# Favourite sounds survey...



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

There's recently been a survey in the UK about people's favourite sounds. & also their least favourite ones.

Article here, some of the results from it below: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...-crashing-waves-are-our-favourite-sounds.html

TOP 10 MOST LOVED SOUNDS

1.Waves against rocks

2.Rain against the windows

3.Treading on snow

4.Baby laughing

5.Birds chirping

6.Crackling open fire

7.People laughing

8.Leaves crunching beneath your feet

9.Cat purring

10.Church bells in the distance

TOP 10 MOST HATED SOUNDS

1.Nails on a chalk board

2.Someone being sick

3.Car alarm

4.A dentist's drill

5.Someone spitting

6.A yapping dog

7.Screaming baby/children

8.Someone talking with their mouth full

9.Someone grinding their teeth

10.Someone's knife grinding on a plate

Firstly, what are your favourite and least favourite sounds? Do they differ or correspond with the results of this survey?

Additionally, I put this in the classical music discussion section (and not the general "chat" section) to discuss this list in terms of relating these things to issues to do with classical music. I will leave it open for discussion/debate but its obvious that people prefer natural and gentle sounds to mechanical or harsh ones, generally speaking. Does this have connections or implications to the music you like or don't like? Or the different types of music and their different aims and aesthetics? (eg. more traditional things versus more experimental things like electronic musics?).


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I found this interesting because "waves against the rocks" is a sound informed by socialist ideology, which is evident in the UK. If you did this poll in America it would be a more traditional sound with better, more wholesome values.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I pretty much agree with the most hated sounds list. It's partially association, of course (dentist's drill with pain, baby crying with unpleasant emotions), but most of those sounds are shrill and screechy and thus almost always unpleasant.

As for a favorite sound, how about wind through trees? I'm surprised it isn't on the list.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Well Cnote, maybe your theory works relating to Vaughan Williams, composer of the Sea Symphony, who was apparently a Fabian socialist. But we're on the internet, which is Alice in Wonderland territory (through the looking glass). What I should have posted is some academic's dissertation positing the reverse of the survey's results. People naturally don't like waves, they prefer a dentist's drill.

Anyway, forget it, I'm just offering something for people to think about. That's it.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Like (love): Birdsong, trees rustling, the way the atmosphere sounds in Winter (I don't know if that means anything to anyone else), thunder storms, machinery, the sound of biting in to an apple, cutting the crust of freshly baked bread, general water/liquid sounds, the sound of cold water hitting a really hot frying pan, the sound of my own footsteps in a "reverberous" environment. I could sit here all day listing them as they come to me, but off the top of my head that's a good one.

Dislike (hate): Babies, other people eating, obnoxiously loud cars and other motorised vehicles, obnoxiously loud music emanating from shops and passing cars or people with phones, people talking on the phone, dogs barking, dragonflies and indeed any flying insect that buzzes loudly with the exception of bees.

So generally I don't like sounds made by people and insects.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> I found this interesting because "waves against the rocks" is a sound informed by socialist ideology, which is evident in the UK. If you did this poll in America it would be a more traditional sound with better, more wholesome values.


Where on earth did you pick up that extraordinary bit of psychobabble? Remenber that the UK is a maritime nation., apart from that you couldn't find anyone more right wing than me and I love the sound of waves.
A yapping dog is the worst---wretched things!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^It was only a joke moody, you might not have been here in recent days, but I've been criticising left wing ideology to do with music (did a thread on it). Cnote was lampooning that and I did indeed overreact.

As for myself, I think that waves crashing on the beach/shore is definitely a sound I like. Not only in terms of the thing itself, but walking along the beach with someone special that type of thing (cliche yes but "memories are made of this" as they say).

I'd add to the list of least favourite sounds the sound of various gardening machinery (eg. lawn mowers, and those things that shred wood and spit out woodchips). Oh, and building sites (jackhammers, sledgehammers, those big drills, circular saws, etc.)...


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Well, it isn't you alone, Sid. There just has been a good number of ideology in music threads/posts around here by a large number of posters. It has been rather contagious! I don't mind it, but I thought it got funny when it felt like there was a new one popping up every time I refreshed the page. Hell, they get a lot of responses and give me something to read. Although, I could probably read something a bit more productive. Ah well...

I don't mind car alarms but I detest the sound of alarm clocks. I really like the sound of rainforests. I don't understand people's fascinations with the babies. I also like the sound of warm, crackling vinyl. A lot of sounds don't really annoy me.


