Tag Archives: Lawrence English

Daily Sound Through Memory

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As I type this blog post, my ear drums are hammered by the punching of my fingertips against the keyboard, and I curse myself for not including this essential percussion of my daily life as a sound bite in my composition. I am soothed, however, by the fact that I could list a thousand more noises I hadn’t included: my sniffly nose, the rustling leaves outside my open window, a running shower with men’s-room-reverb, the late-night busy clamor of my Chinese neighbors, the list goes on…

My composition is not arranged linearly; I layered my field recordings because I wanted to best represent how the echoing memories of my sonic daily life congregate in my mind, running into each other, creating entirely new soundscapes altogether. This, to me, is quite profound, for there is a constant stream of vibrations entering my ears and they are stored in my memory as electrical impulses which I can hear inside my head – via reminiscence – at any moment of my choosing, and sometimes not of my choosing. I then compile those electrical impulses through a hard drive external to my brain, and arrange them by viewing a visual interface and replaying them as vibrations out of a stereo, feeding this energy-transferring perpetuation of vibration to organic memory to artificial memory and back again until I have composed a project for a class in which other students are cycling through the same process, feeding the relationship between man and machine – a relationship fueled by vibrations. Lawrence English, in his article, “The sounds around us: an introduction to field recording,” articulates that “the microphone and the recording device are non-cognitive,” which emphasizes this near-symbiosis because, although our technologies do not “need,” it is necessary for humans to manipulate recordings (amplifying certain sounds, removing extraneous noise, etc.) in order for the successful transmission of “listening.”

The individual recordings of my daily life work together as layers and take on a musical quality. None of the recordings were altered other than clipping and minor volume adjustment (volume adjustment was crucial). I included samples of a documentary I watched in my sociology class called The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, which I recorded in class. Three of the layers are instrumental (improvised by yours truly). I spend a lot of free time playing guitar, banjo, and keyboard synthesizer, so, naturally, I included these sounds in my composition. Playing music is an invaluable stress-reliever. I also use it for relaxation and stimulation; by playing certain families of vibrations, I am psychologically affected accordingly. In listening to the collection of sounds I have put together, one can hear the mundane noises of society: slamming doors, groaning buses, talking crowds of people, and tumbling dryers to name a few. I appreciate such sounds because when I hear them in my memory, I am musically inspired. This inspiration may have led me to compose my audiography in an unorthodox manner. I am justified by my certainty that this means of composition most strongly represents my take on the sounds of daily life. What I feel is most important to get across is that the sounds of my daily life do not only occur as I hear them, but also when I remember them, which is a definitive factor of my overall sound experience. I feel that my audiography has “grain”, as Roland Barthes calls the “signifier of the level of which […] the temptation of ethos can be liquidated” (Barthes 181). In other words, when I listen to my audiography, I do not feel it appropriate to label it with adjectives and force inaccurate characteristics upon it. Instead, I feel that only the compilation can describe itself, as both a listening and reflecting experience.

Works Cited:
English, Lawrence. “The Sounds around Us: An Introduction to Field Recording.”
The Conversation. N.p., 8 Feb. 2015. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
The Life and times of Rosie the Riveter. Dir. Connie Field. Perf. Wanita Allen, Gladys Belcher,
Lyn Childs, Lola Weixel, Margaret Wright. Clarity Productions, 1980.
Barthes, Roland, and Stephen Heath. “The Grain of the Voice.” Image, Music, Text.                            Noonday Press ed. 1977. N. pag. Print.

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.