Soundwalk Assignment

For this assignment I decided to sit right outside my apartment building, which is located in the heart of Midtown East on 58^th Street between 2^nd and 3^rd avenue. I felt that this location was a perfect location to listen to the classic sounds of New York City, as its surrounded by a number of restaurants, stores, office buildings, residential buildings, and more. As I sat outside my building on Wednesday afternoon, I was presented with a number of city sounds. The major “keynotes” I heard were people walking by talking to others or people talking on their cell phones. Some people who walked by were listening to music and if you listened carefully enough you could hear the music playing out of peoples headphones. There was construction happening on the block and the sounds you could hear were drills going into the ground, machine engines roaring and beeping, as well as, the construction workers conversing with one another on what to do. Some would even yell down to their co-workers who were located on the other end of the block. Due to the construction, the block consisted of many metal plates on the ground and when cars drive over them you can hear an almost banging sound every time one crossed over. Some “sound signals” I heard that definitely caught my attention and made me look in the direction of where the noise was coming from were cars that would beep at one another while waiting to drive down the block. I was also able to hear many different types of music such as rap, and Spanish music blaring from cars whose windows were down. I also heard the occasional emergency signal from fire trucks, ambulances, and cop cars, which is a staple sound when it comes to popular noises within the city. I feel that for the most part the sounds in which I heard throughout my hour long “soundwalk” were pretty typical for the sounds of the city and were pretty accurate as to what is to be expected on a typical day in NYC.