An Exercise

This blog (or newsletter if you're reading me on LinkedIn) has a monthly cadence, but I will occasionally add what we might call a mid-month "half entry" if I have a quick thought or something to add to the monthly entry.

In Think First,I discussed the ability (if at all possible) of “thinking” sound and I mentioned how is possible to train our ears to recognise synthesized sounds just like we train our ears to recognise musical intervals, chords or rhythms.

Any form of ear training starts with improving our ability to listen, so today I would love to propose an exercise that you can do every day.

It’s very simple: try to take five minutes to listen to the environment surrounding you.

Make a mental note of all the different sounds that you can hear, and you will be surprised by how many they are, even if you are in a “quiet” environment.

I love doing this in bed, just before falling asleep: the hum of the baby monitor, the light nocturnal traffic of Edinburgh, the dishwasher rumbling, the shower head dripping, my dog breathing.

As sound designers, sound is our vocabulary and the more consciously exposed to it we are, the more our ability to replicate it (and eventually create it from scratch) improves.

Thank you for reading me, I’ll see in you in a couple of weeks with a regular-length issue (and a free virtual instrument!).

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