Noticing sound, and honing in on only one specific sense creates a completely different way of breaking down what is around us and piecing it back together (if that makes sense) with different meaning. To begin with, I noticed the obvious sounds, trying not to judge where they came from or how interesting they were; they were mostly internal such as breathing or digestion, and then they moved outwards to being close by, such as pens clicking or classmates typing. The sounds I began to notice then became distant such as the sound of traffic or banging above the classroom. Throughout the process of noticing sound, I began to hear more than I did when I started and began to become more aware of subtle sounds I didn’t notice before, and how I identified what the sounds were without being able to see the source. Struggling to find any words to describe sound without revealing exactly what it is I’m describing, I compiled a list of descriptive words for sound to help explain some of what I noticed around me.

There was surprisingly a huge difference between listening with my own ears and then listening back to recorded sound. During our sound recording exercise, I listened in on conversations people were having and loud dings and clicks I could hear that I knew would be interesting to talk about after I recorded the piece. What I then noticed after listening to it back, is that I’m not filtering out different noises like I do when I’m physically in a space, but I’m listening to every single sound recorded as a whole layered soundscape and able to absorb everything that’s going on so I can then break it down into different levels of sound; from less noticeable to louder and more obvious noise.

It was curious to me in these recordings that I could very confidently identify the source of different sounds, and even those I couldn’t I still had a good idea of what materials or size of objects were involved; e.g. hollow furniture or coins dropping on a surface.