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I chose to listen in the entrance tunnel to my apartment complex in Ithaca. This setting possessed a certain liminal quality to it. The first thing that I noticed when walking in was the general ambience amplified by the archway’s walls. Bird song, wind, and the sound of heaters were broken up by the cars traveling up and down the hill. I felt I could hear the noise of the upcoming cars earlier than I would’ve normally, and the Doppler effect presented itself powerfully every time. People occasionally walked through, whispering incoherently to one another and never staying too long.

(I thought I took a picture last night when I did this activity, but I couldn’t find it in my camera roll.)

I am standing on Ho Plaza, just below McGraw tower. The main sound I hear is some sort of pitched drone, likely noise emitting from a building. Past that, I can hear cars driving far below. They sound like sweeps of white noise, and scatter in every direction. I can hear footsteps behind me, passing from my right ear to my left. Some faint conversation can be heard in front of me and to my right.

Sitting in my room, I notice the whirring of the refrigerator, not loud but amidst the silence it is definitely the most standout sound. I listen carefully and I hear the heater start up with a hum, much softer than the fridge but almost complementary in tone. As I fidget around my seat creaks a bit and my clothes shift around. A muted squeak happens somewhere in the distance, and I figure it must be the door to my building as people rush in from the cold. The fridge stops humming and I’m just left alone in near silence, with the only sound being the nearly imperceptible blowing of my computer’s fans.

I did my listening assignment in Barton Hall. The most prevalent noise was the pipes and the fans. Its just a constant hum noise that muffles almost everything. Everything seems muffled and echoey. Its a big building and sounds bounce around everywhere. There’s a track coach talking with an athlete and you can hear their voices but no words. And only part of what they are saying is audible, but when you can hear it it echoes. Someone walked in to the door and the door shut and echoed through the whole building. Because of the space, all of the quiet sounds are muffled in the white noise and all of the loud sounds echo. Everything gets lost in the hum.

I decided to stop and listen to my current soundscape in the midst of my afternoon walk in Logan Square, a neighborhood in Chicago. Because I decided to listen to a soundscape in the middle of a street,  the most prominent sound I heard was the hum of the cars passing by.  While I’d usually perceive this as noise pollution, I tried to take a deeper listen into the intricacies of the car sounds. I heard the whooshing noise of the air when cars drove by very fast and the slushing of the snow being crushed by cars parking up and down the street. The street wasn’t super populated so I was able to very clearly hear the conversations of people who passed by. I made out small segments of conversation between a group of young women who had just grabbed coffee. Their chatter was light, and they were wearing healed boots that made a clacking sound against the pavement. Next, a mother walked by carrying her baby who seemed to be just a few months old. She was making gentle cooing noises in order to soothe her child. I loved listening to this soundscape because there was nothing sonically constant even though I had been standing in the same place, which kept me very interested.

Standing on the bridge of Cascadilla Creek, I am surrounded by the serenity of the gorge. I hear my boots scuffling on the snow as I walk across the bridge. As the water whistles, its echo fills my ears. Closing my eyes, I am transported to a beach, listening to the sounds of the ocean waves. A slight buzzing above me becomes louder – a truck driving on the nearby road. The birds start cooing. I hear the crackling of icicles on the branches of the leafless trees. As time passes, these sounds converge into one harmonious sequence. The eeriness of its unity surprisingly puts me at ease.

I’m sitting in the basement of the house I grew up in. This is where my office space is; I do all my work from a table with my computer on it where I’m surrounded by instruments. It’s generally pretty quiet down here as not much noise from outside the house can be heard from where I am, and it’s a quiet suburban neighborhood. But if I pay really close attention, behind me I can hear the aery hum of the space heater I’ve turned. From the walls, I hear the vibrations of the TV upstairs- my parents like to always have the news on, no matter how depressing it gets. Every so often, I can also hear water slosh down the plumbing from upstairs and a mysterious creak from an unknown source in the ceiling. It’s a quiet house between the three of us, but it’s these familiar sounds that make it home.

The combination of 3℉ weather and plenty of snow resulted in a very silent night outside my apartment, but also helped the subtle sounds become more clear. I heard the faint hum of the streetlights, as well as a louder hum that sounded like a generator coming from a nearby house. Faint voices from other houses were also heard, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. A white Jeep passed by me as I was taking notes, the sound of its tires running over patches of snow even from a far distance overpowered all other noises around me.

A sunny afternoon, I’m sitting on my bed and facing the window. It is really loud here. On my left ear, I hear my mom washing dishes in the kitchen from the door, the sound of tap water, the clean collision sounds of dishes, then my mom’s phone rings and she stops the water and dishes and starts to talk. Then on my right ear, the sound of the computer fan has been annoyed me since this early morning. It’s a consistent white noise sound, and because of how consistent it is, even if it is quite quiet, my right ear starts to hurt. Then there are sounds coming from the outside of the window. The window is fully closed, but it doesn’t block the noises at all. I live in the 10th floor, I can hear planes flying by on top from left to right in every 2 to 10 minutes, sometimes there would be pitches that I can recognize; I also hear beeping from cars, someone yelling on the street, then the alarm sounds from fire trucks. At the end I have to change my sitting position because the computer fan sound on the right hurt my right hear and starts to give me an headache. I turn to face the computer now and my right ear feels a great relief.  A long-time consistent sound is better to stay in the center so that both ears get balanced “listening loads”.