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.

No comments: