April 25, 2009

• how sound and volume effects us

  One day I was in College sitting at a table of one of the clubs that meets in my school during lunch in the Cafeteria. Now I wasn’t one for sitting with any of the clubs or really with any people at all except the few people who I had through random fate and happenstance came to regard as interesting enough to spend time with. That sounds arrogant and it is and it has nothing to do with what I am writing about today.

  On that day, a sort of weird thing happened. There were about four people sitting in at the table talking at the time besides me. I was there and not saying a word as usual. And the four people though each and every one of them had a unique way of speaking. I don’t know what it was exactly that made their tones unique. Maybe it was accent, maybe it was the volume, maybe it was the tone, maybe it was speech impediments or something else just under the surface. But they were all happy and laughing and joking and chatting just like any friends would.

  For some reason though the experience felt jarring for me. Something about their voices flowing back and forth felt WRONG to me. It bothered me a lot. I wanted more than anything just to get as far away from that table as I could. It was the sounds that bothered me. Not the people. Not the subject. Just the sounds. Weird huh?

  I was talking to a good friend of mine the other day and this person was telling me about how they find it hard to like “loud” people. Being around people who speak in loud volumes makes them uncomfortable. It can even give them a headache or make them angry. They believe that people should control their tone of voice and keep it within an acceptable range and that speaking louder than that however natural it may be to someone is somehow wrong.

   I am reminded of being in classes where certain kids always got yelled at for talking too loudly when as far as I ever knew them they’d never spoken in a different tone or volume of voice. Other teachers also didn’t mind, but some did.  Also I remember reading about cultural sensitivity training too, that educators now undergo. Part of what they learn is that people from different cultures are taught from a young age different habits about what is considered a proper tone or volume of voice. Fascinating isn’t it? Some might perceive a loud tone as threatening. Others might consider a quiet tone as meek and submissive, a person to be ignored. Likewise with smiles, ironically. Americans see smiles as good, other cultures see it as a sign of weakness.

  I remember another time long ago when I heard someone berate someone for speaking “too quietly”. I remember his words “I hate it when people mumble. People need to learn to speak up if they want to be heard!”  This person literally couldn’t stand people who didn’t speak loudly enough for their taste. And he wasn’t the only one. I’ve met others who expressed the same complaint and digust at people whose voice to their ears sounds like whispering and who do not as they see it expend the appropriate amount of effort to be heard. In other words the exact opposite of those who were complaining about the overly loud tone of voiced individuals.

  So clearly there’s supposedly this middle ground of vocalization volume that is “appropriate” but who determines that? And indeed wouldn’t it be primarily in the eye of the beholder? Just like I was irrationally disturbed by those four entities at that lunch table through no fault of their own, surely when we are equally judgmental about loud or quiet tones of voice we are perhaps directing our judgment indirectly at those who are not in and of themselves to blame.

  However, it seems we, the critics, don’t really have a choice in the matter ourselves either. It almost seems like it’s inevitable that certain of us have certain biases against certain sounds or sound combinations that we can’t even control. It’s not that a person who hates loud noises can’t be friends with a loud speaking person, they clearly can, but it requires some expenditure of energy. It’s not simply choice. They may become accustomed to the louder tone to some extent, but most likely the entire time they are friends the person will have to swallow annoyance at the other person’s speaking mode.

  There are other similar weirdnesses delaing with how sound effects us. Take for example just now I was watching a movie on my television and for the first time this year we had the air conditioner running and it’s a new apartment.  The problem is the air conditioning fan vent is right next to the television and it is LOUD. It’s not the fan vent in and of itself bothers me. It’s fine. But it combined with the sound of the movie just grates on my nerves.  I mean it was really starting to drive me CRAZY.  I had to turn the volume up on the television really loud to hear the speakers and then turn it down again during the action squences. Eventually I just go so sick of it that whenever the air conditioner fan turned on, I paused the movie and read my book and then when it turned off again I unpaused the movie. It took much longer to watch the movie that way, but it was infinitely more enjoyable to me than it would have been had I had to suffer through that jarring cacophony.

  Another example. My younger brother is autistic and his sensitivity to certain sounds seems even more extreme. Certain music for example will make him absolutely freak out especially when he was younger. It was really remarkable since most other people couldn’t even detect anything particularly different about these particular songs or even see what they had in common. But his reaction to them was quite profound. He seemed to be in almost physical pain he hated them so much. It was like the effect I had at that dinner table or my friend has around louder speaking individuals mutliplied by a thousand.  He also reacts the same way to the sound of a thunderstorm btw.

