Silence is (not) golden.

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine the other night (it happens, on occasion). She was telling me that her environment was 'suddenly sounding very different', due to road works going on around her house. Not so much the sound of the drilling equipment, more the sounds she was used to hearing, which were no longer there due to the road being closed. Evenings were especially quiet. She had been used to hearing sirens and traffic and all kinds of other peripheral noises for so long, the sounds had become normalised and as soon as they were no longer there, it all felt a bit odd.

It led me to thinking about the habituation of certain sounds and how we perceive them (or don't, as the case may be). Our brains have a built in automatic gain control system (a bit like a compressor / expander in audio circles) which adjusts itself to it's environment. This explains the phenomena of everything sounding much louder at night, when you nip outside to listen to owls in the woodland or your own footsteps on the gravel. Because the environment is generally a lot quieter at night, sounds are amplified. It's a natural part of the 'fight / flight' system. Really quiet situations are generally perceived by our autonomic nervous systems as 'dangerous' and our bodies are on the alert from thereon, basically.

So, generally, silence is not golden at all. We like a bit of background noise, as it helps our bodies to relax and calms our nerves a bit; it enhances our environment in much the same way as Eno envisaged the purpose of ambient music. 'It should be as ignorable as it is interesting', said Eno. He was talking about habituation of sound in exactly the same way as my friend was when she referred to the traffic noise she was used to hearing (and comfortable with). You don't necessarily need to be actively listening to enjoy it, or feel the benefits. Hands up who likes the sound of their washing machine, or dishwasher whirring away in the background? Many of us. It's a comforting sound.

Audiologists Heller and Bergman conducted an experiment, where they lined up and cajoled a group of people into an anechoic chamber, way back in 1953. These were people with generally good hearing, healthy ears, etc. Within minutes of experiencing relative silence, every single one of them started to experience symptoms of tinnitus. Their nervous systems had reacted to the silent anechoic chamber environment, turned up the volume control on their ears (well, actually their brain) and they began 'hearing' what are known as somato-sounds (i.e. electrical pulses and other sounds originating in and around the brain). This, in turn, felt really uncomfortable and most of them couldn't wait to get out of there and back into a relatively noisy environment.

It's much the same situation with recorded music. Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the sound of 'digital black' in recordings (i.e. no background noise at all in quiet stages). I like a bit of tape hiss. To me, it just sounds more natural. Not necessarily more 'analogue', but it helps glue the sounds together so much more and makes things sound more like 'a record' to my ears. I'm not talking about really obvious 'tape effects' either, I literally mean a subtle, but comforting hiss in the background. If you're in the habit of listening to music recorded in times before the digital revolution, you will have certainly experienced that effect, without even thinking about it. Some of us add these sounds to our records now, in order to create the same feeling (and it doesn't matter how you go about it, as long as it works).

So as you go around your environment (and listen to your favourite records), listen to the background sometimes, instead of just the foreground. There are details in there which may make you think a little, or raise questions about your environment, the sounds around you and how you react to them.

- Jb.