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.