Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Sound Journal 2

I just woke up to the horrible sound of my alarm. This agressive beeping makes me mad in the morning, but it's still an efficient way of waking up because it gives me a boost of energy. I find it agressive because of it's loudness and high pitch, it gets you right out of the dreamworld.

I am now hearing the clock ticking. I find it interresting because even if it's the same needle that is turning, it makes two different ticks. I can hear one that is higher and the other is lower and sounds a bit more open. It makes for good tempo use while recording a song.

I just turned on the tv and I have to talk about this particular sound. I can hear the static, or something else, coming from the tv. It's a really high pitched sound, almost unhearable but it's there. When somebody turns on a tv somewhere in the house, I always hear this sound and I automatically know what it is.

I noticed another sound that I always use as a way of knowing what it is. My parents wear slippers so whenever they walk around the house, I can distinguish one from another by the sound of their slippers. My mother's are hard so it makes a louder sound. My father's sound a lot softer but they still make a loud sound because of the plastic under the slippers. Anyways, I always know who's coming by just listening to the sound of them walking. Also, when my mom asks me to do something and she goes into her bedroom, I tend to wait before doing when she asked me to do and when I start hearing her walking towards the stairs, I get up and start doing what I had to do. So, I guess I use this sound as a warning or to remember.

The telephone just rang and I have to talk about it. Whenever I hear the sound of the phone ringing, I always get mad because I know it's an unknown number or somebody trying to sell me something. But at other times when it rings, I automatically know who it is because of the time they call at. I find the ringing to be annoying, especially when the same number that I don't want to answer calls every minute and lets it ring for a long time. And sometimes when I'm lazy and not doing what I'm supposed to do, when I hear the phone ring it makes me get up and answer and then after that I remind myself what I have to do and then I do it. So in sometimes it tends to structure my day.
I just came back from walking my dog and I noticed the sound the big pylons make. This buzzing sound is loud enough that I can hear it on the street, but only during the night when everything is more calm. On rainy days, I tend to hear it more and there's something I like about it. I find it interresting and it fills in on the ambience of the outdoors.

So it's saturday and the newspaper was just delivered to our doorstep. How do I know this? My dog barks at the newspaper man. Everybody in the house knows why he barks and it automatically lets my mom know the newspaper's arrived. I honestly hate it when my dog does that because he just goes crazy and it really kills the relaxing ambience of the house. It makes me jump right off my chair everytime.

I went soundwalking for a bit and I noticed how I could hear the sounds of the cars passing by on the highway and how I could hear the sounds that came from the city. I live on the south shore and I noticed this even more when I was walking at night. I can't believe there's that much sound and how loud it is that even people from the south shore can listen to it. And I find it amazing how sound travels, this is a great example.

My mom is watching tv in the kitchen and we use this satellite thing but it keeps making the most horrible sound ever. It's like static and it's messing the whole thing up and distorting the sound. I'm sure it's destroying my eardrums a bit each day.

My computer is almost always on. I think the sound that the fan makes can be soothing, but I can't sleep with it on though because it's kind of loud. It always makes the same note too. When I turn it off though, it just makes the sound more clear and it really removes a layer of noise in my room.

My mom made a cake today and the timer on the oven just went off. I've just thought of this and the way we mainly use sounds is for warnings or reminders or simply for alerting something. The way the police use their sirens is for alerting us to get out of the way, when we need to wake up we use the alarm, when we honk on the road, etc. This is really interresting and I think it's the best way to alert people. It automatically grabs our attention and we know where to look after that, where to go or what to do.

Sound Journal 1

Sound Journal : April 7 2008

11:00 I woke up, I was in my room and the window was opened, I heard a few things, some were outside others were inside. For one there are 3 computers that are almost always running. The most annoying part is when they decide that it is an appropriate time to do a virus scan (which they were doing this morning) All the drives run at max speed and click seemingly just to annoy me. I hear cars passing outside. Nothing specifically interesting, I can hear the cars passing on the highway I don't usually notice that because I have gotten so used to it over the years. I can sleep pretty much anywhere.

12:00 I started using my computer, and stopped the virus scan so my computer stopped making the hard drive clicking sound, but there was still the sound of all the fans inside spinning. They go at several thousand rpm so they make a fair amount of noise, I can tell that one of my fans has a broken bearing inside because it is making a lot more noise than it should. I can hear the shower running through the wall so I am pretty sure that the my brother isn't at school yet because if its not him, then there is a dirty burglar in my house showering up.

