Soundrise (and soundset) - part III

III

Once soundrise and soundset are decoupled from the rhythm of day and night, they can be applied across a whole range of other scales and temporalities. Take the human life course for instance. If it is true, as it’s often said, that most of us begin to hear in the womb long before we are born, then the soundrise of a human life begins very early and unfolds gradually over weeks, months and years. Our hearing often begins to fade as we age and perhaps age-related hearing loss presents another way of thinking about soundset, again usually as something often very gradual. In ‘the sunset of their lives’, people might find themselves in ‘the soundset of their lives’. The experience of sound, it seems, rarely fades completely until we die, which could be our ultimate soundset. Of course, drawing on scientific understandings of sound and on our collective observations of human life and death, we know (or believe it very likely) that sound carries on without us after we are gone. Soundrise, though, could refer both to an individual listener’s sonic experience of the day, but also of sound itself, beginning; soundset to a listener’s experience of the sounds of the day, and also of sound itself, drawing to a close.

Soundrise and soundset as described above are very much about listening and the perception of sound but should also perhaps take sound making into account. Staying with the life-course example, the first cries of a newborn baby could be said to be the sudden soundrise of a new life, and the silence that descends (however suddenly or gradually) at the end of life, to be a soundset. Combining this emphasis on sound-making with a range of different timeframes presents other possible uses for soundrise and soundset. Events might have their own soundrise and soundset. For instance, a football match often generates a soundrise involving many actors as the crowd gathers to watch and cheer, and there is a soundset once the game is over and the crowd disperses. This would be noticeable to people who live near a football ground, for instance, as well as to the people actually involved in and watching the match. We could think of the moment when a musician or group find ‘their sound’ as a soundrise, and the twilight of their musical career as a soundset. Audio technologies, musical genres, spoken languages and oral traditions could all have their soundrise and soundset unfolding over tens, hundreds, even thousands of years. In these later examples, though, the line of thinking becomes more abstract. These soundrises and sets are not heard by an individual. They become a kind of metaphor,  standing in for a rise and decline in something that manifests or that manifested itself (in part at least) sonically.

Just as ‘rise’ and ‘set’ reference the movement of the sun in the sky, upward and downward, soundrise represents an increase in the volume of a sound, and soundset a decrease. In western culture at least, we readily associate a rise in the volume of sound with upward movement (think of the fader on a mixing desk, or perhaps a conductor lifting his arms to instruct the orchestra to play louder). In spatial terms, then, there is some compatibility between sunrise and soundrise, sunset and soundset. At soundrise, sound emerges above the horizon of perceptibility and becomes more prominent, and at soundset it fades and sinks below that horizon.

In contemporary western experience, our understanding of sunrise and sunset are informed by modern astronomy, and the movements of the sun often feel as if they are unfolding at a great distance. When people watch a sunset there is a sense that the sun is remote and indifferent to us and our situation (however personal the experience of a sunset might feel). This is perhaps what gives us the sense of being part of something much bigger, putting our own lives in perspective, that is often associated with the experience of watching a sunset. Sound, even something as large in scale as a roll of thunder or the engine drone of a jet high in the sky, is usually perceived as more proximal, it rarely involves the same scale of events.

At micro sonic level, every auditory event, however small, could be said to have its own rise and set, much like the attack and decay of a waveform. The rise and set of sound vibrations occurs regardless of whether those vibrations are transformed into a heard experience by an ear (and its associated consciousness) or not. At the level of experience, though, some sounds which are brief and sudden may be experienced as discrete events; they are there and gone with no fade in or out. This point suggests that although it is possible that soundrise and soundset could refer to a sudden, even instantaneous presence or absence, the terms are better suited to describing a more gradual building and subsiding of sound.

As a way of concluding, here are some of the key ideas presented in this brief discussion:

Soundrise can refer to an individual listener’s sonic experience of the day beginning, soundset of it drawing to a close.

The terms can also refer to a listener’s experience of sound itself beginning and ending.

Soundrise and soundset can refer to the making as well as the perception of sound. They can also refer to sonic events which are not directly perceived.

Once decoupled from direct perception and from the rhythm of day and night, soundrise and soundset can be applied across a whole range of other scales and temporalities (for instance referring to auditory events, technologies and traditions which might emerge and recede over timeframes of decades, hundreds even thousands of years, as well as much briefer ones).

Soundrise and soundset are best used to refer to a gradual building and subsiding of sound.