Exploring Sound

Part 1:

Location: In my bedroom

Setting: I sit on my chair at my desk where my computer and books are; my bed is on the other side of the room and my doors are closed.

Sounds: humming of my printer, the TV from the next room, family chattering, a ball bouncing, typing on my keyboard

Response: The TV sounds were always heard with the occasional bounce of the ball as my brother is in the room playing. The printer is also a constant sound and the conversations always had a response. I didn’t notice that my printer actually made a sound when it was on because I was so used to hearing it and the keyboard is actually louder than I thought it was when I’m typing. The quality of the keyboard was exceptionally good as I am at a close proximity to the source of the sound. The sounds from the other room were a bit harder to hear because my door was closed and the TV was on, therefore I couldn’t really hear the conversations going on. I realized that a lot of the sounds in my room seems to be from some source of media, whether it is the computer or the TV. A lot of them weren’t very natural except for human voices.

Location: On my porch in the front yard

Setting: The door to my house behind me as I sit on the stone steps; a large tree in my front yard, a sidewalk and street in front of my house

Sounds: rustling grass, snow crunching, wind blowing, some birds, odd scratching on the tree

Response: The wind was constant throughout the entire time, even though it died a few times, it always returned. With that, the rustling from the grass could be heard, but every so often, there’d be a crunch from the snow. This was fairly prominent because it was so out of place because of a squirrel passing by. The quality of the sound was not as good as I was expecting as the wind caused it to be a mediocre quality to a fairly good quality. There are actually a lot more sounds than I expected, especially when the squirrel appeared, which helped create a bit more interesting sounds.

Part 2:

Location: GO bus

Response: Focusing on one conversation at a time helped me hear better and helped me take note of the different nuances in people’s voices as well as their different speech patterns. The loudness of the people helped me to hear clearly into their conversations as well. The higher the pitch of the voice was, the better I could hear the conversation.

What prevented me from hearing was combining the conversations. It became hard to hear which voice came from which conversation and what they were saying as they all merged together. Some voices also overshadowed others because of the proximity of the people to me. This created loudness, muffling out the others. There was much more difficulty hearing the lower voices.

Part 3

A sound that evokes an image:

• Train passing à concert band
• Wind blowing à summer
• Doorbell à school
• Pen clicking à shoes
• Train rumbling à dragon

An image that evokes a sound:

• Tree à cracking
• Soccer post à “ding,” as if hitting metal
• Bridge à river rushing
• Dog running à rustling grass
• Poster of The Lorax à spring-like bounce

A sound that provokes a feeling:

• Glass breaking à fear
• Bell/alarm à pain
• Dropping rain à anticipation
• Sneezing à sluggishness
• Zipper à coldness

A sound that provokes a thought:

• Repetitive, monotone drone – “I’m sleepy.”
• Shovel to the ground à “It’s too cold outside.”
• Yawning à “I hope they brushed their teeth.”
• Humming of computer à “I’m too poor to buy a new one.”
• Cell phone ring à Long distance call

A sound that competes with an image:

• A “Sale” sign and a stampede
• One chicken clucking frantically in a pack of wolves
• Construction zone and crashing
• Screeching and a petrified deer
• Dramatic classical music and a royal entry

A sound that works counter to an image:

• Racing noise and a turtle
• A bomb explosion and a flowery field
• Fast-paced rock music and a couple doing waltz
• Paper crunching and someone planting a tree
• A ball bouncing and a cat sleeping

The easiest to find was an image that evokes a sound. It was the easiest probably because I always hear a sound with an object/image. Often, I would also know what kind of sounds they make as well, or if I don’t know what the sound is, the colours, shapes and context of the image gives me an impression of what it should be like, given the details it gives me.

The hardest to find was a sound that competes with an image. This is because I don’t usually think that sound and images compete; I think they work cohesively together to create the final product. It was also hard because it was difficult to determine how a sound can compete with an image as depending on how you interpret it, they can usually work together fairly well.