In our lesson this week, we discussed the relationship between sound and the environment. We spoke in detail about what a field recording is, and how it is defined by its context (eg artistic, archival, etc). We also spoke about the origin of field recording and how it can’t be misrepresented as a discipline that only concerns itself with natural environments and hobbyist recording, its roots in fact tie in deeply to ethno-musicological practices.

In the second half of the lesson, we were sent out on a listening exercise to try and identify specific categories of sounds, these being: soundmarks, keynotes and sound signals. Below I will define each of these terms and give an example that I found during my walk around the LCC campus.

Keynote: The keynotes are the sounds in an environment that are heard frequently by a particular group of people. For example, in LCC a keynote would be a sound that everybody hears regularly. For me, a keynote provides the context for other sounds in a space, it is a background, or a canvas for other more urgent and irregular (or regular) sounds.

An example of a keynote in LCC is something that I feel is common throughout communal spaces anywhere in the world, which is the hum of chatter and spoken word. This sound is common in LCC and is something that will always be heard.

Soundmark: A soundmark is a sound that is recognisable by the given community, something that they may identify with for example.

An example of a soundmark that I found in LCC was the noise of people scanning their ID cards. This is an easily recognisable sound for anyone that identifies with the college, it is a sound that marks their relationship to the environment.

Sound signal: A sound signal is a sound that is meant to be heard, measured, acknowledged or stored, etc. Initially, I struggled to differentiate between sound signals and soundmarks, but I eventually came to the conclusion that sound signals don’t need to have any cultural or historical significance/relevance to the given environment whereas soundmarks do have a relevance to the given environment. Not to discount sound signals as important, as alarms and bells are often defined as sound signals, but they aren’t culturally important and are more of a general (?) sound.

An example of a sound signal I found around LCC would be the flushing of a toilet. This sound, whilst maybe not needing to be measured, stored or acted upon, is a signal that indirectly has a purpose, as stupid as it sounds, it communicates to people in the vicinity that the toilet has been used for example. The reason why this is a sound signal and not a soundmark is that it is not culturally or historically relevant to LCC specifically, but is a common sound and one that needs to be acknowledged.