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.