Pathway 04 · Soundscapes

Sketch a Journey in Sound

Every place has a sound signature. Learn to hear it, then distil it into a few whistled notes you can carry home like a postcard.

Where “Soundscape” Comes From

The Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer popularised the word “soundscape” through the World Soundscape Project, founded at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver in the late 1960s. His book The Tuning of the World (1977) asked readers to treat the whole sonic environment as a composition worth hearing carefully.

Schafer offered three useful terms. Keynote sounds are the background you stop noticing: wind, traffic, surf. Signals are foreground sounds meant to be heard, like bells or horns. Soundmarks are sounds unique to a community, the acoustic equivalent of a landmark.

Soundmarks Worth a Detour

In 1996 Japan’s Ministry of the Environment selected the “100 Soundscapes of Japan”, including the rustle of the Sagano bamboo grove in Kyoto’s Arashiyama district. Elsewhere, think of Big Ben’s chimes over Westminster, the tram bells of Lisbon’s route 28, or the call to prayer drifting over Istanbul from many minarets at once.

Bioacoustician Bernie Krause, author of The Great Animal Orchestra (2012), divides natural soundscapes into biophony (living creatures), geophony (wind, water, earth) and anthrophony (human-made sound). Try identifying all three on a single walk.

Take a Soundwalk

Composer Hildegard Westerkamp, a member of the World Soundscape Project, helped develop the soundwalk: a walk where listening is the whole purpose. It is a personal exercise, and it suits any destination.

Route stop A · Ten silent minutes

Walk slowly without headphones or conversation. Notice what you hear before what you see.

Route stop B · Name the layers

Jot down one keynote, one signal and, if you find one, a soundmark. Note whether each is high or low, steady or rhythmic.

Route stop C · Find a pitch

Many signals have a clear pitch: a bell, a ferry horn, a bird call. Hum it, then whistle it softly. Use a tuner app if you want to log the note name.

Route stop D · Find a rhythm

Footsteps on cobbles, waves on shingle, a train over rail joints — tap the pattern on your leg and count it.

Compose a Sound Postcard

Combine the pitch and rhythm you found into a motif of three to six notes. A tram bell’s note plus the clatter rhythm of the rails might become a short, bouncy figure. A bamboo grove’s hush might suggest a slow falling line.

Write the contour as a line in your notebook, with the place and date. Whistle it every day for a week; it will settle into memory and bring the place back when you need it.

Your postcard is your own creation — label it that way if you share it, so nobody mistakes it for a local tradition.

Recording with Care

A phone recording helps check your memory later. Record places, not private conversations; avoid capturing identifiable voices or performances without consent; and respect signs forbidding recording in museums, churches and concert halls. In many countries, filming people in some settings carries legal restrictions, so when in doubt, listen instead.

Film soundtracks show how powerful a whistled motif can be: the whistling in Ennio Morricone’s scores for Sergio Leone’s westerns, performed by Alessandro Alessandroni, still conjures open landscapes. Your postcard can do the same, on a smaller scale.

Next: questions before you whistle Share a sound postcard