As I sit down to write this blog JP – my other half – is randomly instructing Siri to play whatever piece of music comes into his head.  Siri – resident in a globule-shaped speaker which sits in the centre of the room and lights up – obliges.  I considered taking myself and my laptop off to a quieter room to write then it struck me that me this scenario perfectly illustrates what this post is about – the links between sound and emotion. As each track comes on, I have an emotional reaction.

There’s a strong connection between sound, music, emotion and memory and it’s often very personal – although responses to certain sounds, like laughter or a baby crying, are universal. People the world over, I’m told, find the patter of gentle rain soothing, whereas reaction to the sound of thunder varies wildly between excitement to terror. Personally, I love a good thunderstorm.

The sound of a train in the distance at night takes me right back to early childhood, lying in my room listening to locomotives chugging along the old Somerset & Dorset branch line which ran through our village. I found the sound – and the idea of people travelling to unknown destinations while I was tucked up in bed – comforting. By contrast, road traffic noise at night makes me anxious, perhaps reminding me of when I lived next to a main road in Manchester. I was alone in a strange city starting a new job. The traffic kept going all day, all night, keeping me from sleep.

For this week’s writing exercise, we explored the connection between sound and emotion through a series of sound clips. Here’s a couple recorded on my phone:

So here’s the exercise:

Part 1

• Listen to the sound clips – you can use the ones above, use your own examples or pick a few from this site http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk
•  Note whether the sounds evoke any emotion, mood or memory
• Choose a clip that appeals to you
• Play it again
• Do a freewrite prompted by the sound – see where it takes you.

Part 2 

• Are there any sounds you remember which have strong associations for you? These might remind you of a particular time in your life, a place, or a certain person.
• Try and conjour up that sound from memory (or google it!)
• Note your emotions and write.

Description of sound enhances setting and makes for vivid writing, as this  excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway illustrates:

“Music began clanging against the rocks up here. It is a motor horn down in the street, he muttered; but up here it cannoned from rock to rock, divided, met in shocks of sounds which rose in smooth columns (that music should be visible was a discovery) and became an anthem, an anthem twined round now by a shepherd boy’s piping (That’s an old man playing a penny whistle by the public-house, he muttered) which as the boy stood still came bubbling from his pipe, and then, as he climbed higher, made its exquisite plaint while the traffic passed beneath. This boy’s elegy is played among the traffic, thought Septimus.” 

For anyone interested in the science behind why we react the way we do to certain sounds, there’s more info here:  https://www.brightaudiology.com/6-ways-your-brain-transforms-sound-into-emotion/