The Sounds Around Us

There are so many different sounds that we hear each day, and sometimes they are just in the background and other days they seem to be a lot louder and more present. In a lot of cases, the amount we hear of a sound can depend on how we are feeling and how many other sounds are also around us.

I live in a high-density neighbourhood, so there are always sounds that we can hear, and it doesn’t matter what time of the day or night it is, there are always different sounds around us. When you are in a different location, you will also hear other sounds that you don’t hear where you live or work. I will try and list some of the sounds that are normal for me, but if you don’t live in a high-density neighbourhood, you may not hear all these sounds.

• School bells – this is a sound that we hear all the time and multiple times each weekday. These school bells are also heard during the summer because the school is used for summer school, so there is no break from this sound.
• Dumpster collection – this is a sound that we hear quite often as each of the apartment buildings have dumpsters that need to be emptied, and they are done at least once a week. Each building has a difference schedule, so you hear that most days.
• Emergency vehicles – here is a sound that we hear numerous times a day, and a lot of these will be medical emergencies, but sometimes there are elevator rescues or fires that need to be handled around us.
• Buses – when you live on a street that has buses on it 24 hours a day, you get to hear them all the time, and they start to become just a background sound that you hear.
• Construction – these are the sounds that can overwhelm you sometimes, and that is the construction due to parking lot renovations or road work. These sounds happen, and they can be extremely hard to block out.
• People yelling at each other – now here is a sound that can be very hard to block out, especially when it happens in the middle of the night. People don’t seem to realize how their voices carry when they are carrying on a loud conversation in the middle of the night. These sounds bounce off the buildings, so they can be heard even when you are up quite a few floors from the street.
• Car's backfiring – now this is a newer sound that we have been hearing lately and that is the sound of cars backfiring. There seems to be a few cars in our area that have mistuned engines and their cars backfire quite often.
•  Constant sound of vehicles on the major roads and a highway nearby, including those racing at the wee hours of the night.

So, yes, we all have sounds around us and I know that I have just listed some of the surrounding sounds, but these are the sounds that are ones that happen quite often around us and can be very different from what people hear in a residential area of a city.

When you stop and just listen to the various sounds around you when you are in different places, you will hear different things that aren’t things you may hear normally. For me, it is always such a difference when we go away from home because you do notice the lack of some of these sounds because these sounds have now become normal everyday sounds to me.

The sounds around us can change from time to time, even when you are within one area. When there are leaves on trees or snow on the ground, the sounds around us can sound different. So next time you have a few minutes, go outside, and listen to the sounds around you and see what sounds you have around you.