Hofstra Drama 20 – Sound for the Theatre

1. 4/12/2016, 2:54pm, My room
2. Farthest: People walking and talking in the hallway
3. Medium: Cars driving past my window, a motorcycle revving the engine as it drives by, the shower running
4. Closest: music from my computer, whirring from the heater, my own typing
5. Level: Low
6. One word: Mellow
7. 3 sounds: motorcycle revving, shower running, music

1. 3/17/16, 9:20am, basement
2. Farthest sounds: cars outside, wind chime, wind
3. Medium sounds: shower running, music playing
4. Closest sounds: washer running
5. Sound level: medium
6. Sound description: calm
7. important sounds: wind chime, shower, washing machine

Location: The bathroom

Sounds: Shower running, shower being turned off, curtain opening

When/Where: Wednesday, February 17th; bathroom on my floor

Sounds heard: closing of the shower curtain, shower turning on, water running down the drain

Location: bathroom

Sounds Heard: shower running

Location: Enterprise, 6th floor

Sounds Heard: You can hear the sounds of my resident playing the electric guitar in his room, the sounds of my residents harmonizing and singing in the bathroom and then having  a conversation. You can hear the shower running in the background of them. Whether or not they were singing in the shower is unknown and I wasn’t about to find out.

1- Monday, March 24, 2014, 9:43pm, Enterprise, 6th floor

2- Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.

Furthest away from me, I can hear the sounds of some of my residents playing the electric guitar as well as the sound of the shower in the boys bathroom.

3- Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.

At medium range from me, I can hear the voices of my residents as they sing in the bathroom and proceed to hold a conversation. (Yes, I did ask their permission to use this sound clip.)

4- Identify and list the sounds closest to you (You can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).

Closest to me, I can hear the sound of my breathing as I listen to their voices and distract myself from the mountains of homework I have to do.

5- Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.

The general sound level is that of a typical Monday night on my floor. Everyone is busy doing something, but it is soft and relaxed. Everyone is getting used to being back from break and just enjoying being back on campus.

6- Assign a one word description to the “sound environment”.

Relaxed

7- Select and list 3 sounds which 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.

Three sounds that are essential to the sound environment are the sound of the shower in the background, my residents harmonizing and proceeding to have a conversation, and the residents playing the electric guitar in their room.

1- DATE-TIME-LOCATION of the sound environment
>2.21.2014
>1:40 A.M.
>Nassau Room 607A

2- Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.
>The shower running in the background. The water sputters every 8-10 seconds. There’s a nice mixture of the soft tapping of the individual droplets and the sloshing splashes of the water that hits the body and falls to the ground.
>My roommate singing that one Avicii song about brothers or something.
>That one Avicii song about brothers or something is playing very very softly, probably because he doesn’t wanna wake the neighbors.

3- Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.
>The soft blip-blips of my PC as I sit across the room from it, ignoring the continuous notifications on my game.
>The “whirr” of my PC’s fan, desperately trying to cool a machine that’s put in way too many hours a day.
>The news that’s on in the next room over, something about the olympics.

4- Identify and list the sounds closest to you (You can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).
>My two suitemates playing a very intense online game, the sounds are a mixture of grunts, shouts, and the occasional profane exclamations of how “done they are with this motherf**kin’ game.”
>The crashes, explosions, slicing, clashing of metal, lion-like roars, and the occasional “An ally has been slain” from the games they are playing.
>My laptop making ‘boo-dwee’ tones as facebook notifications roll in in the group chat.

5- Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.
>The sound level is on the very uncomfortable border between noisy and loud.
>The amount of activity is relatively high, or seemingly so with all the noise coming from the computers.

6- Assign a one word description to the “sound environment”.
>Intense.

7- Select and list 3 sounds which 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 noises from the game.
>My suitemates shouting.
>The notifications from my facebook.

1.Thursday 1/30/14 6:45pm. 614B Portsmouth House, Colonial Square.

2. Boys playing soccer in the hallway.

Cars on the street behind C-Square.

3. Suitemate humming as she gets ready to go out.

Shower head running.

Lana Del Rey playing somewhere next door.

4. Heater blowing out air.

5. Generally calm, save for soccer balls slamming into the walls that are jarring and alarming.

6.  Dense

7. Soccer ball hitting the wall outside

Humming

Lana playing in background.

1:  Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 3:14 am, Alliance Hall, 7^th Floor Bathroom

2:  Identify and list the sounds farthest away from you.

Inside the shower, water falls steadily in thin, high-pressure streams onto an assemblage of plastic, toiletry bottles, of which the varying degrees of emptiness create an array of tonalities.  The water also drums on the edge of a plastic shower curtain, creating the full, soft sound of rain on wide-leafed flora – the sort of sound one hears on a recording of a lush rainforest, meant to work as a relaxation/sleep aid.

3:  Identify and list the sounds at a medium range from you.

A girl sits in a stall on the other side of the bathroom, talking on the phone in a low yet urgent voice.  Each syllable, no matter how hushed, ricochets off the smooth, Formica countertops and the hundreds of small tiles, echoing onto the start of the next syllable and garbling her words so that only the vague sounds of pleading and apologizing can be discerned.  The conversation has the intimate, shameful tone of a confession to a romantic partner, and she seems to have sought relative privacy in the bathroom at 3:00 am, presumably to not disturb her sleeping roommate.  The sound of me showering has made her self-conscious, and she murmurs sheepishly for the better part of my shower.

4: Identify and list the sounds closest to you (– you can include internal sounds if noticed or relevant).

Outside the bathroom, a resident can be heard strumming his guitar inside his single room.  However robust the sound may be within the room itself, when emanating through the wood of the bathroom door and the curtain of water, the notes sound eerie and thin.  Compounding this effect is the slow, lilting pace at which the player strums as he tries to find his way through the ill-remembered chords.

5: Describe the general sound level and amount of sound activity.

The sound level is somewhat low, in keeping with the time of night and the solitary nature of the various, simultaneous activities, from my ablutions to the girl’s chagrinned confessions to the boy’s meandering guitar practice.

6: Assign a one-word description to the “sound environment”.

“Intimate”

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.

All three levels of sound work well together, however disparate the individual sounds may seem in character.  Each is the product of a private activity, carried out alone in the latest hours of the night, and thus creates a sound suiting one such mood.  As a result, the tone of each sound fits nicely within the theme of the collective.