Taiwan Soundscape

Macaulay Library of Cornell Lab of Omithology claims itself as the biggest organisation that collects animal sounds (I wonder if Sound Archive in Britain is competative?). In its website, how sounds are recorded and archived are mentioned. It's worthy of visiting!

Should we have a sound walk in November? It is to exchange our listening experiences. You are welcome to propose a route for walking, no matter it is in the urban or suburb area. Since it is the first time we orgniase it, should we have the walk for no more than 30 min? Are most of you living in Taipei? Men and woman, young and old are all welcome!

O-Yan-Chao-Chao's blog Shien-Chang-Quo-Shen-Yen-Jio-Suo (means 'Live Recording Research Centre' in Chinese) introduces books about field recordings from time to time. It also talks about techniques. Please have a look!

For those who are interested in recording natural sounds, the discussion group in Yahoo-- Natural Recordist should be of help to you! I have added it in the column of [Communities and Organisations].

I was waiting for the Circle Line (London) at the platform.
I heard the rail tracks in front of me vibrating...
The wind started to blow...
It blew a coca cola can and made it rolling on the platform...
The drink was not finished, sounds of rolling were reverberating inside the can...
... PON!! PonPon, PonPon,PonPon... (the body of the train shook forcefully on the rail track)
The train ran out of the tunnel
I marched to the left for a few more steps, chose a position that was near home, be ready to get on the train...

What sounds did you hear when you were returning home today? You are very welcome to write about it and give us a listen!

There are many ways to represent a city, such as altitute, temperature or the tensity of population. Can you imagine how a city is represented through noises? The city of London uses traffic noises to form a map. It enables us to learn how 'noisy' the famous Oxford street is even if we are in Taiwan! However, if you wonder what sounds made the noises, I am afraid that you have to take the plane and make a long trip!

From today's Libertytimes's e-news, I realised that there is profound knowledge in the sounds of watches (in Chinese). I personally cannot bear with the ticking sounds of watches. After buying a watch from Swatch, I suffered from its ticks for a long while. The watches of Swatch make really loud sounds!
In the article, it mentions about 'the bell sounds of Westminster'... Ha-ha, sorry, I have no impression of them despite of my six-year time living in London! I shall go for a good listen soon!
What sounds would you use to describe the existence and passing of time? ^_^

The typhoon LongWang just left Taiwan. Have you be impressed by any sounds caused by the thyphoon? I am now in London and did not experience the typhoon. Hope you can share some experiences with me!^_^
There is a big glass window in my room in Taiwan. Every time when a typhoon came, strong wind and rain hit and shook the glass which caused loud noises. It made me worried about the strength of the glass window and I thus could not sleep well... Now, the more I think about it, for some reason, I start missing home...

Recently I have been watching DVDs of Bae Yong Jing's Winter's Sonata. There are 6 discs in total and each disc contains 4 hours of drama. It is pretty tiring to watch them all. I wonder if you have noticed that there are only 2 songs played in turns in the whole drama. The cost is extremely low! Nevertheless, because only these two songs are playing all the time, my brain has been loaded with the rhythms of the songs after watching 2 discs! Since then, when I wake up, I hunger for watching the next episode... I am basically poisoned! 

The Executive Summary of the 1994 NPS Report to Congress provides the results of a system-wide visitor survey.  15,000
visitors were surveyed during the busiest 2 months of the season at 39 parks across the country.  Approximately 91 per cent of the visitors reported that their reason for the park visit was to enjoy the “natural quiet. (National Park Service.1994)

When you... see something you don't like, you can ask the brain to close eyes to avoid it

But you   listen to some irritating sounds, can you ask the brain to close your ears? 

Posted by Water