I was struggling to fid the right sounds for an assignment this week. So much so that I was still working on it today, the day it’s due. I try to avoid that at all costs, but this week was brutal and it became an unavoidable necessity.
The wind was battering the branches and making the ugly, white, apartment-issue blinds dance and bang against each other and the leaves that rested on our balcony crash into each other constantly. I sat on my front room couch going through various wind sounds on Freesound, cursing everything around me for having to do this on a Sunday, and getting more and more irritated by the insistent squawking and caws of the crows that decided the tree right outside my window was where they were going to have their mid-morning debate. I had been glad that I’d managed to get a decent recording of my post done without the microphone picking up their racket.
Then it dawned on me. I’d used Hocus Pocus for my post. I should re-record it with the wind, leaves, and crows crashing in the background. Or at least try to get the sounds themselves recorded. Of course, as soon as I decide this and open the patio to try my luck, the quarrel has ended and the wind has died down.
So much for that brilliant idea. It did serve as a reminder, though.
Try to absorb what’s around you instead of blocking it out or battling it and you might learn something.
I tend to fight the world around me when I get an idea in my head and anything else is a distraction to be removed. Had I not spent so much time fighting against my surroundings, I would have realized the opportunity in front of me to capture some very original sounds. They may not have been entirely usable or anywhere pro-quality, but my irritation at the world would have been removed entirely and I could have had something very unique for my work. Stop, breathe, and think instead of allowing stress to take over.
References
Hartford Courant/AP Photo. (2020). Crows roost briefly at a staging area at Trout Brook Drive and Exeter Avenue in West Hartford before ultimately heading to the Berry Rosenblatt U.S. Armed Forces Reserve Center on South Quaker Lane [Photograph]. https://www.theday.com/article/20200112/NWS12/200119839
Originally published as part of the Full Sail Mastery Journal.
