The Sound of Wood Paneling
The first night I spent in our house when we bought it, I remember laying awake in the middle of the night listening to the wind scrape tree branches against the stucco walls. Since then I thought I was pretty in tune to the sounds of our house. Then I started to record a radio drama in a make shift studio in the basement. Make shift meaning I hung some blankets and opened sleeping bags, taped old carpet to the walls, and kept the dog upstairs.
The recording went great. Then I started to edit everything together. And the more I played it back, the more I turned it up, the more I heard the way my house really sounded. What was that noise in the middle of the sentence? It was the TV from upstairs bleeding through. That creak wasn’t a part of the vocal performance, it was the wood flooring.
It’s not like I found some paranormal noise the deeper I dug. But I did begin to realize that there’s an advantage to not covering up all the wood paneling in the basement. There’s a slight echo there, and it’s warm. Reassuring. Even though I know it’s not true, I hear that echo and imagine a big, comfortable, soft fabric couch filling up a wood paneled room with shag carpeting. Doesn’t that sound comfortable? Isn’t that the room we’re all trying to evoke when we put conversation to tape?
