Sound Experiences
I was raised in a California
ranch with high ceilings. When I was
younger, the floor covering was vinyl with few household furnishings. I can recall the house echoing. My brother and I use to yell across from one
end of the house to each other, just to hear acoustics of the space. As I grew, so did the furnishings in our
home. The apex of the house was about
20 feet high, where my father built a library wall filled with books. The vinyl floor was replaced with thick
carpeting. Lots of furnishing filled
the walls and spaces in every room. Our
home became cozier and quieter.
I use to go to church with my
family in a very Old Catholic Church building with a transept, nave and high
ceilings. The priest would step into
the nave to give his sermons to the congregation. His voice would carry to the back row of the
church without microphone assistance.
The Italian priest was a very good public speaker annunciating every
syllable in a rhythmic tone to reverberate alone the hard surfaces towards the
rear of the church.
Many years later as the
congregation grew; the Church built a large auditorium below the school as an
annexation to hold larger groups for their sermons. To enter the auditorium, you would need to
walk one flight down, but daylight would still enter into the space from
windows located high up on the walls.
It was a very large rectangular space with a flat ceiling. A sound system was required for the space in
order to be heard clearly. Sound did
not travel well in the space, but it was still a noisy space.
When I recall the Old Italian
priest with his sympathetic note; I remember he only gave his sermons in the
old church. Sometimes his sermons were
in Latin, with a musical and religious tone modulating at a perfect pitch
throughout the space. When looking for
which sermon to attend on Sundays, my siblings and I would always request to
attend the mass in the church. At the
time, I thought it was the visual experience of the environment with their
beautiful stain glass windows, carved moldings and décor that inspired our
choice; but now I realize that we made a subconscious decision of preference, because it was the acoustical experience within the church that added to our enjoyment
of the space.
As a young student, I recall
a fellow male student who was an excellent whistler. On one occasion during our math class, we all
stopped to listen to him whistling from one end of the empty hall corridor
down to the other the tune “Andy Griffith of Mayberry.” It was a great whistling
tone that reverberated wonderfully down the hard surfaces of the corridor to
our attentive ears; a very pleasant memory of math class that I recall fondly
today because to the auditory enjoyment of that experience.
When I was younger, I use to
take guitar lessons. I was never a very
good guitar player, but I enjoyed listening to the reverberating sound from
the strumming of the strings on my Old Spanish guitar. The guitar was small with a wooden frame and
metal strings of different thicknesses. I still possess this guitar in my mother’s
home, kept tucked away neatly in its case.
Occasionally, when I go home to mom’s house, I pull out of my closet
that old guitar, just to listen to its beautiful tone once again, and I’m
instantly transported back to my youth.
I smile, cause the sound just washes away the years.
