GSU: ENGL 4320

February 15, 2015

The soundscape I responded best to was the sounds that surround me every day. I ever realized that I am surrounded by so many sounds especially at different times of the day. During this morning and early afternoon I had heard birds chirping and dogs barking. For the assignment I decided to record some of that sound from a different part of my yard and picked up several different sounds. Take a listen:

I stood in the doorway at the front of my house and had the recorder going. I mainly heard the humming of late afternoon street traffic. It’s a comforting humming of engines and light, though high, squeaking of the brakes. That is until a huge truck, the size of which no one really needs to drive or can pay the ungodly cost of the gas to fuel the beast, came roaring by. Once that monster revs up the hill that is right beside my house there are chirping birds again with the light humming of the other smaller cars zipping by.

There are a couple more layers of my recording. By the eight second mark there is a clanging sound of me locking the front porch door, because my dog decided to follow me around. At one point my voice can be heard telling my dog to stop biting at my shoes as I stood there around the twenty-two second mark. There is the mumbling sound of people going by, but I didn’t see anyone walking by.  Being our town there are people walking about everywhere so they could have been on the other side of the adjoining street and my mic picked it up.

The main sound that I responded to the most is the revving engine. I am a person who really hates that sound when I’m at home. There is a time and a place for everything and in a tiny town there is no need for a land yank to be revving up the hill. It covered up the nice chirping of the birds, and destroyed the nice humming of the other cars.

It is that loud disruption, the non sequitur if you will, of the situation that just irks me. However it is the sounds of the chirping birds that bring me back into the peace of mind of being home. I promise I’m not a neoclassical critic that believes that the unities of plays should be applied to life as well, but jeez do I hate the noise.

However, once the noise has settled I am able to relax both physically and mentally to the song of our finches and the steady humming of the little cars. It’s a reminder that no matter how annoying or bad something is that it will always pass just like everything else in life. It may not be pleasant at first and it may not pass as quickly as an obnoxious truck, but all will be better in due time.