Sound Mapping

My good friend Doug reminded me in his comment the other day of the work of the composer John Cage. That triggered the memory of an exercise another musician who knew Cage, John Barlow, once taught me: sound mapping. It’s quite simple. Take a piece of paper and go to some location For a set period of time, say…10 minutes, makes notes on the paper of all that you hear.  Use a timer.

I’m just in from teaching the exercise to five high school students.  While it always seems like going out on a limb, their responses to the time mirrored my own. “Serenity.” “Relaxed, but with a focused attention.” When I asked about their favorite sound, three mentioned the fountain in the pond nearby, another the birds, and the other the flapping of the flag.  Myself, there was an exquisite moment where the metal clip on the rope that holds the flag made one solitary gong sound as it hit the metal flagpole.

Then there’s the complexity of trying to map the time experience of the exercise. I tend to let them each figure that out, or not, for themselves.

The point is to become aware of the stream of sounds our ears are always capturing, but our minds are usually filtering out.  Just as we can appreciate the landscape, we can learn to witness the soundscape.  I grabbed this piece of audio just after we finished up so you could get a taste of what we were hearing.  Enjoy…