically) to laughter. But often, I find myself not appreciating these sounds by themselves for what they truly sound like. The reason why the silverware disposal stood out to me is because every night, silverware is a part of my dinner. Each night, I, along with every other student, use the utensils provided by the dining hall. A simple, routine, task. Silverware has become so common in our life the sound of the metal becomes so overlooked. I wanted to use this project to let my audience hear the raw sounds that typically are disregarded. This reminded me of a quote in Lawrence English’s article on The Introduction to Field Recordings. The article stated that, “Ultimately what we hear is not always what we listen to.” This quote stood out for me because I feel it relates to the connection of physical actions and auditory experiences. English states that “what we hear is not always what we listen to” and that could be do to the fact that we are not listening to certain sounds because of the overpowering nature of a physical action that associates with it.

These ten sounds represent my everyday life, but none of them stand alone. Each carries a physical action associated with it, so I tried to isolate the sound to fully appreciate my unheard auditory field. This project help me isolate the sounds that I typically don’t hear and moving forward, I’m really going to try to appreciate each sound individually, giving it the attention that it deserves alone. I encourage you to do the same.

English, Lawrence. “The Sounds Around Us: An Introduction to Field Recording.” The Conversation 8. Feb. 2015. Web.

Schafer, Murray. “Open Ears.” Journal of Acoustic Ecology (2003): 38. Print.

Movement. Like Lust. Movement. (2014)

The Technology of the Listening

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Asher Bean

Sound and Society

10/4/15

Professor Brennan

The Technology of Listening

   The ear is a technology used by the brain to hear and process sounds. The podcast “The Technology of the Listening” reflects this idea through the sounds of recorded in my everyday life. The first sounds, “Roses” by Outkast, is not only my alarm in the morning but also an mp3. An mp3 is a form of sound that is compressed and emptied, creating a smaller file size. Jonathan Sterne states, “An mp3 takes an existing CD-quality digital audio file and removes as much data content as possible, relying on listeners’ bodies and brains to make up the difference” (Sterne 832). This implies the ear notices the emptiness within the mp3 and signals the brain to produce the missing sounds or the ear amplifies the surrounding noises making it possible to miss these certain sounds.

   The following sounds heard in the podcast, “Roses” , the shower, the zipper, the water fountain, the falling of the weights, the second shower, the clicking of keys, FIFA, and even the light switch all are sounds produced by technology. However, this only demonstrates nine sounds, indicating that one sound is missing; talking while eating at restaurant. Although this is not produced by modern technology, it is perceived differently based on the technology that is ears, and produced by the technology that is our voices. In the article, The Energetic Ear by A.J. Hudspeth, Hudspeth talks about the physiological way our ear is able to listen. The ear is composed of multiple different elements. The most important part of the ear to signal translation is the small hair-like structures located inside of the ear, known as the cilia. When a sound wave enters the ear, the cilia stand up in specific quantities based on the amplitude of the noise. In more simple terms, the more cilia stand up, the louder the initial sound is. When the cilia stand up they open pathways for electrical signals to enter allowing the brain to process the waves providing us with hearing (Hudspeth). The ear is composed of several intricate parts working together to accomplish a specific function, in this case hearing. This concept can also be applied to the production of the voice. Ultimately, Hudspeth’s view of the ear from a physiological perspective supports the idea that the final sound of the voices in a restaurant was actually produced by technology, just as the other sounds were.

   The sounds produced in the “The Technology of the Listening” also contribute to Hudspeth’s idea of listening being an active process. Hudspeth states, “As discussed above the active process is an example of positive feedback. Moreover, like many manmade feedback systems, the active process exhibits gain control: it can be turned up or down as circumstances dictate,” (Hudspeth 50). Hudspeth claims that the ear is able to amplify certain sounds and decrease others depending on the situation. This is exemplified in all of the sounds listened to but is most evident during the sound clip of me at the restaurant. In a normal situation when talking to someone at a restaurant, the conversation one is involved in is amplified while the surrounding conversations and noises are decreased. Through recording, the process in which these sounds are amplified or decreased is changed. Since the microphone can’t necessarily filter the same ways an ear can, the sounds at the restaurant are heard differently due to the lack of filtering.

