The Sound of the City

We use all our senses to experience the city, not just our vision.

Any place offers audio sensation as well as visual ones. Our capital city is the perfect example of how sound can affect our experience of a place. Depending on what route we take through the city we can see different things and also hear different things. Certain bus routes have older buses. These buses will have a slightly different engine pitch. In certain areas different types of birds or animals are more likely to congregate and diffuse their noise through the air. Even different types of people can be found that speak with different tones or accents.

Of course we are often inclined to ignore this music of the city. We prattle on to someone about unimportant subjects. Or more frequently, we put in our headphones and drift off into our own personal store of music. In short, we do anything to fill what we perceive as the absence of noise when travelling through the city. We need professional musicians to provide us with a soundtrack instead.

But people, buses, trains, even bands and musicians on the street combine to form a soundtrack for the city. There is a different score every time we enter the capital, with different notes contained within it. This score is played by different instruments too. While we may be more inclined to force our own music onto the scene we should allow the music of the city to flow through us and enhance our perception of the city.

When we use more of our senses we gain more information and get closer to understanding our capital city.

-The English Student