the riddle “does it make a sound” not “does it sound different to the listeners who each have their own personal history and delimmas with trees” its not “how do you interpret the fall,” its not “how does the noise affect you emotionally” only “does it make a sound” everything you have written already assumes it does so i would say yes. yes the tree makes a sound and even if theres no people there to hear it surely there has to be animals ;)

yes i think i do think of these kinda sounds which merge with my soundscapes. At times , i think like the way they lit a scene. How foreground, mid and back grounds together create a visual. the same is applied to when designing a time and space using sounds. the sound from a far away highway in the night heard from a interior village or a bird call going away all are peripheral sounds.

thanks for writing about this.

For example say you have ten people hear that exact same tree fall – each would hear it and remember it differently. For example, say one of those ten listeners fathers died in a forestry/tree accident when he was a boy. Do you think he will hear the same tree fall sound as the other nine? And another of the ten is an environmentalist, adamantly opposed to forestry. Do they hear the same tree fall sound as the others? Another listener watched the first Blair Witch film for the first time the night before, do you think they will hear the same tree sound? You do a dis-service to both the koan and to your own mind, to dismiss it as a “dumb riddle”.