   The “The Technology of the Listening” follows the themes of technology and how the ear itself is technology all while taking the listener through the sounds of an average day for me. By looking at the ear as a form of technology it can provide humans a new way to view the world and the sound within it.

 

Bibliography:

  • Hudspeth, A.J. “The Energetic Ear.” Daedalus, The Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences(2015), 42–52.
  • Sterne, Jonathan. “The mp3 as Cultural Artifact .” New Media And Society(2006), 824–42.
  • Big Boi. Andre 3000. Roses. Outkast. © 2004 by Sony Music Entertainment. mp3.

My Day

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When we were first assigned this project, I started to hear the sounds of my everyday life differently. I began to notice the sounds that reoccured throughout my day. The ten sounds that I chose to include in this project are the ones that I found occurred the most, and have become the soundtrack of my daily life here at UVM. I chose to not have all my sounds be one minute long because I wanted them to be as authentic and representative of my real life as possible.

The second sound in my podcast is the sound of me getting out of bed. As you have heard, my bed creaks like an old basement door. When getting into or out of bed, or even when sitting on it, every spring can be felt, and definitely heard. The vibrations of each spring’s creak ripples through the cotton-polyester blend and into the body of whoever has sat down. I felt that this was a good demonstration of the vibrations that make up sounds, as we read about in Hearing Vibrations. Instead of just hearing the vibrations like we do with the majority of sounds we hear, when it comes to my bed, you can feel the vibrations that make up the sounds as well, proving, and reminding who ever sits on it, that sound is in fact vibration, which was the main point that Shelley Trower was trying to get across.

The seventh sound in my podcast is the sound of the fan that sits next to my desk. When I recorded that sound, I was doing homework with the window open, and although you cannot hear it in the recording, I could hear the sounds of people walking through the pebbles outside of Harris-Millis. I hit record in the hopes that my phone would be able to pick up those sounds, as well as those of people walking up and down the stairs outside of my dorm, and people talking outside my window. To my ears, those sounds were just as loud, if not louder, than the sound of the fan that is so prominent in the recording. I chose to keep this recording and include it in this project because it shows the difference between what human ears can pick up and what technology can, as was discussed in The Sounds Around Us: An Introduction to Field Recording. This example also connects to Hudspeth’s The Energetic Ear, because my ear was able to pick up and focus on the sound of people’s footsteps outside, even though they were seventy-five feet away, and the sound of people walking up and down the stairs even though there was a thick door between us. Even though the sound of the fan is what is predominant in the recording, that was more of a background noise to my ear, allowing my brain to unconsciously focus on the new sounds that were being produced around me.

This project made me slow down in my busy every day life and listen more closely to the sounds happening all around me. I noticed small things such as people talking behind me in class, or the sound of longboards going over the cracks in the sidewalk as I’m walking to class that I would’ve disregarded previous to this class and this project. I also contemplated sounds’ deeper meaning, with Hillel Schwartz’s quote, “Noise may be unwanted or incomprehensible sound; it is never insignificant sound,” in the back of my mind. In the past month, these ten sounds have become most familiar to me, and in hindsight, have been essential to me adjusting to my new life away from home, here at UVM.

Citations:

Trower, S. (2012). Introduction: Hearing Vibrations. In Senses of Vibration: A History of the Pleasure and Pain of Sound (pp. 1-12). New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group.

Schwartz, H. (2011). BANG (a beginning). In Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang & Beyond (pp. 17-35). Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books.

Hudspeth, A. (2015). The Energetic Ear. 42-51.

English, L. (2015, February 8). The sounds around us: An introduction to field recording. Retrieved September 24, 2015.

Morning Ritual

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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.

Sounds of Everyday Life

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Michael Greenberg

TAP: Sound and Society

3 October 2015

Soundtrack 2 My Life

Everything we know is founded upon the human body’s ability to process sensory information. Of these senses, hearing is one of the most fundamental and important to our accumulation of knowledge and our understanding of the world. Sound is vital to sharing information, interacting with other people, creating art, regulating schedules, and countless other aspects of life. The ten sounds that capture but a fragment of my life are a glimpse into such necessities with which sound privileges the human race. These recordings display how sound acts as a regulating factor in my life, as well as cultural, and social aspects.