1:00 Now my cat is hanging around I can hear her in the hallway making noise for no reason, it actually sounds like she is trying to make music, it must be one of my two younger cats because the older one doesn't care enough to actually make any noise or move around most of the time. My cats have no claws but they still feel the need to scratch at things as if it will help shorten their claws, it makes a strange sound when they scratch at cardboard boxes. It sounds like she is putting the cardboard between her paw and the pad on her paw and it makes a lot of noise, and I am not sure why they do it, its an annoying sound and I am pretty sure it must hurt (I checked nothing is caught on their paw)

2:00 The doorbell rang so I went to check it out. Got some mail, nothing interesting my house is pretty quiet but when I opened the door there are so many different sounds that I can hear outside, cars on the highway, cars on my street (they sound different since the highway is behind a sound dampening wall) a buss passed and it makes a lot more noise. I'm gonna head out in a few minutes. Taking the metro to save some money on gas today.

3:00 I put on my headphones, but no music is playing yet, its an awesomely quiet sound because of the ear pads on these headphones. I walk outside and turn on my iPod so I can have some music to help pass the time more quickly. Awesome some Beatles, I remember listening to that track last time I turned it off. When I get to the bus stop I wait for the bus. You can hear it over the music, I don't know why they are so loud, I guess its the size of the engine but still, it can't be good for the driver to hear that all day long.

4:00 Got my laptop out on the metro, still listening to music, the fan is broken, I seem to always manage to find the car with the broken fan, its screaming at me and its horribly annoying and its making me tense, the metro sound of the metro is also loud so I pump up the volume even higher. It's gonna make me deaf for sure one day but I prefer music to the sound of the metro so its a risk that I have to take. Whenever the metro slows down the sound changes, you can hear the breaks squeaking and the doors opening, when the metro is running you can hear the wind rushing through the grate.

5:00 I met up with my girlfriend and we went to East Side Mario's (woo product placement) it was quite loud in the restaurant, I'm not too sure why I guess because everyone is finished work and now they are going out for an earlyish supper. All kinds of different people talking in the background, I hear someone speaking french with a Parisian accent, pleasant for a while but then they just sound too full of themselves.

6:00 One of my friends came to pick us up in his car, its a broken down Honda and it makes tons of noise, the doors squeak when you open it and the car is constantly making a clicking sound, when he has to accelerate you know that the car wants to just give up and stop on the side of the road. He turns on the radio so that we hear something besides his car, his radio isn't properly grounded because you can constantly hear a hissing in the background. Oh well its not his fault maybe he'll get it fixed some day.

7:00 My brother and my friend rent this room in a warehouse that's where we are now. This place re-defines sketchy. There is an echo while we are walking up the stairs, the walls are tiled and the floor/ceiling is cement so our footsteps are echoing loudly. From outside the building you can hear bassy sounds of distant music being played way too loud. As we get closer we can hear more and more of the music. It turns out they are jamming right across from our room, it's a NOFX cover band, I will probably go see them soon because through the two walls you cant really hear it too well.

8:00 WOW talk about loud. In hear you can certainly hear the music, but you cant really hear yourself think. Fun stuff for sure, two guitars with two huge amps, a bass with a giant 2x4 ampeg amp, and a fully decked out metal drum set. All the guys in here seem to have pieces of toilet paper stuffed in their ears, I guess they are hoping it will protect them a bit, but I am not sure about how effective it is. I wish them luck in the future, in the room you can't hear anything of the other bands playing.

9:00 We're about to leave, we all head to the bathroom which is even sketchier than you could imagine. I turn the nob on one of the sinks, nothing happens except it does screech. My brother is washing his hands at another sink, but I hear the sound of watter running onto the floor, I look over and start laughing, the drain from the sink runs to the floor, I am sure that's healthy but whatever its not the end of the world, my brother starts laughing hysterically for no particular reason except the fact that he wants people to think he's nuts, in the bathroom the echo makes it sound even scarier..

10:00 Back in the car, same sounds as before, we drop everyone off and drive home with the windows opened, the motors to open the windows barley work, but they do make a ton of noise as if they really wish they could do something to open the window, we can still push them down manually. The wind rushes to my ears making a ton of noise, you can always hear cars going by, they all make a different noise but you can always tell they are a car.

11:00 Back at home, back in bed, back to the normal sound of my computer running, I know the virus scan is gonna start again soon so I gotta try to get to sleep soon!