Winter Sound

I was thinking about a demonstration of sound editing in films I saw once.  A man wearing a trench coat, a fedora and wingtip shoes was walking along a wet sidewalk.  Leaves lay in loose piles in the gutters, and the colors were of muted tones. The man was looking straight ahead as he walked, and he was moving steadily without deviating to right or left.  His hands were in his pockets.  There was a total absence of sound.

Then, the scene was shown again, but a lilting, sweet song was playing. The mood changed. Here, you thought, was a happy man, perhaps in love, certainly content with life.  It seemed delightful, light and inviting.

The scene played one more time, but this time the sound track was a low, minor-key chord played on cellos and basses with a rising anxious intensity.  Perhaps the man was being followed by a killer or he was angry and violent.  He seemed in imminent danger and dreadfully vulnerable to unseen forces.


I thought about sound today because the day was so gray and color so subdued.  The absence of visual interest shifted my attention to my ears and what they were telling me.  I decided to be "blind" while I walked and thought of the famous ability of people like Ray Charles, Andrea Bocelli and Stevie Wonder to mitigate the loss of vision with wonderfully increased auditory acuity. 

I walked only for a few hundred feet (glancing up to keep my bearings and laughing at my clumsiness) in a rain-soaked environment. Water noises were everywhere.  I thought about the way our minds monitor what we hear, "filing," in a way, the ordinariness of most of them, but still alert for subtle clues that might signal an important change that could be dangerous or interesting to us.  The variety of sounds that indicated the movement of water in the world around me was infinite and virtually indescribable except by a few adjectives we always turn to:  Swish, splash, gurgle, drip, plink, and roar.  Most of the sounds today were tiny and subtle, notable in their infinite variety and exquisite detail, all very surely the sounds made by large and small portions of liquid, moving or being moved. 

I thought about what babies hear in the womb and how the voices and sounds outside, in the room, give them a preliminary introduction to the world to come.  It has been shown that the sound of a beating heart played to a fussy infant will quiet them very quickly.

I listened to the sounds around the pool as I swam later, and knew that visual clues were serving to edit the sounds in my mind.  My arms moving through the water made a very similar sound to that of oar blades pulling through a still lake surface.  If I had been able to focus on listening only to the sound - played in a darkened room for instance - I would probably have been unable to tell what thing was making the gurgling sound.

I remembered the sound of the storm-swept ocean last week and the way the waves sounded as they steamed across the bay:  A variable swishing crescendo that culminated in a booming rumble and then the clatter and crash of rocks rolling up and down the slumped cliff rubble.  The swish was the same as you hear when very fast swimmers race in a pool.  Slower swimmers and slower waves create a different quality of sound, so by just listening to the quality of the noise, you can tell the quality of the swimmer.

I've thought about what perfect pitch might be like for those gifted with it.  I think the cacophony of sounds that are off key must be annoying.  Some musicians have been known to be so intolerant of a poorly tuned piano, or guitar, that they were simply unable to use it.  I don't have perfect pitch, but I have enjoyed good hearing and being able to listen to beautiful sounds; being able to do so has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. 

Today is a visually unlovely one, but the brilliant shadings of noise, even in their tiniest dimension, are everywhere to be heard and appreciated.  At this time of year when the light is low and air cold, tune up your hearing a bit and notice what you're surrounded by.  It's a refreshing alternative that can be very uplifting when sunshine has gone missing for so long.