one thing that I think is clear is that a recording of a very quiet place i=
s very, very different from the experience itself. I think, with these quie=
t recordings, this is where the discussion of the emotive & experiential el=
ement really comes to the fore.
--- In "Avocet" <> wrote:
>
> > I don't wish to overanalyse, but I'd be intrigued in a wider sharing
> > of experiences of such quiet places to see if there's any
> > commonality, or if our experience's differ widely.
>
> Tony,
>
> I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in this "Silence Debate",
> but yes, I have many memories of silent and quiet locations and was
> very glad to move out of West London to a quiet Devon location.
>
> I now have slight tinnitus above about 13KHz where my hearing fades,
> but I remember many silent locations in my youth. One was in India in
> open empty moorland where I heard the thermal sound of the air. With
> keen youthful hearing, it is just possible to hear this but many
> experts will not believe me. There was the roaring sound of my
> breathing, my heart thumping away noisily, noise in head muscles, ear
> noise, blood passing in capillaries, but faintly in the background
> was a clear high pitched hiss which could only be thermal noise.
>
> As with letting your eyes adjust to the dark (I won't have any outside
> lights here apart from the Milky Way). Ears settle down in an hour or
> so after a car ride etc. and reveal many sounds most people are not
> aware of.
>
> How you reproduce this with a sound recording is another matter as
> most listeners' noise backgrounds are higher than the "quiet" sounds
> of nature. The volume control is at hand and the listener will use
> this to destroy the effect we try to create.
>
> Shortly after I moved here, a delivery man looked around and said:
> "'Tis nice and quiet yer" but as he said it, two military jets passed
> overhead at 500 feet and it came out as: "'TIS NICE AND QUIET YER!".
> Shows how silence can be relative. :-)
>
> David
>
> David Brinicombe
> North Devon, UK
> Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
>
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