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Just a straightforward one this week: talk to me about your favourite sounds, or your least favourite sounds, or both.
My favourites are, I suspect, pretty basic:
The movement of water (waves breaking, rivers flowing, water tumbling over rocks, etc)
The wind moving through leaves, or bare branches
Onions frying
Fire crackling
The crunch of dry leaves, twigs, or snow underfoot
Lots of sounds related to paper — pages turning, paper being cut with scissors or folded precisely, the sound of a fountain pen moving across the page
Babies laughing, or babbling, or small toddlers learning to talk
The song of Australian magpies
My least favourite sounds (other than obvious stuff like sudden unexpected loud noises) are audible chewing, or anything that sounds like lips smacking wetly — even just thinking of those sounds makes me grimace involuntarily.
What about you?
My favourites are, I suspect, pretty basic:
My least favourite sounds (other than obvious stuff like sudden unexpected loud noises) are audible chewing, or anything that sounds like lips smacking wetly — even just thinking of those sounds makes me grimace involuntarily.
What about you?
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Date: 2024-10-25 06:47 pm (UTC)Also I like the song of (European) blackbirds.
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Date: 2024-10-25 06:51 pm (UTC)What kinds of jam have you been making recently?
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Date: 2024-10-25 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-25 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-25 07:25 pm (UTC)Sounds I don't like: most noises made by babies and small children, and the scrape of cutlery on plates.
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Date: 2024-10-25 09:16 pm (UTC)The scrape of cutlery on plates is indeed an awful sound. I also dislike the sound of cutlery touching (like forks being scraped by knives, etc).
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Date: 2024-10-25 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-25 09:19 pm (UTC)Nature sounds, on the other hand, are very soothing, as you say.
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Date: 2024-10-25 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-25 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-25 09:21 pm (UTC)Wind in leaves/long grass is probably the biggest favorite one for me, and I also love the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, running water and crackling fire. Also the sound of stones falling into water, especially pebbles into fairly deep water -- it's a very satisfying plop.
This is probably a weird one, because I know it annoys others in my household: I love the sound of keyboard keys when someone is typing, and in fact prefer "clacky" keyboards to quieter ones for my own typing. I find the sound cozy, similar to other repetitive but not uniform noises like wind, water, fire.
I find animal sounds neat, but I think less for the sound and more because it means an interesting critter is nearby. Like, I always get excited to hear the skree of a red-tailed hawk or the hooting of an owl, but that's just because I like owls and raptors. (Although hawks do sound pretty badass, so that's hard to deconvolute). And I get excited to hear frogs and bugs at night, but that's because I like frogs and bugs and don't get to hear them very often, living in a city.
I think I'm fairly tolerant of "negative" sounds, at least compared with the people I live with. My husband and daughter hate the sound of audible chewing or people talking with their mouth full, but it doesn't bother me. My husband, who I'm pretty sure has misophonia, absolutely hates any kind of repetitive high-pitched noise -- sirens, car alarms, dogs barking -- even fairly distant ones that don't bother me at all, and also sounds like a chair scraping on carpet. I wouldn't listen to them for fun, but I'm unbothered by most of them. I also find aural things the hardest to tune into -- my mind wanders during lectures if I'm not focusing on something visual or tangible, I don't do audiobooks -- so possibly that also means I automatically tune out noises that would otherwise be unpleasant, and so they end up not bothering me.
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Date: 2024-10-26 01:59 pm (UTC)I also love the wind sounds that you mention, and the stones/pebbles dropped into deep water.
I actually agree with you regarding clacky keyboards — it's a fantastic sound, although I find that I prefer the sound if it's someone who touch types with all their fingers. For some reason, the 'clacking' with two-fingered typing (my dad is a particular culprit here) sounds annoying to me.
Animal sounds are great, and I agree that there's something particularly special about hearing them when you're in a city, or if you're a city dweller and hear them in a more rural setting. I love the sound of cicadas in the summer — it takes me back immediately to my Australian childhood.
Like you I find audiobooks impossible (I just end up thinking that I'd read the whole thing so much faster in text; I have the same issue with podcasts and Youtube video essays — something that takes an hour to listen to would probably take me less than ten minutes to read, and it just seems so inefficient), but unlike you all those kind of irritating noises like audible chewing, screechy noises, or even sounds like the fridge seem extremely intrusive to me. It's like they overwhelm the silence, or distract from 'meaningful' noises so that I'm unable to focus on the sound of conversation, etc.
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Date: 2024-10-28 06:14 am (UTC)Oh yes! I was definitely thinking of 10 finger touch typing for this. (Hunt and peck doesn't bother me, but it doesn't have that favorite sound murmur either.)
