What is your favorite sound?

[skippercollector]

This is a question I seldom if ever hear asked, or read in a questionnaire, or mentioned in a poll.
You get asked all the time about your choices in music. And there are all sorts of quasi-scientific studies out there asking about color, weather, TV shows and movies, etc. But not this one. It's not for a study, and I'm not asking about your favorite songs or performers. I just wonder if others had ever thought about this simple question.
What is your favorite sound, or series of sounds? Something you hear occasionally that instantly relaxes you, or brings back pleasant memories, or even makes you smile.
These are some of mine, in no particular order:
1. Jet cruising at 30,000 feet overhead
2. Bobwhite quail on a hot summer afternoon
3. Cat purring

[ZombieHorde]

1. Fans, rain, and people fleeing in fear from a zombie attack. nt

[NJCher]

2. what a cool question

Wind chimes.

Cat purring is right up there at the top with me, too.

Also, for some reason I find orchestra warm ups to be comforting.

I've got another one but I have to look it up. BBL.


Cher

[tularetom]

3. I sorta like that "dunk-dunk" thing they do on "Law & Order"

[doc03]

4. Tree frogs on a summer evening n/t

[lastlib]

30. Frogs in spring!

Nothing says spring like that!!

[virgogal]

5. Mourning doves and rain on the roof at bedtime.

[BlueJazz]

6. Xylophone

[PearliePoo2]

7. some of my very favorites are:

a babbling brook (seriously!)
frogs croaking
crickets
owls hooting
and I actually enjoy the "caw- caw" of crows!

[doc03]

9. I like crows too. This is probably weird but the crows on the sound track

of the Ken Burns Civil War series sticks in my mind.

[mia]

8. The wind singing through Australian Pines.

There's nothing like it.

[LASlibinSC]

10. nice question

Rain on a tin roof, purring. Mama humming

[ret5hd]

11. This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RzTrDbs0n08#t=178s

[Scuba]

34. Ouch.

[canoeist52]

12. Loon calls always stop me in my tracks.

[Curmudgeoness]

13. Crickets on a summer evening

Cooing doves
Breeze in a forest
The first peeper frogs in spring
And the sound of silence in a woods far from away from any of the "normal" manmade noise
And of course, a cat purring

[rocktivity]

14. A Fender as played through a Marshall stack

rocktivity

[laconicsax]

15. A few of mine:

Janet Baker's voice.
Johnny Hodges' sound.
Rich Perry's sound.
CSO brass (especially the period after Charlie Vernon came on and before Herseth retired)
Eddie Daniels' clarinet sound.
That old-school symphonic clarinet tone like Stanley Drucker or Larry Combs had.
Medium range cluster chords.
Fender Rhodes

[longship]

24. Ooo! Janet Baker's voice!

Pure top of the cream!

Purcell's Dido and Aeneas "When I am laid to earth..."

Here it here (I hope): " target="_blank">Janet Baker Video

If link doesn't work just Google "Janet Baker Dido" and you'll find it.

Enjoy!

Her Schubert is the best, too.

[undergroundpanther]

16. incredibly cute cat coos&chirps

thunder,birds,wind through leaves, a single as in 1cicada doing his mating call/buzz-chirp noise (it's really a cool sound and each cicada has his own voice bass,soprano and everything in between) big cat sounds,and the sounds of wolves

[Warpy]

17. Oh, I have several

Cat purring
Birdsong

Believe it or not, sirens. They remind me I'm in the inner city and that's where I always want to be.

[EC]

18. A saxaphone

and motor cycles.

[laconicsax]

23. *saxophone

[saras]

19. All sounds are boring, eventually. The process of getting there is fascinating.

Favorites is a weird concept... one of my favorites is the noise that I've never heard anything like THAT before...
Marc Bolan's voice
Javanese court gamelan
Multiple cats purring around one's head
The sound of people working on household tasks without conversation, media, or machines
The wind blowing through long wires that hum
Explosions in complex reverberant spaces
Calves playing (moo doesn't BEGIN to do it justice)
Really low notes on pipe organs
Water in a fast creek with boulders
Complex rhythmic machines (an Artos wire stripper from the 20s was the best drum machine I've EVER heard, bar none)

I'm a noise junkie. There are very few sounds I don't like (the thing about nails on blackboards is that the ultrasonics are at ear-splitting volume - tame the sound in a recording studio and it's pretty cool, like rubbing balloons), with the possible exception of drum loops, synth sounds programmed by people without subtlety of discernment, and devices like motorcycles and leaf blowers that are designed to be noisy for adolescent male reasons. (obviously all motorcycles are not like this, and some loud ones, like dragsters, have to be, but if you know motorcycles, you know the difference between an expansion chamber tuned for torque, high-speed horsepower, or sheer volume.)

