It’s around midnight, and I’m sat listening to the rain. I don’t really watch TV when Aneesah is out of town, and it feels especially quiet. I like the sound of rain. If you really listen, you start to hear all of the ways that it makes sound. The light drizzle against the window, stronger as a gust of wind hits it. The heavier drips that have accumulated on something, finally falling when they get heavy enough. The streams coming down a gutter, or going into a drain, an occasional gurgle as it picks up or slows.
Most of us like this sound, don’t we? People play it while they work, or read, or relax. It’s calming for some reason. I think that’s why I’m so fascinated with ambient recordings, and especially recording my own. When I listen to the sound of the ocean that I recorded, it sounds different to “the sound of the ocean,” you know? I think our ears remember a lot. That’s why I love binaural recordings. Make the ear part of it. That’s how I hear things. That’s how I want to hear things. Ear-shaped.
I think I could be quite happy traveling the world to record ambient sounds. A rainforest here, a lighthouse there, that sort of thing. I use an app that generates soundscapes to help me focus when I work. It’s great, but there’s nothing quite like the sound of the world. The problem is that it sort of disappears if you start doing anything else; anything other than listening. To listen demands that you’re present, I think. There’s no half-listening, there’s just listening and not listening… or something.