Ever since moving to Melbourne, I haven’t been listening to my own music much while I commute around the city, which is very unlike me. Back home in Singapore, usually I’ll have my earphones on with my iPod playing rock tunes while I’m travelling on the public transport. But here, I would go through a day without even playing a single song while I’m moving from one place to another. First of all, I would tend to feel uneasy having my sense of hearing of my surrounding being blocked out with loud rock music in a foreign land. Secondly, it is always intriguing to hear the different languages, accents and conversations that take place all around. Being in a cosmopolitan city, you are bound to be exposed to many different languages, some familiar, some not so, but you will always tend to lookout for the more familiar ones, especially those that might remind you of home. That’s how I identify someone that’s from Singapore or Malaysia even before we speak or shake hands.

Another group of sounds would be what makes the city, a city. One thing I found really iconic to Melbourne was the tram sounds. The bell just before the tram moves off from a station or warning pedestrians to keep clear of the track while the tram is approaching. It is just so unique to Melbourne to hear that sound, to the extend where I think it could be one of the main “instrument” that makes the voice of Melbourne. You won’t hear that iconic sound in Sydney or Brisbane or even in Singapore. On the other end of the spectrum, while I’m on tram sounds, I really really loathe the sound it makes while it attempts to come to a halt. Majority of the time, it is silent when the tram operator puts on the breaks to stop the tram or slow down, but on some particular old ones, you can really hear the metal with metal grinding and screeching and it is just a nasty sound that makes the hair at the back of your neck stand. I know there is nothing much the tram operator can do, and all the more he would need to stop the tram in order to avoid accidents and to pick up as well as to alight passengers, I can’t really blame them for causing the loud piercing noise, but I should do hope they service their trams.

Living in the city exposes myself to the traffic noises of the vehicles that travels in and out, and around the city. I can never go through a day without hearing the waling of sirens, be it ambulance, police, or the fire engine. Particularly on Friday nights, the sirens are more prominent, which I think is made unique to the city as well. Coming from an island city state, and my home back in Singapore is just right beside a fire station, I have been trained well to disregard the loud sirens easily. Lucky me.

So just by not having my earphones on, blasting rock music into my ear canals, it has opened up another form of soundtrack to me that I never knew existed until after I sat down to think about the soundtrack that runs behind my daily commute around the city. Those that I have mentioned are just a few of the many “instruments” that are responsible in making the soundtrack a city soundtrack. There are more components to it like car honks, people talking, crowd noise from the pub, more people talking, loud car exhaust from a straight pipe, and more… The list just goes on and on…