Kate Chisholm

Wall of sound

What was the very first sound you heard this morning?

issue 11 July 2009

What was the very first sound you heard this morning? Have you noticed how many planes have rumbled overhead since the beeping of the alarm penetrated your consciousness? Can you hear birdsong above the din of traffic? The new Save our Sounds campaign launched by the BBC’s World Service is trying to make us more aware of the sonic soundscapes in which we live.

We’re all very clued up on visual interference, blots on the landscape, the way buildings look and affect our aesthetic sensibility, but we tend to overlook the sonic soundscape which surrounds us. On Wednesday’s Discovery programme, an acoustician, Professor Trevor Cox, took us on a sound walk from King’s Cross to Regent’s Park in London to celebrate 25 years of the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. This was set up by R.

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