SF Lunchwalk: Attack and Decay

Four Recent Lunchwalks

Attack and Decay are technical terms known to sound editors and synth musicians, but the concept is also intrinsic to urban walking.  "Attack" is the initial rise of a particular sound and "Decay" is the falling away of the sound from its peak to a normal or "sustained" volume.   Doors open and the clamor of a restaurant rushes out (attack); someone walks in, shutting the door behind them (decay) but listening closely, the sound of the restaurant remains.

If we think of the city as an infinite sound library, the library is perused by walking through it.  Sounds rise and fall and blend together in the great mixing chamber which is the street.  I am interested in the ability of the city to edit its own sound.  The sound-makers engage in the space of the street, all competing to vibrate air molecules.  Air is resilient; like a spring, it receives the initial burst of sound energy and then recoils (decays) until the sound disappears.

Since my last post with sound, I have recorded four hours of sound from four lunch-hour walks, continuing this series where I take a walk through the city instead of eating lunch.  Listening back through the sound recordings, I am pulled in two directions.  One, I have ideas to snip up the recording and reconstruct the walk as an edited soundscape.  The other direction is to isolate only certain moments where it appears as though the city has done the mixing for me.  This latter case is explored in the following track.  Listen:



The track is unedited.  It is simply what I (or the microphones) heard over a 2 minute time-span, using elements of the city (doors cracked open, hills, different sized streets) to "edit" the sound.