  Still another example, my roommate and I often travel places in the car and listen to songs we both enjoy on burned CDs through the car stereo. Only sometimes she’ll set the volume to a certain point and it’s just too high for me. It literally annoys me. I can’t enjoy the music at that volume, it’s just ever so slightly too loud. On the other hand she doesn’t enjoy the music nearly as much if I leave it as quiet as I am wont to have it. 

  Then again I CAN listen to those songs really loud and enjoy them, well not as loud as she would enjoy them, but still pretty loud, but it rathe depends on certain circumstances. The problem is when I am in the car with my roommate and the music is too loud it disrupts my ability to think and communicate. I don’t like speaking OVER the sound of the music. When it’s noisy in a room I don’t really want to raise my voice to be heard even though I am more than capable of doing so. It bothers me to add my loud voice to the already loud environment. It’s jarring. It doesn’t sound or feel right. My voice overlappign with the rest, just makes things worse. So when the volume on the music is too loud then I feel almost as if I am being cornered and being forced into the solitude of my own mind. I can’t talk, or rather I refuse to talk at least not in a tone that can be heard.

  Similar happens at a party or a social gathering, a concert or somtehing where the music is blasting. Or anywhere where a lot of people are talking at once. I am already a naturally quiet person but under those circumstances I become absolutely silent to the point that people think I’m brooding. But I’m not. I’m not even upset about the loud voices and sounds. Rather is the overlapping and disharmony that is bugging me. Like the four voices at the lunch table. Like the air conditioning vent and the movie.  I couldn’t stand to speak under those circumstnaces and if I did I don’t believe I’d be heard anyway. And the whole situation just makes me feel out of it and uncomfortable.

  Of course there are other people who are the EXACT opposite. Being in an environment where everyone is quiet and soft spoken and there isn’t a lot of music or background noise or stuff going on will make them extremely uncomfortable or freak tehm out. I’ve heard people complain LOUDLY that it’s TOO QUIET in here under this or that circumstnaces. And I’ve known people who have to interject background music into any quiet room, even if it is soft music just under the surface.  Now undoubtedly there’s a point where things are too quiet for me too but it’s at a WAY lower volume than it is for these people.  They need stuff going on. They need more noise!  Often they assume that people being quiet are unhappy, uncomfortable, or not having enough fun.

  There’s all kinds of things like that. For example the thought of someone texting during a movie would in no way bother me at all and yet it is banned in most theatres even if your phone is on silent or vibrate. In fact a vibrating phone in a movie theatre is no disruption for me at all. I literally wouldn’t care in the slightest. Same with a random loudly spoken comment about the movie being seen. Who cares about that? Unless they are talking at an inpportune time and making me miss dialogue I don’t care. However the fact that these phenomenons are banned in many theatres and those that aren’t are often the subject of much scorn and disgust in any number of water cooler conversations suggest that for a lot of people these things really DO bother them. They bother htem A LOT. Enough so that they get pissed off about it.
   
  And I can understand it too. Although I’d sympathize with the mother’s dilemma,  a crying baby in a theater would bother me A LOT. Likewise would a person insisting on holding a detailed conversation either in person or on the phone in the middle of a movie. That would bother me a great deal. Then again these are the kinds of the disruptions that really ARE likely to make me miss dialogue. And if I am missing dialogue, especially important dialouge then I DO care. And that again was the problem with the damn AC vent. I really only want to watch a movie ONE time unless it is totally exceptional so if I miss dialogue the one time I see it then I’ll probably NEVER know what they said cuz I aint watching it again and so if I miss important story details I’ll just miss them and my appreciation of the story will be decidedly less.

  It seems that the way we process and perceive sounds has a huge impact on our lives. I wonder if it even effects who we choose as our friends and our mates, who we get along with at work and what kinds of people become our enemy? Heck differences in speaking patterns could even have an impact on our likely political affiliation and the social groups we are willing to associate ourselves with.  These differences may well effect our grades, our social standing, our likelihood to get jobs. It could integrate into everything. Audial biases, conscious and subconscious, may well be one of the least known and least understood biases effecting every day life.

  What do you think? Do you have an audial biases? Have you experienced or observed any in others? How do you think they effect our daily lives? And how do you suppose we both as the noise makers and the noise receivers can work to get past and help conflicts caused by these biases?

  • 11:46 pm
  • 8 Comments