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## Guest (Dec 31, 2012)

I note that the pouring of wine made it in to the liked list, but not the pouring of tea or coffee. Curiously, I dislike the sound of pouring tea, though I don't know why.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mosquitoes in/near my ear - that would be the #2 hate for me, and is not listed at all (#1 is babies/children crying or screaming). Many of the top 10 pleasant sounds do not give me a pleasant association at all - then again, I would be hard pressed to list any sound other than music that I like that pleases me.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> I found this interesting because "waves against the rocks" is a sound informed by socialist ideology, which is evident in the UK. If you did this poll in America it would be a more traditional sound with better, more wholesome values.


I am informed by good old Sid that this was a joke--so excuse me won't you?
Next time stick a label on saying, "Joke coming!" then I'll know.
I didn't look at the thread in question--Sid says he over reacted having just made a 
New Year resolution not to do so!
Babies crying are a pain,but as many of us have had babies and many of us will have,it is one of those unavoidable things in life.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Sid James said:


> There's recently been a survey in the UK about people's favourite sounds. & also their least favourite ones.
> 
> Article here, some of the results from it below: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...-crashing-waves-are-our-favourite-sounds.html
> 
> ...


All sweet sounds i lke
Ugly sounds should include this...







Ouch


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Outside musical instruments.


Like

1. Thunder
2. Elephant's voice (is like horn!)
3. Mechanical instruments/structures (hammer, saw, windmill, watermill)
4. A rooster singing
5. Waves sound
6. Baby laughing 
7. Sword Fighting (with real men's sword though!)
8. Church bells from distance
9. Some birds singing

Dislike

1. Crying/shouting that is called sort of "singing". 
2. Car alarm
3. Coughing - Cleaning noise/mouth 
4. Drill (all kinds)
5. Scratching Nails on a blackboard
6. Flies/Mosquitos
7. Aeroplane's Jet noises
8. Dogs or Cats voices during the night
9. The sounds created in a toilette...!


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Sounds I like: Wind in the trees, wind in the grass and bushes, that sort of windless breath that you can hear when it's really silent and not windy at all, but you can hear something which is the wind (I like wind, by the way ).

I dislike any noise after about 1am, noises that intrude into my room - drills, people talking outside etc. - the sounds of other people laughing and having fun when I can't (I'm a generous person, I know)...


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The list provided by Sid James (I like the irony of his namesake avatar wearing a wig...) is a survey I can pretty much identify with. One dislike I would add is 'shouty' ads on TV - the current one I hate features a northern bloke with a terrible 'bald on the top/long at the back' hairstyle but I can't remember what the ad is for. Drills are best kept to albums by the likes of Einsturzende Neubauten.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I LOVE bells. I wanna go to Russia to hear those famed bells so alluded to in their classical music. I don't like wind chimes too much though, just if I can hear them temporarily, and not as a permanent fixture.

I love almost all sounds of nature too, wind in the trees, rain, thunder, rivers and streams, the ocean.

I like little critter sounds too: chirping birds, crickets, a squirrel whining somewhere, an owl hooting, a fox crying.

I like the sound of echoes too, whether it's being in a valley or mountaintop that echoes, or in a large building like a cathedral.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Yes, I love bells as well. I also love the sound of a city and life outside of my window.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> I found this interesting because "waves against the rocks" is a sound informed by socialist ideology, which is evident in the UK. If you did this poll in America it would be a more traditional sound with better, more wholesome values.


This made me lol


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

"TOP 10 MOST LOVED SOUNDS...........7.People laughing"

This one really really depends on the person....


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Yes, indeed. I find some of these a little too variable.

I like the sound of violent storms on the sea!


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I like all the sounds in Xenakis' Mycenae Alpha.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I LOVE bells. I wanna go to Russia to hear those famed bells so alluded to in their classical music...
> ...


Its central to Russian music for sure. I read that Rachmaninov's inspiration kind of dried up in large part due to leaving the Russian soil. He was surrounded by things like those onion domed churches with those bells. Not hard to hear it in his music - from the opening of the 2nd piano concerto (bells tolling in the distance) to of course his tone poem 'the bells' and even in a capella choral, his vespers have vocal imitations of bell sounds.

To extend on my last paragraph in my opening post, I think sounds like that do inspire composers. At the back of Sibelius' house (Ainola) is a wooded forest apparently where he would go on daily walks. Maybe he felt the presence there of the mythical spirit-god of the forest, Tapio, before he wrote Tapiola? Its hard to separate these things from the music, when they are imaged like that in the music...


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I don't really have a sound that I don't like...apart from that high screech of brakes in cars that need to be serviced. Drives me up the wall!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I don't really have a sound that I don't like...apart from that high screech of brakes in cars that need to be serviced. Drives me up the wall!


Seriously, I'm the same there. Taxis (cabs) seem to be the worst offenders regarding that here.


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