Tag Archives: Footsteps

Sound Journal 1 – The Endless Creaking
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1. 1/29/2014, 1:08 AM, Home on Front St.

2. Identify the sounds farthest from you: Four housemates upstairs, their muffled voices above my ceiling. They laugh and scream with excitement, not a care in the world. I hear very faint music as well, so faint, in fact, I’m not quite sure what it is. The water in the sink upstairs goes on occasionally and reminds me our water pressure is harsh when the facet is turned up high and tonight, it seems to roar like thunder.

3. Identify the sounds at medium range: As the housemates joke around and enjoy themselves, I hear the sounds of a loud, squishy mattress, on a rickety, old hardwood floor. The floor creaks beneath them every time they jump off the bed and walk down the hall to another room, and I can hear it ALL from my room down below.

4. Identify the sounds closest to you: The vaguely rhythmic clicking of the radiators in my room as the heat attempts to warm this frigid night. Someone is in the bathroom outside my room. The water from the faucet is much softer and I hear the opening and closing of the medicine cabinet.

5. General sound level and activity: It feels rather chaotic in the house tonight. It seems I’m the only person with homework. The feeling seems to intensify with every creaky footstep, every rustle in the bed above my head, every muffled laugh. Even the heater in my room seems to tease me by assuring me I’ll get no silence tonight. While most of the sounds are muffled through the ceiling and the walls, they are all too familiar and are indicative of an active, loud house of college students. The sound of every footstep on the old hardwood is like nails on a chalkboard. The worst.

6. One word to describe the sound environment: Distracting.

7. 3 essentials sounds to the sound environment: The creaking hardwood above me, the constant clicking of the radiator in my room, the near constant rustling, tossing in the bed in the room above me.

Journal Entry 10
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1- Wednesday April 10, around 7:30pm (or whenever it began to downpour), intramural fields

2- Girls screaming and shouting to each other, scrambling to the cars; another car drives by humming through the rain

3- Thunder rolls loudly and rain hits the metal face of the scoreboard for the softball field.

4- Rain pours down all around and on me, pitter-pattering, slapping and clapping against the ground; my cleats crunch on the ground

5- The sound activity is low, but the sound level is a medium, spiking high with each crack of thunder

6- Calming

7- Rain, footsteps, thunder

 

Journal Entry 9
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1- Thursday April 4, 10pm, on the sidewalk near Popeye’s on Hempstead Tpke

2- Down the road, I can vaguely hear the thumping bass of the club nearby. Someone far away honks their horn.

3- The door into Popeye’s opens, momentarily allowing the chatter of the half-full restaurant to be heard on the street. The noise becomes muffled as the door closes with a small whoosh of air. There is a group of people walking on the sidewalk coming towards us. I can hear their footsteps echoing slightly on the concrete and a pair of girls is murmuring to eachother, but other than that, the group is silent.

4- Cars on the turnpike drive by quickly, sending gusts of air our way. The girls I am with chatter excitedly, someone is playing “I’m sexy and I know it” from their phone and the music is slightly tinny. Someone mentions they want to get some Popeye’s before continuing down the road, and this idea is met with a wave of approval.

5- The general sound level is at a medium high, especially due to the loud cars driving by, though the sound activity is closer to a medium low.

6- Pleasant

7- cars driving by, the chatter of the girls around me, and the song playing on the phone

Field Recording #4
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Listen to

Location: Social Sports Kitchen — February 17, 2013, 6:33 pm

Sounds Heard: I am taking a lap around the interior of the restaurant/sports bar in which I work, starting first in the dining room, in which the raucous voices of the men who decided to stay and get drunk after the Hofstra Wrestling Team’s Poker Tournament can be heard cheering and carrying on loudly.  About halfway through the sound bite, my shoes can be heard on the wooden floor, as the noise dies down abruptly with my transition into the kitchen (the door of which can be heard).  I make my way past Elvis, the bar back, (apologizing for getting in his way) as a kitchen staff member moves a rack of clean silverware.  I complete my loop by pushing through a swinging door and reentering the main room of the bar, at which point the inebriated patrons can be heard once again.

Field Recording 3
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Listen to

 

Main Unispan

I originally took this clip to try to capture the way the footsteps echoed across the unispan in adjunct to the passing conversation. I was standing still near the middle of the unispan when a blind student bumped into me. I think this is what makes the clip especially interesting because my interaction created an unplanned accent to the field recording.