Similarly to how the body follows biological rhythms such as the circadian cycle, I follow the rhythms of sound. Every morning I wake up to the song Pink Matter by Frank Ocean. The first five to ten seconds of the song draw me gently from my slumber, and hurtle me into the next monotonous aspects of my morning routine. Relieving myself, showering and brushing my teeth soon follow suit. The sounds of my mornings are interesting because they are paired with physical stimulus, not just hearing. My alarm vibrates while it rings, the water in the shower plops against my body, and the bristles noisily polish my teeth. Jonathan Sterne explains, “Sound is a product of perception, not a thing ‘out there’ – the only thing ‘out there’ is vibration which the body organizes and stratifies into what we call sound” (Sterne, p. 834). Sound as we know it exists because our brains are able to translate those vibrations into intelligible noises. Each aspect of my morning routine utilizes this two-fold, not just in the normal process of turning vibration into conscious thoughts, but also because each vibration affects me physically, amplifying the auditory experience.

The sound of coffee gurgling through the brewer is enough to wake me up just a little bit more. Subtle as it is, the sound of note taking in my textbook and turning pages represent the highlight of the next sound, the deep, peaceful quiet of the Billings Round Room. Often, silence can be deafening. As Schafer notes, “myriads of books [are] written in silent rooms and read in silent libraries” (p. 35). The acquisition of knowledge is often done in silence, which I have personally experienced. Such silence is especially beneficial to learning and thought. The reverberations in my life from this silent learning is metaphorically loud, rather than literally noise generating.

The droning of footsteps, the chattering of students, and the jingling of keys encompass the sounds of walking back to the dorm after class. The jolting sound of the next recording (which Schwartz would most likely define as noise) is my skateboard against the pavement. Noise is a sub category of sound, but is has a highly fluid definition. I would strive to define it as irritating stimuli as perceived by the listener, such that all sounds aren’t universally considered noise. Socrates, according to Schwartz, delighted in the buzzing of cicadas, whereas most people find their clamor corrosive. (Schwartz, p. 19). While the harsh sound of hard rubber on concrete may be a nuisance to others, the sound elicits feelings of happiness and freedom for me.

Metal on ceramic and the voices of friends define lunch for many students at UVM, and is a vital recording to include. Music defines much of the sound here, and a little soul in my dorm is uplifting and helps vitalize my energy to prepare me for each night’s workload. A quick Netflix break to watch The League is all too common during my days. The echoing of rubber ricocheting off of wooden walls and heavy footsteps comprise the quick paced game of squash. Friends and quiet music ease the stress of college life at the end of most nights.

Creating this podcast forces me to actively listen to my surroundings and consider the modes in which I interact with sound. Many sounds that fill my environment go completely overlooked, especially the impact they have on my life. Such minute sounds such as highlighter on paper represent so much more, but are routinely ignored. Other sounds, chiefly music, have a heavier burden of influence on what defines me as an individual, my culture, my experience socially, and my interaction with my surroundings. Being forced to observe the auditory stimulus around you helps generate a better understanding of yourself, acquisition of knowledge, and the perceptions of sound.

Works Cited

channel ORANGE. Perf. Frank Ocean. CD.

Dark Side of the Moon. Perf. David Gilmour, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Richard
Wright, and Nick Mason. LP.

“Ebdbbnb.” In The League. The Fox Broadcasting Company. November 12, 2014.

Schafer, Murray. “Open Ears.” Journal of Acoustic Ecology 4.2 (2003): 25-38.
Print.

Schwartz, Hillel. Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang & Beyond, Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books;, 2011

Stern, J. “The mp3 as a Cultural Artifact.” New Media and Society, 2006, 825-42.

