Personal Narrative: My Listening Journal

My listening journal begins with hearing water splash onto the beach repeatedly, with sets louder splashes preceding smaller splashes until another set of louder splashes appears. With the water splashing in the background, I hear the sound of several engines passing by me, with some quieter and father away, and some louder, and much closer to me. The engine “buzzing” starts out quiet, then grows louder and louder until it starts to die out, until eventually I can only hear what is happening on the beach again. This includes the sound of dogs barking and children playing around me, sometimes startling me because they are so close. The buzzing of some insects also sneaks up on me because it happens at random intervals, in many different
places around me. The sound is also unlike any of the others because it is so much louder, because it is so much closer. It took some time for me to notice it, because the sound did not occur very often. In the background of all of this, there is random conversation between people and different kinds of music playing on the beach. The several types of music make it confusing to distinguish one song from the others. All of the sounds quiet down as I walk down the beach, and away from everyone else there. The crashing of the waves gets louder and more frequent, so does the insect noise. As I move around different boats on the beach, I can hear some types of music get louder, as others get quieter, with the changing of some peoples’ voices. The sound of waves was pretty constant throughout the whole experience though. Overall, I listened to a lot of different kinds and volumes of noises, each one distinct, yet most of the time complimenting one another to make the sounds of the beach enjoyable.