Part 1
The first of Schafer’s concepts that I would like to discuss is how man made sound, that which is found in urban areas affects human life, and the life of the environment that the urban area exists in. Schafer talks about how when people who lived in rural areas migrated to the big cities to find work during the industrial revolution, the working conditions that they were used to back home were much different from the new long work days and factories that were able to run all day long (Schafer 72). This is something that I haven’t considered before. Living in a city for my whole life, no matter the time of day, there is always light in the streets and work can always be done whereas before the industrial revolution, when the sun went down, the work would stop and it would be time to rest. I can only imagine the toll this change took on the workers.
Later on, Schafer discusses how by the 1900s, people had become accustomed to the new soundscape they lived in, the industrial sounds, merging with nature (Schafer 74). I think that by now in major urban areas, there are very rarely sounds of nature beyond the odd bird chirp. The sound of public transit and the immense traffic that uses the city’s streets are so overpowering that it is all that can be heard. I find that when I do have the opportunity to travel anywhere beyond the city’s limits, my mood improves very quickly as my ears finally have the opportunity to rest, and then listen.
The third concept worth noting is the connection between noise and our health. According to Schafer, excessive noise has been known to cause deafness since 1831 (Schafer 75) and goes on to mention how hearing loss prevention in the work place was only seriously considered in most countries in 1970 (Schafer 76). As discussed in class, people are reluctant to protect their hearing. Few people that I know wear hearing protection when going to concerts and fewer wore hearing protection at the auto garage I worked in. Perhaps it is because hearing is less precise than vision and it is harder to quantify how much of it is damaged when we go to concerts and such, but regardless it is just as important as our other senses and is something that cannot be fixed to the same degree as vision with glasses. It seems the trend of people ignoring hearing damage has existed for a long time according to this chapter.
Part 2
A sound (or sounds) that is above you: Light Aircraft overflying the city.
A sound (or sounds) that is below you: The rumble of heavy traffic.
A sound (or sounds) that moves from left to right (and/or right to left): Cars passing by and people’s footsteps.
A sound (or sounds) that has a repetitive rhythm: People’s footsteps
The loudest sound you heard: Emergency vehicle sirens
The quietest sound you heard: Zipper from someone’s backpack
A sound (or sounds) that was present the whole time you were listening: Building ventilation system exhaust
A sound (or sounds) that happened only once: Small aircraft overflying the city
A sound (or sounds) that started off loud and got quieter (and/or vice-versa): Emergency vehicle siren
The most pleasant sound you heard. Why? Bird chirping. Because it was one of the few sounds that weren’t man made throughout the exercise.
The most unpleasant sound you heard. Why? Gravel Truck passing by. Because of where I live I hear traffic 24/7 and large trucks tend to be the loudest.
- Since I did this exercise outside as opposed to the first time where I did it inside the RCC, I discovered that there was much more depth to the sounds that I was hearing. By this I mean that the sounds were augmented much more due to their proximity to me. For example, someone walking at the furthest end of the RCC can only bounce off so many walls in the short time it takes to reach my ears whereas the sound of the light aircraft I heard fly over my head at 2000 feet was able to travel a much farther distance resulting in only a portion of its original frequencies to possess the energy to reach the ground and because of its volume, bounced off of every surface, building, car etc. around me before reaching my ears. Therefor the change in what I heard versus the sound at the origin was much larger than anything I heard while sitting inside of the RCC. Because there were people walking by just like the first exercise, I was also hearing very direct sounds, so the depth of the soundscape was much greater during the second exercise.
- I found that the vast majority of my listening was causal. I would hear something, identify it and write it down, I guess I was so focused on the task to identify the sounds that I heard that I neglected to do much semantic or reduced listening (Chion 25-30). I did my most semantic listening when I heard people’s conversation because the time it takes to identify speech as coming from a human is almost negligible and we immediately listen for meaning. I did do some reduced listening when I heard the plane fly over, listening for the quality of the sound, how much of which frequencies were present.
- The concept I would like to relate is noise and health. As discussed in part one, being shrouded in the noise of a city can be damaging to our hearing Schafer 75). While sitting outside, I heard many people having to shout their conversations because of their proximity to traffic. Not only can this volume be damaging to our ears but the energy required to constantly converse at a volume to compete with the sounds of construction can be an exhausting task. Sometimes I can hear and feel the strain in my own voice after talking with someone for an extended period of time downtown.
Works Cited
Chion, Michel. Audio Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 25-30
Schafer, R. Murray (1977, 1994) The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred Knopf/Randan House. Pp. 71-99
Sound Media 