In Schaffer’s “The Rural Soundscape,” he mentions that the hand-operated pump “snaps into memory as a soundmark of [his] youth” (Schaffer 48). He mentions a variety of sounds present on the farm he was raised, some of them bright and intense (the screams of sleigh runners), some of them signals (the gong that signaled dinner), and some of them rhythmic (the whirring of the windmill). Yet, it was the pump, which “at the time [he] listened to carelessly” (Schaffer 48) which seems to be the most vibrant keynote in his mind. I imagine the pump to be rather innocuous. The only signal it must have given him was that butter was being made. When the pumping began, it wasn’t a call to action. When the pumping ending, there would be no immediate result.
It’s funny that seemingly meaningless sounds come to be the ones we remember. I guess this has to do with regularity, giving sounds the status of a keynote. A soundmark from my childhood was the mechanical humming and screeching that occurred when using dial-up internet. It was a sound I would hear when myself or a family member logged on to the web (or if I picked up the phone while the internet was in use). Though it would sound abrasive if I heard it now, at the time, it barely even registered in my mind. I’m going to again stress regularity: I heard this sound at least once a day, if not multiple times. It became a keynote in my household. Something familiar and nostalgic, but largely ignored at the time.