(I just end up thinking that I'd read the whole thing so much faster in text; I have the same issue with podcasts and Youtube video essays — something that takes an hour to listen to would probably take me less than ten minutes to read, and it just seems so inefficient)
That is part of it, too. YouTube video essays I mostly listen to while doing something else with my eyes (and/or hands), and ditto for podcasts which are conversations. But for some reason I find it much harder to multi-task through fiction -- I guess I just never learned, unlike lecture-style things (when I was often doing crosswords or sudoku in class (in uni, where the lecture halls were big enough that the instructor wouldn't care) while listening and occasionally writing stuff down if it was important), or conversations over dinner or out walking or whatever.
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Date: 2024-10-25 10:19 pm (UTC)I think my actual favourite sound is that of a cat purring. maybe primarily because if I can hear a cat purring, that means it's in in my lap :D
my least favourite sounds are the sounds of my own blood rushing (the sound you get when you stick your fingers in your ears or otherwise block the ear canal. I can't hear my pulse, but I can hear a rushing and wow do I hate it.) and the sounds of my own chewing. these are particular challenges whenever I get new hearing aids so there's always a lot of fiddling and adjusting to make that sound less obtrusive. it's difficult because these things *are* designed to pick up sound and well, when I'm chewing that sound is the thing that's closest to the mics in my hearing aids so it's kind of more amplified than everything else. (I sometimes have to turn them off to eat, especially if it's crunchy stuff like crisps. it truly sounds like somebody else is crunching up crisps directly into my ear and it's the worst. with the hearing aids turned off I can still hear the crunching but it's muffled).
related to this is the sound of my own voice - I don't dislike it day to day, but hearing myself on *a recording* never sounds like *me*, and it's this kind of knee-jerk hate-on-sight kind of feeling. just instant hatred and disgust that I don't know how to explain. (hilariously this is your best safeguard against me ever starting a podcast. I do NOT enjoy listening to myself, lol.)
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Date: 2024-10-26 02:03 pm (UTC)I think what you're describing about your own recorded voice is quite common — there's some scientific reason why it sounds different to our own ears when we speak, versus when we hear it recorded — but most people find it dissonant. I basically talk for a living (I give lectures, seminars, and 1-to-1 training in a university library), and I very rarely listen back to any recorded lectures I have made — just enough to check the sound, and that's it!
Cats purring, on the other hand, is an utterly delightful sound.
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Date: 2024-10-26 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 12:01 pm (UTC)It's cheesy but I love the sound of my partners' voices. They both have very soothing voices.
Babies' laughter is another one of my favourites.
Least favourite by a mile is yelling and shouting, particularly men yelling. Other least favourites are cars modified to sound unnaturally loud, the buzzing of an insect you can't locate, and nasal singers.
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Date: 2024-10-26 04:59 pm (UTC)I love that you love the sounds of your partners' voices — it's not cheesy at all!
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Date: 2024-10-26 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 05:00 pm (UTC)I hadn't even considered the sound of scroll buttons on computer mice, but you are correct — it can be incredible grating!
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Date: 2024-10-27 07:06 am (UTC)I also like the sound of the rain on the windows.
My least favourite sound is metal scraping against metal. I just can't handle it. I hunch up and want to hiss like a cat.
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Date: 2024-10-27 11:53 am (UTC)Those screeching metallic sounds are indeed awful to listen to, while rain on the windows is lovely. I also like the sound of heavy rain on a tin roof.
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Date: 2024-10-28 08:37 am (UTC)It's been a long time since I got to hear rain on a tin roof.
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Date: 2024-10-29 06:32 pm (UTC)Me too. I miss it.
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Date: 2024-10-27 08:49 pm (UTC)I like the wind in the trees, the fire crackling, twigs and leaves underfoot. I also like the sound of snow underfoot. The rumble of thunder. The cooing of wood pigeons. The purring of a cat.
Noises I dislike: babies crying, yappy dogs, chewing sounds, traffic noise, school playgrounds, lots of people in an indoor space.
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Date: 2024-10-29 06:35 pm (UTC)I like the wind in the trees, the fire crackling, twigs and leaves underfoot. I also like the sound of snow underfoot. The rumble of thunder. The cooing of wood pigeons. The purring of a cat.
These are all excellent sounds! We have wood pigeons that live in the trees in our garden, and it's beautiful to hear them cooing all day.
I dislike all your disliked sounds as well, apart from school playgrounds, which I don't exactly love, but don't viscerally dislike.
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Date: 2024-10-28 02:16 pm (UTC)Babies laughing, or babbling, or small toddlers learning to talk
Yessss!!!
Birdsong in general is a fave, of course, as are cats purring.
It's not exactly a favorite in that I don't love it for its own sake, but the sound of cicadas singing far away (not close!) just sounds like summer to me, and I enjoy that.
Sounds I hate: STYROFOAM!!!!!, anything scratchy, anything to do with chalkboards, etc. Basically: anything that sounds too dry? Idk how to explain it, but that's how it feels to me. Also: dogs barking, especially little yappy dogs.
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Date: 2024-10-29 06:37 pm (UTC)I know what you mean about those dry, scratchy sounds — styrofoam is awful. And I agree about the yappy dogs.