The Best of. Perf. Mavis Staples. 1986. CD

 

 

 

The Little Things

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I’ve always been told to pay attention to the little things in life and to appreciate the things that you tend to overlook, which is why I made my podcast of the ten daily sounds that give me tranquility and happiness. I started my podcast in the way I like to start my mornings, with the sound of someone running on the treadmill, a shower, and a Keurig machine making coffee. The next sound, of a door opening, is supposed to resemble a person holding open the door for the next. The sound of my little brother’s voice always brings me happiness and is definitely a sound that I enjoy hearing every day. The following four sounds are sounds I experience at the end of the day. Starting with that feeling of relief, my sixth sound is of a pen crossing of homework from my planner. My next three sounds are of popcorn popping, brushing my teeth, and the theme song to Grey’s Anatomy. All three of these sounds are at the end of my day, when it is winding down and I can finally relax. At last, my final sound, which I fall asleep to every night, is the sound of our fan.

In “Making Noise” by Hillel Schwartz, he references how as a society, we believe that silence is what we want, but in reality once it all goes silent, we go crazy. Looking back on our class conversation about how machinery is manufactured to have sound, I noticed how quiet life would be if the objects I recorded functioned in complete silence. I realized that even though all day I cannot wait to go to sleep and get some peace and quiet, yet I always go to sleep with the fan on for the “white noise” effect because like Schwartz said, many of us think we want silence but truly cannot be comfortable without some type of noise.

When talking about the passive ear, Bull and Back state, “we increasingly fail to listen to the natural sounds of the world and that this inattention could have dire consequences.” I found it interesting, that when looking back at my list of sounds, none of them are natural. However, trying to think of, and more importantly, obtain natural sounds for my podcast seemed to pose even more of a challenge. It was very surprising to realize how heavily my daily life and the sounds that I hear and acknowledge revolve around manmade items.

In English’s, “The Sounds Around Us” he explains that the non-cognitive microphone lacks the ability to zone into a particular sound or filter out undesirable sounds. This became apparent when I was recording the sound of my fan, which turned out to be extremely difficult to capture, even when using a high tech recording device. Along with the sound of my fan, almost all the sounds turned out to be more challenging to record than I anticipated.

While making this podcast my eyes were opened to so much about recording devices and the way in which I go through the day hearing different sounds. I recognized how dependent and focused I am on material objects as well as how difficult these sounds can be to capture.

Bibliography:

Bull, Michael, and Les Back. Introduction: Into Sound. n.d.

Schwartz, Hillel. Making Noise. n.d.

English, Lawrence. “The sounds around us: an introduction to field recording.” , n.d.

Let the Sounds Serenade You

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Beams of light strike my eye as the cacophony of sound that is my alarm wakes me up for the day. I hop out of bed and head over to the bathroom where I take my morning shower, a daily routine which helps me wake up and prepare for what is in store for me. Once I am all clean, my headphones make their way up to my ears until they are in and the music has taken over. This time, its Madvillain’s Accordion that takes me away to a place where all that concerns me is my music. I crack my knuckles, something I have been doing everyday since I was a kid, and put pencil to paper taking notes and erasing mistakes while listening to lectures. Classes end and I swipe my card to open the door to the stairwell where I make my journey up the stairs to room 509, my humble abode. The needle drops and lets loose the beats of J Dilla, whose music always manages to find its way into my life at just the right time. He has inspired me to go grab my guitar and start my daily jam, something I have been doing since middle school. I get up and go to the bathroom again, but this time to brush my teeth; the sound is only recorded once, but I promise I brush twice a day. I crawl into bed and watch as the Always Sunny in Philadelphia theme brings laughs and entertainment after a long day.

Let the sounds of your daily life take you away, let them show you what they have to offer. While recording my sounds I found that it really made me appreciate all of the seemingly miniscule sounds that I hear every day. Listening to these all made me think of what Schafer described as the “deafness of others” (Schafer p.25) in the sense that these sounds which mean so much to me could literally mean nothing to someone else, or worse, they could just not even hear it.  It is all dependent on perspective, and I just find it so interesting how people perceive different sounds so uniquely. At the same I time I feel confused about whether the fact that nobody will ever perceive and enjoy a piece of music the same way that I do is a good thing or a bad thing. It makes me feel lonely to imagine that I am the only person, but at the same time it is a good thing for everybody to have their own experiences with music.

