Blog 12

When thinking about the context of public and private sounds, we must first think about where and when in our soundscape we hear and observe these sounds. The private sounds we hear within our soundscapes can be associated with what we tend to hear individually within our headphones or within specific areas of our soundscapes. Public sounds are what sounds that the environment, the city, or the town you live in produce naturally. When seeing how these sounds sensitize us within the soundscape, we can focus on which parts of our soundscapes we are exposed to more often. Those who are primarily focused on private sounds will not be able to hear and experience every aspect of the sounds that arise in and around their environments caused by the “point of view of the self” at specific times of the day (Hosokowa 108). What we hear individually can be associated with how that individual has been sensitized to their soundscape. Both public and private sounds can cause us to hear specific sounds that may not be heard at different times of day. Personally when I listen to my own soundscape it is very surprising to me how it tends to change within the matter of hours. The private sounds I hear when I’m alone and nobody else is out are much different from the public sounds that I hear from the same location at specific times of day. The use of personalized listening here has shown me how big a role being alone plays in what I hear versus the effects of what I can hear when many others surround me. These two concepts can cause much of what you heard alone to be lost or drowned out by human interactions heard in public sounds.

Public and private sounds can have completely different effects on our soundscape depending on how in tune we are with the sounds around us. For example, people who live in very large cities are bombarded by noises all the time so they become less in tune with smaller noises, however people who live in more rural areas are more likely to pick up on some of the smaller sounds if they were to visit a large city and visa versa. There are also some instances in which seemingly public sounds become private sounds. This is the case in Shuhei Hoosokawa’s “The Walkman Effect”. Before the creation of the Walkman in the 80s, all music was part of the shared public soundscape of society. However after this technology was introduced, there was also an invention of a possible private soundscape available for individuals, specifically private music. Whether the soundscape is public or private is also based on whether you are observing the soundscape or enjoying the soundscape. From the outside, the soundscape enjoyed when listening to a Walkman would be considered private silence since they do not know what the listener is listening to.

 

Since learning about soundscapes, I have found myself paying more attention to some of the keynote sounds in my acoustic environment. I have always been in tune to some of the less noticeable noises when I listen to music and I have been carrying that habit over to other parts of my life even when I am just walking around campus. I have started to even notice the noises that the squirrels make to each other when they chase each other around the campus.

The effects public and private sound has on a person’s soundscape is determined by how sensitized they are to it. For instance, a pedestrian who has lived their whole lives in New York City has been exposed to a plethora of noises that do not bother them because they have adapted to them. Using R. Murray Schafer’s themes to distinguish soundscapes, the sounds of New York City do not bother a civilian because they are used to the sounds of that sound mark. In conjunction to this, Hosokawa demonstrates how civilians who live in the city are able to disregard the public sounds due to their low degree of sensitivity. To illustrate, “Some people pass by, others stop. As in a concert hall, the participants are divided into two groups… linked together because both groups share their inner and outer time, “tuning each other” (Hosokawa 105). Hosokawa uses this example in his text to demonstrate musica mobilis, the voluntarily or involuntarily movement of music from one source. However, Hosokawa also presents a polar perspective of how one can block the musica mobilis and be in control of their own soundscape. For instance, Hosokawa discusses the power technological instruments can give to the listener. As Hosokawa states, “The listener seems to cut the auditory contact with the outer world where he really: seeking the perfection of his ‘individual zone of listening…” (106). For someone who has a high degree of sensitivity to public sounds, technological instruments allow them to tune in to their private music. Depending on the person, their private music can be considered as private silence if they view public music as noise pollution. The significance musica mobilis has on everybody’s soundscape is extremely surprising to me because I had no idea certain people have strong preferences for private sounds. Also, it is really interesting to see how easily one can escape from a public soundscape into their desired one through modern day technology.

It is difficult to draw a line between public and private sounds because no sound can be one or the other all the time. The nature of sound is that it permeates its surrounding area and often cannot be stopped from incorporating people or things. Therefore, a sound may be private in one moment (ex: the sound of your own breathing) but then as long as one person draws near enough to hear it the sound becomes public. Walkmans, iPods, and smartphones allow people to choose the music they listen to and tune out the world around them. This seems to be the most common idea of private music. Hosokawa discusses three kinds of public music. He focuses specifically on urban life. One type is the music that seems to drown into the overall sounds of a city environment. The second is the street musicians who have the power to unite a group of people that are caught in the space reached by the music. The third kind is someone who is choosing the music based on what he or she wants to hear but is still playing it out loud so that others can hear as well.

 

Since reading the different theorist for this unit, I have found myself paying more attention to the keynote sounds in my environment. I have tried to identify the sounds around me that have become so routine, I have forgotten they were there. I also have found myself analyzing the difference in how I view the world with my headphones in vs. with my headphones out. I find that with my headphones in I am focused on various other things and not only tuning out the acoustic environment around me but also the visual/physical environment around me.

Even in the 19th century, the human race had become so sensitized to the soundscape that members of London’s upper middle class felt it necessary to eradicate unnecessary street music from the busy London streets. So transfixed the world was with this phenomenon that Times even posted articles and complaints concerning these “organ nuisances”. Men such as Leech, Charles Dickens, Marcus Stone, William Powell Frith and Thomas Carlyle had taken issue with the unwanted cacophony of sound coming in from their open windows. Sound, especially if it was as loud as many Londoners of that time depicted, travels very far, so what makes Leech and other men like him powerful enough to dictate the sound that can and cannot be played within the specific sound radius they deem pleasant enough? How can we decide what sounds are public and what sounds are private if some of the sounds being discussed come from a more open area where everyone can be heard fairly easily? It is one thing to deem private sounds sounds made in the comfort of one’s own home, but what gives one the authority to deem sounds coming in from the outside (from a propped open window, no less!) more important than sounds coming from inside the house?

There can be private sounds, however. First Walkmans and now much smaller and more technologically advanced MP3-players and smartphones help keep sound private when headphones are plugged in. if your windows are closed, you might be able to hear a lot less of the streets hustle and bustle instead of having to seclude yourself in your very expensive, custom made noise-eradicating room/attic.

Sounds can be both public and private, but one must be very careful when labelling them or risk overstepping sound boundaries and losing more sound-based relationships.

When I was in the fourth grade, I put in my headphones and I never took them out again. Since that day, I have been addicted to my private music. Whether I was going shopping with my mom, on a car ride to a friend’s house or I had five minutes between classes, there was one constant: I was listening to music. I valued this greatly, being able to tune out everything going on around me made the world easier to deal with: I do not like the public sounds, I often feel a sensory overload and become extremely anxious when I am surrounded by a lot of voices, or other noises. This environment, however, is different than the one I left at home, it is not as loud, not as overwhelming and, because I have been inspired by the conversations we have had in class, I have allowed myself to try to experience the world without my headphones. As someone who had eight to nine years separate from the world of public noises, I find that everything sounds new to me. While anyone who hears these sounds day by day would not be able to notice any particular details as they would become desensitized to the sounds they hear constantly–my experience is totally different. I can hear every detail, I can hear wind, I can hear bugs, I can hear birds–I can hear different types of birds–and it all sounds new to me. Surprisingly enough, I have found that I enjoy some of the world’s more organic sounds just as much as I enjoy my music–for example, I like the sound of the crunching of dead leaves so much that I now go out of my way to step on them. Even though I don’t see me separating myself from my music, it is nice to experience these organic sounds as well.