Film 116: Essay 1

                 Prompt 1: Murray Schafer describes a hi-fi soundscape as being, “one in which discrete sounds can be heard clearly because of the low ambient noise level,” and a lo-fi soundscape as one in which “individual acoustic signals are obscured in an overdense population of sounds” (Schafer 43). This basically means that in a hi-fi soundscape you can easily hear and identify just about every sound there is around you, while in a lo-fi soundscape, all you can hear is just a jumble of sounds overlapping each other. A good example of a hi-fi soundscape would be the countryside or the middle of the woods. While there aren’t a lot of sounds to hear in these environments, each sound is very distinct and easy to make out, the wind blowing through the trees, the birds chirping at the crack of dawn, wild animals ruffling through the bushes, and so on. As for a lo-fi soundscape, such as the middle of a city, it would be impossible to hear any of the discrete sounds like the ones from the countryside because there would just be too many other sounds fighting for dominance. 

                   Prompt 2: In his book, Schafer recalls a few sounds he remembers from back in his youth that occurred on his family’s farm. However, the only sound he describes as being a soundmark of his youth is the sound of churning butter (Schafer 48). One soundmark I remember from my own youth is the sound of a passing train blowing its horn every night as I laid in my Georgia bed. While the sound of a passing train itself is very loud, the train was far enough away so that instead of it being a nuisance, it was instead a very calming sound that helped me sleep. Every night when I heard that train horn it was as if the train was saying “good night!” “sleep tight!” and now, whenever I hear a train in the distance all I can think of is me back in my old bed drifting off to sleep.