Listening Exercise
The sounds that I heard in the {add name of park} Park made the park seem bigger than it actually is. There was no ambience in the sounds I heard, so the foreground and the background sounds were strongly contrasting with one another, which induced an auditory illusion. The sounds of children playing and yelling nearby were loud enough to be heard at the foreground, while the sounds were at such a low-tone level that I could only hear them in the background. The pitch of the sounds in the park, especially the voices of the children who were yelling very loudly, was relatively high, while the frequency of the other sounds, especially the traffic outside, that I could hear throughout the learning experience was relatively low. This made the park seem rather empty and large. One of the major components of timbre is that the children are yelling rather than whispering and playing silently, and I have similarly loud kids playing around in my neighborhood as well, so it kind of reminds of them. The sounds the children are making are only getting louder, almost reaching the peak level, and since they are so excitedly talking and yelling at each other, the sounds have a fast attack. As mentioned, the park is indeed quite large and the area from where I am listening is unconfined, so there is very little decay in the sounds the children are making and the sounds barely reverberate. Between the attack and decay, the internal dynamics of the sounds can be heard in the form of variations in their voices, as they switch from yelling to talking, laughing, even going silent momentarily, as they play, then they again start talking or yelling. The duration of the sounds coming from the children was relatively longer than all the other sounds that could be heard within the park, since they played for quite some time. Though it is tricky to describe the rhythm of the sounds the children are making, the sounds have a heavy rhythmic quality almost like rock music. Ironically, sounds the excited children are making have a fast tempo, which is referred to as ”Allegro,” which means cheerful or lively in Italian.
6 Word Story
“Large and empty, yet so loud”
Works Cited
