Noises Off

Heard an interesting Crowd Science podcast about noise today. They explored the whole idea of  the word, which clearly has pejorative overtones. There are sounds, which are neutral. Then there is noise, which is unwanted.

I am interested because my attitude to sound has changed over the years. I am obviously deafer than I once was. Those familiar sounds, such as close family members talking, are easy to miss. I often fail to grasp the first few words of a sentence and have to ask for a repeat. It doesn't help that I have a life-partner who talks to herself pretty much constantly and so I tune that out then discover, from time to time, that it would have been wiser to have been listening.

Aged seventeen and eighteen I had music on almost constantly. I did history at A Level and a coursework essay could be endured with five sides of LP. About 100 minutes for 500 words.

But today I am far more likely to prefer silence whilst reading or writing. Music accompanies cooking or ironing. My parents were kind enough to endure piano practice, something I played forward with a son learning guitar. Chase the mistake anyone? I have music or spoken word on in the car when I drive but usually turn the radio off when trying to locate a new destination.

I grew up near the centre of a city. There was a background hum that never went away. The comforting, familiar sounds of home included Birmingham University Clock every quarter of an hour, and on the hour throughout the night.

On the Crowd Science programme they interviewed people in one of India's largest cities often dubbed the noisiest place on earth. Drivers in Chennai sound their horn as a matter of course for very minor reasons. A family who lived ten feet from a busy railway line explained that house-guests never sleep. 'But after four months you hardly notice it.'

In downtown New York everything has to become louder to drown the noise of cars. One expert said 'Make the cars quieter and everything follows.'

But it isn't as easy as that. Electric cars could be perfectly silent but pedestrians are used to having their ears as an early-warning system. Electric cars have to come equipped with some noise, to reassure drivers and warn the jay-walker.

You see we don't like silence as much as we think we do. We like sounds. Your bank's cash dispenser doesn't need to make a noise as your money rolls out, but we like it to. Equally deceptive is the software that makes a shutter sound on a digital camera. Totally unnecessary. But we are now self-programmed to respond. We like those clicks and whirrs. Most of you, if you have a printer in your house, will know when it is making the right noises pre-job.  It is a little dance of preparedness. I am doing what you expect me to do, it tells you.

When I first moved into my current home, a modern dwelling, I was weirded out by all its noises. But the clicks of those expansion joints as the sun comes round is a good thing. At half past two on a spring afternoon our conservatory wakes up. It is a cracking sound telling me everything is working as it should be.

We all get used to the sound of our home's heating system. Not noise.

I rejoiced at the arrival of quiet carriages on trains. Pretty soon I realised that I was more maddened by rule-breakers in those than the noise in the others.

I had an interesting discussion over the weekend  about sound quality on vinyl music. Is the presence of surface noise or left-over studio sounds an imperfection or part of the reality of construction? And do you tend to listen for the imperfections or to the tune? A member of my family is a musician whose main instrument is computer. No extra noises there. The music is good but it is a monocultural landscape without hedge or ditch. All sound and no noise. It was interesting the way someone such as Burial introduced industrial and surface noise sounds to his music to make dubstep. Improved by imperfection.

How do you take your noise? One bump or two?