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waveforms as waves form
my relationship with sound has been constant, evolving, shifting - revelations and discoveries in a lifelong attempt to understand the whole of it. when i was a little girl it often felt like i was some bizarre creature, as even my musically inclined family members weren't nearly as sensitive to changes in the perception of audio as i was. the materials of a room or surroundings in an open area, occupancy of persons or other lifeforms and objects, the degree of angle between myself and the source, and so on. with ease i could identify how a song heard on one set of speakers sounded different from another. as is often said, youth is wasted on the young, and here i look back as a woman of many greys wishing i had the capability at the time to hold a conversation with sound and find ways to elucidate properly all of that which i experienced.
though, if i were granted the opportunity to reach out to young eleanor to hand over the lexicon i possess now, i may find myself hesitant. as the years have gone, so too have parts of my hearing. would i want myself to be blessed with even more complete awareness of Sound as a concept, as a physical entity, as a phenomenon, as a sense, knowing full well how much harder it would hurt when i would begin to lose it to age?
one of the more tremendous breakthroughs in my insight into audio came through upgrading from dinky $20 sony headphones that crackled in my ear whenever bass was present, to the family's first bose wave radio, to investing in my first pair of professional headphones. each step up gradually revealed a wider soundstage, richer presence of every sound i thought i knew, and laid out exactly how limited my palette was before then. proper sourcing, too, became important. 128kbps mp3s ripped from a cd that had been burned to a cd already by a friend who had downloaded 128kbps mp3s was a daisy chain of horrors i thankfully freed myself from before i was out of high school, but even after that i still had so much i had listened to before, but hadn't really heard.
good vibrations
stories make the rounds on the absurdity of the very peak of audiophile setups, like placements of rocks or glass tubing to enhance certain sound qualities. i've never really had the money to invest in $1000 headphones, $10,000 speaker and amp and head deck setups, let alone particularly wanted to. however, the purpose behind these claims may be misunderstood... or at least ill communicated by those who experience audio in a more full, present way. something as simple as putting the right material by a speaker can change the way the sound travels and propagates through a room to your ear. the way that material bounces the sound gives it these new and exciting properties that we speak of. for most, they won't really ever think about sound at that kind of molecular level, so it comes off as irrational when we speak of it. one has to truly want for a union with the perception of the movement of air in order to tap into that headspace.
there are very few joys in life like relishing in the way sound travels towards us, through us, & within us. developing awareness of the effect the physical world impresses upon sound opens the windows to reveal a much more vivid, spacious place full of character and color if we allow ourselves to study it. in a sense, i had been practicing aspects of "deep listening" long before i was ever aware of the concept. i feel as though there is a part of me that must continue to carry the torch in my own way, as pauline left this world to rejoin the hum of the stars years ago. her teachings reflected aspects i had come to understand about sound on my own (to say the least about us both being lesbians with inexplicable music tastes) and i feel it's only right to try my best to burrow deeper still and offer what findings may come so that others can discover their own expanded cognizance of sound.
subdued étude
sadly, this all does come with a few downsides. decades of attentive listening have made me hyper aware of every minute difference internal factors have on my hearing. some days, my allergies will erase the entire low end, leaving only the vaguest sensation of pressure. maybe i slept on my side with a little too much sustained weight on my ear, causing an imbalance that can even hinder my ability to locate the source of a sound on the worst days. sometimes highs lose their sparkle, or mids become smeared and caked with mud.
generally these are temporary!! yet, there are notable permanent & incurable discrepancies in how i would hear the same song 2 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. though the equipment and listening circumstances may not be the exact same, i can discern when frequencies mute slightly or go missing entirely. and this is where i would falter should i be given the impossible liberty of divulging what i know now to my spry self of decades past... i can still remember how far depression pulled me down when i stopped putting up a fight against the inevitable. it had to be anything else! maybe the foam cups on my headphones weren't forming a complete seal, maybe there was some noise in the house that was permeating through the open backs, maybe this was a different mastering than what i was used to??
coming to terms with the loss was probably the 2nd hardest personal realization i've had to overcome.
but, that too gifted me its own reward, silver lining, coping mechanism, however you'd like to call it. in much the same way as different speakers/equipment, setting and physical aspects of a space transform sound, so does my gradually failing internal wiring. quite the unwelcome development, but one i must do my best to live with and analyze as studiously as i can. excitement can still be found in uncovering a piece of sound that was once shrouded and obscured by denser bass, shimmering highs, and fully driven mids. had it been hiding there this whole time, unfocused only because i had so much else to take in at the same time?
it's with a smile on my face that i can at least say - as the theater fades away by degrees, there are yet more curtains that remain to be pulled back to unveil more that again challenges my assumptions and earlier conclusions. and that alone is worth keeping an ear out for.
-eleanor