Exploring Soundscapes By Summer & Maggie

 

Exploring Soundscapes By Summer & Maggie

Creak, creak go the trees, sketching skyward. 

Rustle, rustle go the leaves, sharing secrets. 

Whoo, whoo goes the breeze, blowing by us. 

Drip, drip go the dewdrops, dancing downwards. 

There are sounds all around us, and you’ll find that the garden has lots to say if you listen. That’s right, today’s blog post is all about listening and soundscapes!

As we entered the UBC Orchard Garden, we met Diana Ihnatovych, a UBC graduate student who is passionate about music education research. The first task Diana gave us was to find a walking stick (sounds simple, right?). The interesting thing was that the sticks we each chose were all unique in their qualities, akin to the students we will encounter as educators. Next, we dove into a discussion about what listening means to us. Something that struck us from the discussion was the idea that when we eliminate some of our other senses, such as sight, and focus on listening, this can help us become more in tune with the world around us. Later, we used the sticks to play a game that required us to listen to taps (one or two) and perform an action based on what we hear. It amazed us how a simple sound like a tap can be used to help us communicate. This would be a really fun activity to bring into our future classrooms. 

The following activity that we engaged in, the soundscapes activity, helped to emphasize the importance of listening to sounds. During the soundscapes activity, we could hear things that we could and could not see, but were always there – like the low hum from an electrical panel or the special song of a chickadee. The act of recording the graphic notation of sounds really showed how listening is an active process and helps us become more aware of our environment. When we looked at the graphic notations we created of various sounds made by humans, nature, and technology, we started to see connections between sound producers. Reflecting on the production of sounds, we noticed that the pleasant and soothing sounds were from nature. However, there were also less pleasant sounds or harmful sounds such as the backup motion alarm of a truck moving in reverse. It reminded us of what Diana shared at the beginning of the workshop about the significance of listening to the health of one’s environment (Schafer). We never thought about associating sounds with different meanings and how sound can be a source of pollution. Now that we have grown this awareness of how sounds live in place, we wonder how our day-to-day connection with the world will change. 

We also enjoyed sharing our work in a small group to compose a soundscape together and perform it. It was interesting to identify similarities (e.g., what sounds were more dominant) and listen to different perspectives (e.g., how did we represent the different bird calls?).  We realized that there is an abundance of knowledge that we can gain by being present in our environment and listening, closely and deeply. By the end of the activity, we felt more connected to the place we were in and the Land we are on. We also walked away feeling as though we had strengthened a tool to better understand and navigate through the world we are in – by listening. 

Now we can all understand Gabe Lewis' passion for soundscapes: