Blog 2 | Soundwalk

Keynotes: background sounds

• Sound Signals: foreground sounds intended to attract attention.
What sounds are clues to a specific neighborhood?

Location: Woodhaven, Queens
Time: Tuesday Evening | 5pm
Season: Fall

The sky was glowing orange and most of the school children had gotten off from after-school when I began my soundwalk in Woodhaven. In all of the soundwalk I could hear varying pitches of the leaves being blown by the wind. If the breeze was light, the rustling of leaves on the trees would whisper lightly, and if the breeze was strong and lingering, you could hear the wind circle from one tree to another, touching four or five trees before the rustling was inaudible.

I could hear the drilling of holes inside someone's home: it had to be drilling of a wall because the pitch was deep and long, whatever was being drilled was not hallow, and the sound was too clean for it to have been a jackhammer on the floor.

In the distance there was a (happy sounding) screaming toddler.

Occasionally, if they were close enough, (three feet away) I would hear the flapping of sparrows. (They're the small round brown birds with gray and light brown bellies,)

I counted two people long-boarding down the road.

I heard an ice cream truck playing "Pop Goes the Weasel." I expected to hear a wave of children screaming, following the playing of icecream truck song.
I heard some police sirens. I heard a few cars whirring by, a slow smooth whirring because there were no speed bumps.
"Honk" went a fire truck.
I heard three ambulances wail within a span of an hour.

At the end of my soundwalk, I heard a young man cussing.