Soundrise (and soundset) - part II
II
The ideas of soundset and soundrise have has some usability in ordinary hearing life. The archetypal soundrise would perhaps be the dawn chorus, a multitude of different bird species calling together. But what makes up a soundrise is a question of an individual listener’s location and perspective. The dawn chorus might be very noticeable to most human listeners in spring in a place where there is a rich diversity of bird life. But for city dwellers like myself the dawn chorus isn’t conspicuous much of the year, and is always accompanied by the sounds of human activity as residents wake up and start their day: car doors opening and closing, engines starting, people walking and talking in the street are a notable part of what I experience as the city soundrise. But because I am often not outside first thing, soundrise for me doesn’t tend to be marked by the sounds of the outside world at all. Owing to my son’s cancer treatment, mornings have not been predictable for much of the last two-and a-bit years, but they have been more settled lately and soundrise has been the sound of family members waking up, walking around, making breakfast. Usually, I am very much a participant in this rather than only a listener. The phase of the evening where things settle down as people start to go to bed and the house becomes quiet constitute my typical daily soundset.
Of course, even if our own perceptual awareness of it diminishes or ceases as we fall asleep, sound never really sets. Nocturnal life and its sounds simply take over from those of diurnal life. The rainforest is the obvious example here, where certain species of cicadas, other insects, amphibians, birds and mammals wake up, stridulate and vocalise where other species did before. The sound now is just as loud, if not more so, than it was in the day, though the sources are different. Perhaps the transition to the sounds that mark the end of the day for a particular listener is what we might think of as soundset. I was recently at a busy train station on a Thursday evening. It was already dark and most people seemed to be waiting for their train home. There was sound at a fair volume, but the atmosphere was distinctly one of ‘after work’, of ‘headed home’, of being in the aftermath of the day’s main purpose and events. Listening to it felt like listening to soundset (or the rise of a sonic moon?). Perhaps we can think of soundrise, then, as the sound of a listener’s day beginning, soundset of it entering a late phase, or coming to an end.
Soundrise and soundset may be only loosely tied to the movement of the sun. In the UK in winter, my soundrise often begins before it starts to get light, and soundset occurs long after darkness. For a person or animal living a nocturnal life, soundrise might take place at dusk and soundset at dawn. We could even imagine a disorientating world where soundrise and soundset become disengaged from the movements of the sun altogether, perhaps even occurring at random intervals, unpredictably and without warning.