Happy New Year! You may have noticed that I’ve been far less active on the site lately […or maybe you haven’t and I’m just a narcissist]. I’ve taken a step back from the site’s more regular content, but I wanted to challenge myself to something. I’m going to try to post a musing on sound once a week for the next year. I’ll probably fail, but I want to keep the juices flowing. Contributing to this site over the years stimulated a lot of paths of exploration for me, and I don’t want to lose that impetus. While I no longer have the time to contribute in a more dedicated way, these little bite sized musings are something I should be able to handle. This isn’t a New Year’s resolution, but the the start of a year sure makes it easy to keep track of. ;)
So here’s the first “Sunday Sound Thought”
Our hearing changes throughout our lives. That means that no matter how many times we hear something, we can always hear it in a new way. Even if you eliminate the ideas of experience and reference from the equation, there are biological changes that affect how we hear. Children’s ears have a wider frequency response than adults, but the neural structures that interpret our sonic environment don’t mature until our 20’s. Even if you fastidiously protect your hearing, presbycusis sets in and attenuates the higher frequencies in adults. And let’s face it, we can’t perfectly protect our ears.
So remember the next time you hear something you’re tired of listening to, even that mental state means that you’re hearing it a little differently.