1. March 7, 10:13 pm, Dutch Treats
2. Cars outside, wind
3. Voices, cash registers
4. Refrigerators, door and bell
5. Low. Mostly quiet.
6. Still
7. Cars, cash registers, door/bell
Daily Archives: March 8, 2013
Location: Alliance Hall, Room 1111 — March 7, 2013, 2:17 am
Sounds Heard: I was originally going to upload a different recording for this week, but I had a conversation with my friend Morgan in (which she showed a home video of herself singing in a church choir when she was eight) that was too good to pass up. I usually don’t consider voices a top choice for my Field Recordings, as it doesn’t feel like as much of a discovery to just record someone talking. But Morgan has such a dynamic voice, and my interest was piqued by hearing her echo the sounds in the video and imitate her own thick, Appalachian accent.
The video itself can be heard initially, followed by giggles and chatter about the video, as well as Morgan’s stellar impression of herself, which I ask her to repeat. My boyfriend Steve chimes in when Morgan shows a video of herself dancing in another home video — he comments that she looks like both Mary Kate AND Ashley Olsen.
Sound Journal #6
1: Saturday, March 1, 2013, 1:17 am, Social Sports Kitchen, The Gallery Room
2: Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.
I am sitting in the coat check of the basement level of Social Sports Kitchen, counting the cash accrued from checking 87 hoodies, parkas, blazers and peacoats during the Saturday night mob scene. The door to the walk-in-closet-turned-coat-check is hinged in two separate halves, so that I can partition myself from the bedlam of mass, collegiate inebriation like I’m taking orders at a drive-through window. Being set apart from the nucleus of pulsating sounds that is the dance floor means that I am spared certain hearing loss by the walls around me. I have never heard the music played so loudly at the bar before. Even with the sound cushion of my partial seclusion, the amplitude of the music feels like it’s battering my eardrums.
3: Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.
Flocks of girls occasionally clomp unevenly past my window, one complaining loudly to the others about her heels or her sorority sister or some other bane of her existence. I usually can only hear the women that pass because they speak in higher pitch tones that can be heard over the bass-heavy roar of the music. The men’s voices just become vague, mellow inflections wavering somewhere in the less intelligible levels of the soundscape.
4: Identify and list the sounds closest to you (– you can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).
I literally cannot hear anything inside the coat check. The noise of the party is so all-encompassing that the little sounds of metal coat hangers sliding against the metal of the rod and pen on paper as I tally the ticket stubs are indiscernible. Only once in five hours does the music stop (due to a computer problem), and I can hear the swishing sound of paper money as I bank-face my tips. Even that is almost unnoticeable to me, however, as the ringing in my ears is so strong.
5: Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.
The sound level is remarkably high, to the point of discomfort. I’m always the girl chided for listening to music too loudly through my headphones, yet I can barely handle the sound pressure. The cement floor seems to move with the bassline, as if car bombs are going off outside.
6: Assign a one-word description to the “sound environment”.
“Aggressive”
7: Select and list 3 sounds that are essential to the sound environment. Note: you need to try and figure out what sounds make up this environment and which of those sounds need to be there for the feeling of the environment to stay intact.
The only really pertinent sound is that of the music. Overly loud dance music in a nightclub has such a signature sound – wide, fuzzy, and mind-numbingly percussive. The occasional snippets of shouted conversation as people move from the bathroom to the dance floor can also help build this particular sonic atmosphere.
Journal Entry 6
1- 3/6/13 7:30 P.M. Sitting in Bits, near the front windows
2- Wind, Leaves rustling outside, men’s voices
3- Women laughing, talking, YouTube music video
4- chewing, shifting weight on a chair, bottle cap being screwed on
5- Some pockets of loud noise, such as the laughing, but overall a muted sort of rumbling white noise.
6- Tired
7- Laughing, talking, wind
Field Recording 5
Journal Entry 6
1- March 3, 9:40am, LIRR train from Mineola to Penn
2- High pitched humming in the background due to the heating system at the other end of the car, other train-like mechanisms make soft noises off and on.
3- The sounds of the train moving on track creates a hypnotic lull, an announcement is made regarding the next station and that patrons should watch the gap between the train and the platform, the doors ding and slide open with a groan
4- The person in the seat in front of me coughs occasionally and ruffles the papers of their newspaper; when the doors open, a large gaggle of high school girls with a chaperone, talking and laughing loudly – clearly on a field trip of some kind. They discuss a woman they saw on the train another time who decided to appear in public topless in high pitched voices, talking over each other and finishing each other’s sentences.
5- The sound level and activity begin at a low and are abruptly shifted to a high sound level and activity
6- Interrupted
7- The background humming, the clacking of the train tracks, and before: the shuffling of the newspaper, after: the loud chatter and laughter
Field Recording 5
Identify the location:
In the car with a few of my friends (if your volume is up, you might want to turn it down, because my friends are loud).
Identify the sounds:
I started the recording after they were belting out the verses, during the guitar break. They were joking about singing it and, “being off,” and then started singing again. In the beginning of the recording you can hear one of my friends keys jangling as she claps her hands. You can hear me laughing as they sing, and you can hear them laughing as well. One of them starts to sing the guitar part at one point. At the end, you can hear all of us laughing as the song ends and the radio announcer comes back on.
I like this recording because I feel like you can hear the smiles on everyone’s faces, and tell no one is trying to impress anyone else. It’s just three girls being themselves and having fun.
Journal Entry 6
1- Date/Time/Location.
3.6.13/midday/Au Bon Pain
2- Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.
The thumping of speakers playing a poppy, overplayed tune, people chattering
3- Identify and list the sounds at medium range from you.
Someone dropping silverware, people speaking, someone laughing loudly
4- Identify and list the sounds closest to you.
A chair scraping against the floor as someone pushes away from the table, a girl speaking loudly, braggingly about her grades in a glass, a boy talking to a girl about someone.
5- Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.
Highly active–loud.
6- Assign a one word description to the “sound environment”.
Clamorous.
7- Select and list 3 sounds which are essential to the sound environment.
The pop tune, laughter, people speaking
Field Recording #5
Location: Outside of Bits & Bytes while it was snowing
Sounds: Droplets of snow/rain mix falling into puddles, some higher or lower in pitch than others, sound of my footsteps in the snow
I saw it snowing outside after rehearsal, and I wondered, “Does snow have a sound?” I mean it seemed pretty easy to answer considering you don’t really hear snow falling, but there are tiny detail sounds such as the snow hitting puddles and how people’s footsteps sound different in the snow that I found were worth recording because they might be able to help differentiate snowy weather from other types of weather.