The Domestic Soundscape making, listening, thinkingfelicityford@outlook.com
Making
Cutting Parsnips
soft, wet, firm sound of the parsnip’s surfaces and texture as it is cut low sound as it hits sideboard/worktop. MUCH NOISIER than a chopping board… SLEUSH… SHMUPP… STRIKE
Roadworks outside
high-pitched trilling mechanism panning machinery moving L to R white noise; the blocky sound of a generator or large engine rumble of breaking tarmac
The weir
(near the Oracle…) On the approach to the weir, a louder & louder ROAR becomes evident… a deep, dangerous, powerful DIN.
Horses passing
ROUND HOOF SUCKING CLOPPING MUDDY SOUND clop   clop clop clop clop clop rhythm of movement WHINNYING: exhale through the lips, with mouth closed but relaxed lips, so that escaping air makes flubbering sound. Also, vocal noise… Nnnnn the N of ‘neigh’ begins in the nose & travels down through the mouth and lips. […]
Joey’s noises
Joey’s pitiful miaowing, mewing and other assorted cries have been very present in the soundscape of today. His miaow is uncertain & needy; a high, thin sound. I feel a bit bad about today’s SOUND BANK entry, since it doesn’t so much describe the actual sound of Joey’s miaows as well as it could, and […]
Breaking Chocolate
Breaking squares of chocolate off a bar has a strangely soft, brittle, dense, snapping sound.
Swans Flying
I can’t recall *exactly* the sound of swans flying overhead; but I do remember their wings made a great sweeping sound & there was a high tone in the noise of their calls & movement. It was an assured sweep of wings; too strong for a flutter and yet not at all choppy or hard. […]
Cow slipping on ice
concentric circles of echoing harmonics with many thin tones built up on each other… The cow that slipped was this one, and I saw it when I was walking in Ditchling this time last year. This is Ethel Mairet’s sign, which hangs in the Ditchling Museum, just around the corner from where she had her […]
Wind in the last oak leaves
A very small sound like a thin rattle at the edge of the wind… shk, shk, shk, shk…
Ice cracking
extreme hardness: kkkkkk-fsh-RUKSH-CRRRRRR can sound be ‘SHARP’? Snap. Crack. Brittle surfaces colliding & freezing friction Ice cracking: it is like glass being torn.
Pouring a beer
1. Get bottles out of cupboard. They CLINK together; a rolling, glassy resonant bang. 2. The short fzz/shhh as the cap is popped off the bottle. 3. The clunk of the glass being set down… 5. 4. The gentle zzzzzzz of the bubbles as the glass fills & the diminishing space produces a higher pitch.
Mystery birdsong
Buoyantly; rapidly; intensely; alarmingly PAUSE: then repeat You can hear a recording of the mystery birdsong (I have since learned that it was a Great Tit singing) here from when I recorded it last year and posted it on this very blog to find out if anyone knew what it was!
Shattering crockery…
Porcelain surfaces CRASH clink… A violent, percussive, short, staccato BURST. A single, radiating, large soundwave. I remember this sound very well; it was when Joey the cat was investigating the shelves in the kitchen and he knocked over a Toby Jug that had belonged to Mark’s Grandmother. It was in so many tiny little pieces […]
Frost
Walking on frosty pavements; the occasional slip in the rhythm of my steps as I slide. The marble-like qualities of a frozen surface… a hard clacking sound.
SOUND BANK Advent Calendar
Last year around the end of October I created the stationery for my SOUND BANK project. To do this, I screenprinted SOUND BANK onto 365 glassine envelopes along with space for the date, a title and a record number. Then I created for each envelope a letterpress-printed card on which to record (by means of […]
The People’s Museum
Last Wednesday, Stav and I headed over to Crowthorne to check out Jon Lockhart’s project, The People’s Museum. In a small community hall, we drew items we had selected from our own collections to submit to the museum. I took the blue and white dotty-handled ladle that Caro sent me for my birthday a few […]
Swaledale sea socks – a maritime yarn
This is the first sock I have made in which sound was an influence, and I think it may well be my very favourite sock. Last year when I was staying in Sussex, Kate and I took a walk on the beach and I found myself comparing the gorgeously light crunch of the seashells and […]
Dyeing with Black Walnuts
Spurred on by all your encouraging comments re: the tester-strip scarf, I have been on a spree of dyeing using those walnuts I told you about. Here is the basket of walnuts that Ruth and I gathered on Tuesday. This is Saint Mary’s Butts in Reading, and if you stand exactly where I was standing […]
Botaknits
This is the woad I planted and in 2007, when I lived in Oxford. And here is the yarn I dyed using that woad, along with some sunflower-heads, rhubarb leaves and brambles, along with tin, iron, copper and alum mordants. I spent some time organising all those colours into different shades, and I created a […]
Blackbird
Forgive me if I have already said any of this before; it is a favourite story of mine and is required here in order to contextualise today’s little creation… The first time I realised the magical role that everyday sounds could play in my life was 4 years ago when a Blackbird decided to sing […]
What to make from beginner’s handspun?
When we went to Woolfest earlier this year I was struck by the beauty of a project Liz was working on using her handspun. She explained rather modestly that she didn’t feel that her ‘learning’ handspun was good enough for garments or gifts and had ingeniously found a project which would both show off the […]
Spinning
I love reading about other people’s spinning. Caro wrote this post – spinning – on her blog last week, with a great description of why spinning is a good evening activity, whilst on the Bowerbird Knits blog the rich story of her latest sweater from Corriedale tops to finished sweater has been gradually unfolding throughout […]
Sunday’s happier news
I have finally finished knitting, seaming, zippering and weaving in the ends of, the twice-frogged mansweater. I am in a malaise so am not taking my uncharacteristically critical observations of this completed garment too seriously; I will review the situation in a week or so, since the Man is wanting to wear this today rather […]
Music in everything you hear
This is a contemporary remix of a song from my own ABC record, which was released in 1972. It has been mixed live and post-mix on my computer and includes recordings from my own collection as well as from the wondrous sound effects record collection I have begun to amass. Listen out for: The telephone […]
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