Tag Archives: silence

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.

Table Music

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Any sound can be music if you listen to it the right (or wrong) way. Living in the Farm to Table living/learning community at the University of Vermont, I am constantly surrounded by musical people (who knew so many wonderful people could love both food AND music!?). In this podcast, I have collected 10 sounds from my daily life which I consider to be music. We begin with the noises I wake up to, such as the box fan in my window, and progress through my daily life until the last things I hear before going to bed. Additionally, you may notice that the music in my life starts out as an individual experience each morning, and slowly builds to include our whole community by the end of the night. Each and every sound can be found within the Farm to Table house. Some of these noises are indeed actual songs that can be played, but others are fragments of noise which inspire me to create and connect to other people.

  1. Box fan – Each morning, before my alarm even goes off, my brain registers the sound of the fan in the window of my room. The sound is constant, and always in the background of my daily life.
  2. Book Pages – Books are a huge part of my life, whether I am reading them for class or just for fun, I have always loved the sound of crisp pages turning.
  3. Pencils drumming – A tick similar to tapping a foot, I often tap my pencil in my room while thinking of an idea (or sometimes out of boredom).
  4. Feet on the Stairs – Every person has a unique, distinct walk. The acoustics of the stairwell outside our suites carry the pounding of feet up three floors, so we always know when people are home.
  5. The Laugh – One of the members of my suite has an amazing, deep, bubbling laugh. Whenever I hear it, I can’t help but smile.
  6. Food Song – While hiking with five other people from my house this past weekend, I was introduced to a song by one of the other members. He taught us this song which he sang while in high school, and we sang it before our lunch at the top of the mountain. Later that evening, we taught it to the parents of one of the other members.
  7. Eating – Oftentimes I come back to my room to find my beautiful roommate spread out on the floor, eating pretzels or other snacks.
  8. Percussion Jam –Spontaneous jam sessions often happen on the third floor of A Mid, such as this percussion circle from a week or so ago. One person started with a beat, and slowly everyone else (about 20 people) added in their own rhythm until we were all clapping, stomping, and shaking trashcans as one.
  9. Night Music –Nightly music adventures make our community ever stronger. Sitting around in a circle, singing and playing music together allows us to bond as a community. We are no longer each our individual selves trying to do the best we can, but parts of the whole machine that work to achieve a common goal.
  10. Deep breathing/absence of sound – After everyone goes to sleep, this quietness seeps through the suite like a blanket, quieting our minds until we wake up to the sounds of a new day.

The way we perceive sound, and thus music, is highly individual. However, the act of hearing is also a cultural phenomenon. As explained in “BANG (a beginning),” our culture and language greatly influence how we hear. In the article, Schwartz states that “just as noise is what we make of certain sounds, the meanings we assign to noise are no less consequential than the meanings we assign to other sounds” (Schwartz, 28). In that case, I consider all of the noises in my podcast to be music, so therefore they are. Additionally, my observation of Farm to Table as a whole has helped me find each individual’s own voice. As Barthes states in his article “The Grain of the Voice,” “the voice is not personal… it is not original… and at the same time it is individual” (Barthes, 182). This is the essence of Farm to Table. Though we all come into the house with our own voice and personality, there is a constant give and take between us and the music we create together. To me, it seems that at the end of the night our voices all together make up one singular new grain.

Picking 10 sounds that exemplify my life with Farm to Table caused me to thing about many things, but most importantly it made me realize that sound is a communal experience. In choosing which noises to include on the list, I was required to ruminate on what I personally consider music, and why. I have decided that, for me at least, music does not need to have an established rhythm or melody, but just something that strikes a chord in my heart, and brings me back to a specific place or time. These 10 sounds will forever remind me of Farm to Table, a place that I have come to call home.

 

Bibliography:

Bathes, Roland. “The Grain of the Voice.” In Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath, 179–89. Noonday Press, 1977.

Schwartz, Hillel. “BANG (a Beginning).” In Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang & beyond, 18–36. Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2011.