Ordinary Soundscapes

Lately, I've been venturing down an audio rabbit hole.

Part of my day job is to monitor real-time acoustic data recorded from multiple sites on the bottom of the ocean (yep, there are plenty of whales). Because I can't possibly listen to all the recordings, I look at spectrograms—a visual representation of the different frequencies with time, so basically a picture. While I look at all these 'sound' pictures, I listen to podcasts—already two steps down this acoustic rabbit hole.

Recently, I stumbled upon a new (to me) podcast titled 'ephemeral' about early sound recordings. They discuss analogue recordings on media such as cellulose that is decaying over time and taking whatever is captured on the surface with it. These sounds will eventually disappear--unless someone finds and saves it.

In the first episode, an audio snippet captured my imagination and I’ve now listened to it multiple times. The recording is 113 seconds of a family ‘enjoying Uncle Jack’s nifty tape recorder’ (nifty is used at least three times) captured on reel-to-reel tape probably from the 1960’s. An older child is directed to speak and everyone attempts to get a toddler to say ‘hi’. The snippet could be from a family home today (albeit with less usage of ‘nifty’).

The recording had been essentially thrown away – it only exists now because a stranger saved it. In this case, Bob Purse, an audio archivist from https://inches-per-second.blogspot.com/ who describes himself as a ‘collector of other people’s sound and memories’ (there are all sorts of interesting other audio recordings one can listen to on his blog).

What struck me about the recording is how ordinary it sounds and how it left me feeling nostalgic and simultaneously guilty for being a voyeur. It conjured up my own memories of a moment from my childhood when my grandfather directed me to talk into a tape recorder. I have no idea what happened to that recording, and now I can’t help but wonder if someday a stranger salvage those childish words.

I think I’m about as far down this audio rabbit hole as I can go. I’m looking at visual representations of audio data, listening to a podcast where they discuss other audio data and play snippets of the recordings while thinking about recordings I once made as a child.