Music is something very near and dear to me and I think that is easy to tell based on the amount of music in my sounds. It is so easy to get lost in music and to find yourself listening for hours on hours, but with regular everyday sounds it isn’t such an easy thing. Why is it that people can’t find the attention span to sit and listen to ordinary sounds? What is it about music that regular sounds don’t have? I think that music gives the listener the chance to release emotions into the music and to really form a connection with it, whereas sounds don’t offer that same deal. It is easy to let the music take over your soul, body, and mind, but the challenge is trying to have that same feeling, that same emotion, with everyday sounds.

Bibliography:

J Dilla. Airworks. J Dilla, 2006. Vinyl recording.

Heinz Kiessling. Temptation Sensation. N.d. MP3.

Madvillain. Accordian. Madlib, 2004. MP3.

Schafer, Murray. “Open Ears.” (n.d.): 25. Web.

My Daily Playlist

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It seems that the more I grow up, the more repertoire my life becomes.  When I was younger, I had no obligations.  The day was whatever my parents made of it.  One day they would take me to the playground, the next I would be following them to whatever errands they had planned.  As I become older I find myself walking through the same daily routine.  I wake up, go to class, complete my homework, and then even my extra-curricular activities at night are repeated.  I hear the same sounds as well.  If my day was recorded every day for a week, with the exception of weekends, all of the sounds recorded would be almost identical from the time I wake up, to the second my head hits the pillow at night and I fall asleep.

My day starts with possibly the most appalling sound on Earth, the alarm clock.  It is loud, obnoxious, and positively dreadful.  The alarm clock is the American staple of the beginning of the day.  It is how people in today’s society wake up.  Before this invention people had to be woken up in different ways, like church bells, sunlight, or even a rooster.  The alarm is an example of how life has progressed.  As Murray Schafer explains in his article “Open Ears”,  “there are also real flash points in history where something revolutionary was heard for the first time.”  The evolution of sounds in a civilization is a great way to learn about the culture’s history.

After turning off my alarm, scrolling through the latest instagrams that I had missed while sleeping, and contemplating whether or not I should even get up (I always do), I finally saunter out of bed and brush my teeth before my first class.  The scraping of the bristles onto my teeth is the first natural sound I hear every day.  After brushing, I quickly walk over to my favorite class, Spanish.  I am a Spanish major, and hearing Professor Ebratts’ Colombian accent is the ideal way to start my day.  It provides comfort, because learning Spanish is what makes me happiest, and I know that it is what I am supposed to be doing with my life.

With the little time I have in between Spanish and my second class, I spend it making the most essential drink for any college student, coffee.  I hear the Keurig in my room working its magic, shooting water through my pumpkin-flavored K-Cup, creating the liquid that will keep me awake for the rest of the day.  When my coffee has been made, I rush off to my next class.

I am incapable of walking to class without listening to music, and I always start the walk with my favorite song, “Time to Run”, by Lord Huron.  The reason this song is always the first played, is because it has what Roland Barthes would call “the grain of music.”  According to him, “The musical adjective [grain] becomes legal whenever an ethos of music is postulated, each time, that is, that music is attributed a regular – natural or magic – mode of signification.”  “Time to Run” embodies all of this.  The song starts off with the singer explaining to his listener why he has to leave them.  After about two minutes of singing, there is a two minute instrumental break that lets you process what has been sung.  After the beautiful instrumental, the final two minutes of the song explain the outcome of him leaving.  When I play this song, I always know that I am on my own journey to Geography class.

After I finish my day of classes, I finally get to go to the most looked-forward to part of my day, crew practice.  There is nothing better than hearing my coxswain shout out commands.  Following practice I watch an episode of Friends, shower, and then walk up to the dorm room full of my best friends on the third floor.  Every night before bed, a girl in that room named Cara plays us her guitar, and reads us a bed-time story.  Although not much of my day ever changes, I would not want it to.  I am surrounded by incredible people, doing things that I love.  The sounds I hear on a daily basis are just reminders of how lucky I am to have so many wonderful things happen to me from day-to-day.

Bibliography:

“I’ll Be There for You”, by The Rembrants

“Time to Run”, by Lord Huron

“The Grain of the Voice”, by Roland Barthes

“Open Ears”, by Murray Schafer