And talk radio. Hatred is an understatement. I would kick over a whole row of Hell's Angels' Harleys to make talk radio shut up. It doesn't matter who, or what they say - it's the same voice they use in a lot of ads. That voice where, if a real person talked like that to your face, you'd knee them in the gonads without a second thought.

[larkrake]

20. wind chimes

[limpyhobbler]

21. mig welding, metal grinder, jet engine, guitar feedback, ocean waves, babbling brook, rain forest

[longship]

22. Bach, or Mozart

Bach: Almost anything by him, but I like Goldberg Variations ( 1955 Gould recording is my favorite), St. Matthew Passion, "Coffee Cantata", Suites for solo cello, and so much more.

Mozart: Le Nozze do Figaro (Giulini recording from the early 60's, with a really great cast and wonderful orchestral interpretation.), his Piano Concertos are revolutionary, the piano sonata with the "alla turca" finale (w/o "blue rondo" ). Don Giovanni (Giulini is again a recommendation).

Bela Bartok, especially Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste. As Charles Ives said, "Shut up, and take your dissonances like a man."

A lot of other opera.

[BlueIris]

25. 1. Train whistle in the distance.

2. Kitten meow.

3. (Human) Baby coo.

4. Rain on leaves.

5. Water rippling/lapping.

[PearliePoo2]

28. A train whistle of course!

Growing up in a 3 generation railroad family...how could I have forgotten that one!!
dah...dah...di...daaaah (Required whistle at road crossings or as my Dad liked to say, "Pay-day To-day!)
Soulful multi-chord whistle always gives me goosebumps!

[Dead_Parrot]

26. "Quad Damage"

[Javaman]

27. I have two...

Current one and one I will never hear again.

the current one is the sounds my dog makes when he sleeps.

The other is the sound of the door opening and closing on my grandparents house. A very unique sound. Last time I heard it was about 35 years ago. I miss that sound.

[Orsino]

29. Helicopter blades.

[PearliePoo2]

38. Good one!!

Bye-Bye Bushies!

[RagAss]

31. One hand clapping.

[HereSince1628]

32. My car starting at -25 F. otherwise Bobolink song or Sandhill Crane trumpeting

Honestly, I thought about that for a while...

[Scuba]

36. Yeah, the engine firing on a cold day is a sure winner!

[skippercollector]

33. purring

A number of you mentioned a cat's purr. I think the fact that we humans like it is as much physical as it is aural*. We can feel the little engine running as we hold the cat, and it is very pleasant and calming.


*Don't know if I've ever used the word "aural" in a sentence before!

[Scuba]

35. In no particular order: Laughter, spoken foreign language....

...drop-D Tuning, Barack Obama speaking, cat purring, baby cooing, owl hoots.

[PearliePoo2]

37. My Mother singing softly or humming while preparing dinner.

Her pleasant voice told us kids that at that moment, everything was just fine in the world.

[Codeine]

39. The sound of rotary-engine airplanes.

We live near several small airports where old planes come and go as well as being in the flight area of a few air shows each year. I love the sound of old planes buzzing slowly across the sky.

Also, there was a certain kind of telephone ringtone that the phones in Waldenbooks (or maybe B. Dalton's) used to have back in the 80s, a kind of "riiiing-bleep-boop-boop" sound that, for me, was the soundtrack of hanging around paging through books for hours when I was a kid.

[ThingsGottaChange]

40. Red-winged Blackbirds n/t

[fizzgig]

41. great question

i love the sound of water, any kind. rain, streams, rivers, the ocean. the brr noise my little gray cat makes when i wake her out of a deep sleep. the birds chattering in the morning. the sound of the city.

[skippercollector]

42. regarding the cat purring

Mutts,
April 25, 2012
[link:http://twitpic.com/9fb7zh|