Some exciting new developments have taken place the last week and half! Slowly, but surely my trip to New Orleans has evolved into a road trip through the south.  My roommate is Alabama born and raised and her parents have a cabin on the river in Tuscaloosa. So myself along with three other people will be driving to New Orleans, making a stop at the gulf, and ending in Alabama. This has been a dream of mine since I can remember – and in just short of two weeks it will be coming true. We will be driving through Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, straight into Louisiana. After we stay there a few nights, we will make our way to the gulf shores for a night or two and then up to Alabama.

This change in plans of course, will affect my study questions. If I’m being honest – I am really grateful for that. While New Orleans is rich in history and cultural influence, being able to explore more than just the french quarter is really exciting. I’m excited because this program has challenged me to be an attentive traveler. One that doesn’t just drive through a city, distracted by the radio or my phone, but a traveler that takes the time to observe, to notice, to draw, to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. My hope is to take note of the contrast between urban and rural soundscapes. Some new questions I will be asking myself: What differences do you notice in urban and rural settings? Similarities? Does one influence the other?

This week, I read an academic journal titled “1/f  Noise in Rural and Urban Soundscapes” by B. De Coensel, D. Botteldooren, and T. De Muer

Here’s the summary: “In complex systems, log-log linear relations between appropriate descriptors are quite common. In this paper, the rural and urban soundscape is assumed the voice of a complex system. Self-organized criticality is shown to occur at different levels in this underlying system. The power spectral density of loudness and pitch in recordings of rural and urban soundscapes indeed often follows quite closely to the typical 1/f frequency dependence in many cases. Looking in detail at the data, a breaking point is observed in many of the curves around 0.2 Hz, which corresponds to a period of 5 seconds. It seems logical to associate this to within event and between event sound dynamics. Indicators based on this analysis could be useful for cataloguing soundscape dynamics. By extension of the earlier finding that 1/f noise is quite common in music, labels such as “boring / dull” or “too chaotic / too unpredictable” may even be borrowed to describe soundscape dynamics”

While the authors focus is on 1/f frequency – the article breaks down different aspects of rural and urban sounds – bird song, wind, road traffic, a mixture of urban activities, song and speech. Having these categories will help me to organize my thoughts and will be helpful for me to pay attention to sounds I might not have paid attention to before. This article also touches on the fact that different sounds, with different pitch and frequencies can change the way you hear the sounds. A bird song with a high pitch may be easier for you to notice than the low frequency wind sounds. This is something I’ve been observing in myself  over the last few weeks. When listening to music, sometimes all I pay attention to is the lyrics, other times it’s the piano, or the drums. This program has challenged me to pay attention to everything – but as I am going to be exposed to many different sounds in a couple of weeks, I think it is important for me to take note of my raw reactions to sounds. Like de Botton talks about in The Art of Travel, I am bringing myself on this trip and there is not getting around that.

I am also bringing three other people – so here’s where I talk about expectation. I love road trips – I think there is something beautiful about driving to your destination rather than flying. I think it gives context to the places I go. The deep south is different than the northwest. You don’t need me to tell you that. The food is different, the weather is different, the dialect is different, the people are different, and the music is different. I know these things because of research that I’ve done – reading articles and books and talking to people that have been there or lived there. With these things in mind – I want to let go of them as much as possible to allow myself and the people round me to have as much of an authentic experience as possible.