{"id":1746,"date":"2010-10-02T14:42:01","date_gmt":"2010-10-02T21:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/?p=1746"},"modified":"2010-10-03T21:55:27","modified_gmt":"2010-10-04T04:55:27","slug":"san-franciscos-quiet-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/2010\/10\/02\/san-franciscos-quiet-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco’s Quiet Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On this day, the City was quieter at 1pm than it was at dawn.<\/p><\/div>\n

I work in San Francisco. It’s one of the world’s great urban centers. Imagine my surprise when I took the subway to the financial district and walked for two full blocks and heard…well, not much.<\/p>\n

It was 1pm just off the Financial District on a weekday, and I heard almost no talking, no horns, and very few “hard sounds.” All that came to my ears was the occasional footsteps of a non-talkative passerby, the sound of a water jug being put on a hand truck, and of course traffic. There was plenty of sound, sure, but it was a wash of hushed tones, very diffuse and distant voices, nothing jarring like you’d expect near one of the great cities of the American West. On lunch hour, no less.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example. I’m walking this whole clip, but wearing my quietest shoes (my sweet camo Chuck Taylors<\/a>, if you must know), so any footsteps you hear are passers-by. This kind of hushed background ambience would be a great layer to which more specific hard effects could be added to achieve a certain mood.<\/p>\n

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\n [Zoom H2 recorder]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I work in San Francisco. It’s one of the world’s great urban centers. Imagine my surprise when I took the subway to the financial district and walked for two full blocks and heard…well, not much. It was 1pm just off the Financial District on a weekday, and I heard almost no talking, no horns, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[180,9,10,182,321,18,181],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1746"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1856,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1746\/revisions\/1856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}