Ralph Ellison describes that in his NYC apartment building, music has put him in a dilemma. For example, while the sound of his neighbor disturbs him, he also cannot complain about it due to him being the same when he was younger. By the first sentence, “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise…,” he means that during those days, it was either enjoy the music, take it in and admire it, or consider the music as just an annoying noise and let it disrupt your peace. Schafer and Ellison both seem to be of the same opinion that sounds are something all around us.

1. Ralph Ellison stated that as a child, he sang awfully and frequently, but now his neighbor sings awfully out loud just like him and it makes him hesitant to call the police. Both her and the jazzmen reminds him of the desire to express an affirmative way of life through musical tradition. But when his neighbor does sign well he says he will become upset that he wouldn’t be able to type so well again after they stop. He had also created a music system that would attempt to override the signing noise from his neighbor, but it could also be used to record quality sound as well. Then as time passed, he started to use music less as a defense and more as a way to control his mood and memory.
2. What I believe live with music or die with noise means is that you can choose to listen to music which can uplift your mood or spirit, “Art thou troubled? Music will not only calm, it will ennoble thee” or you can drown in the endless stream of city noise-pollution.
3. During Ellison’s time in New York, and the 1970s New York that Krukowski talked about had some similarities. Music from different cultures poured into atmosphere and no would merge together, people were more willing to interpenetrate through each other’s world, and it wasn’t easy to simply put on headphones and listen to your own sound waves in order to block the incoming noise.

1. The difference between hearing and listening is that while listening, you are actively taking in the information or meaning of what you’re hearing. But if only hearing and not listening as well, one isn’t taking in or trying to understanding the meaning or information of what is being heard. People can simply hear a noise without putting any thought to it, or actually try to understand what they’re hearing. Perhaps if one thinks something they’re hearing has valuable information or meaning, they might listen to it. Structural features can inform how we listen, because our personal biases and so on might effect how we’re taking in the information or understanding the meaning behind it.
2. Schafer and Krukowski discuss the relationship between sound and space by speaking about how sound is something always around us, weather we realize it or not. Sound of one’s breath, environment, such as birds, people talking, traffic, etc. Sound is in the air.

In “Living with Music,” Ralph Ellison describes how music affects his living experience so badly. He describes at the beginning how all this noise around him was so annoying. He couldn’t write anything because he could barely hear his thoughts. From his own words, he said:

To our right, separated by a thin wall, was a small restaurant with a juke box the size of the Roxy. To our left, a night-employed swing enthusiast who took his lullaby music so loud that every-morning promptly at nine Basie’s brasses started blasting my typewriter off its stand. Our living room looked out across a small backyard to a rough stone wall to an apartment building which, towering above, caught every passing thoroughfare sound and rifled it straight down to me. (Ralph Ellison 227)

He describes all the separate noises, and we can tell (if we have experience in a neighborhood like this) that the noises themselves aren’t so annoying. Each of the sounds has basically a little art and story behind them. What I mean is, when a person is singing, maybe this person isn’t good at it, but she or he could be singing with such a passion that it makes you think that, in some ways, it is beautiful how the person is giving herself or himself a chance to dream. At the end, he tells us how he feels that the Oklahoma days weren’t so bad at all. He mentions that they were “glorious”. Such a pain he couldn’t figure out early. Now he lives with nostalgia (a good friend of mine).

A type of comparation that I can make within Ellison’s essay and Episode 2 of Damon Krukowski’s is the relevance of the noises. They have this “annoying” experience, but each of them thinks differently. Meanwhile, Krukowski thinks how each person’s bubble of sound is causing people not to socialize as much as in the old days. Ellison thinks and had the experience that in the end, each person’s bubble becomes one.

Ralph Ellison talks about how hearing and listening to music was almost everyday thing in his nyc apartment. Ellison describes himself as constantly under the attack of noise as hes in his apartment. One of his neighbors would play music and it brought him back to when he was a kid and played instruments.  When he moved away he realized how much he missed hearing his neighbors music.  When he says “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise” he is trying to say that music was such a common thing back then that you expected to be listening to music everyday as it became a part of everyday life. Ellisons essay and Damon Krukowski’s Ways Of Hearing have some similarities, one of them is the importance of sound which carries over to the aspect of listening to that sound. In Ellisons case its listening to music and growing up around it for him.

The difference between “hearing” and “listening” is that “hearing” is more to do with the physiological act of hearing sounds and that sounds you hear are random. For example, you hear someone talking on the street, but you may not focus on the content of the talk. “Listening” means paying attention to the sound, and you make an understanding of the sound. Moreover, we will make choices about what we listen to. People usually choose to listen to things which they are interested in or are important to them. Sometimes, structural features will inform how we listen. For example, when we hear someone of the same race speaking on the street, we prefer to listen to the sounds we are familiar with over others. There are some other structural elements that can affect our listening experiences like mood, weather, and position.

Schafer and Krukowski believe that there is a close connection between sound and space. In other words, sounds can describe what’s happening in space at that moment. Krukowski says “Listening has a lot to do with how we navigate space” which means when we listen to some sounds, and these sounds are on the space will tell us what’s going on. Krukowski also mentions that people wear headphones to keep some noisy sounds outside their ear, and it is the way to run from ears contact. However, even when people use headphones to isolate themselves from external sounds they are still in their own space. Schafer shows that the sounds may come from the environment around us, but the sources of sounds are varied.

1.The distinction between hearing and listening is that we can hear but sometimes perceive nothing more like background noise without much thinking, whereas listening you’re being attentive to each word and evaluating what is being said. We make the decision about what we listen to. For example if someone was to give a speech in a” silly shirt” or “funny hair” any form of a distraction can lead to misinterpretation  and  just obstruct the whole listening process instead of focusing on the substance of the topic/person rather than the appearance.

2.Shafer and Krujowski believed there was a connection between space and sound, They believed most of the time when you hear background noise you don’t pay close attention as in what’s being said which can have a negative impact as Scafer explains. Scafer believes sound comes from culture and environment, and by not paying close attention to noise can impact on our everyday activities and even beliefs. Krukowski’s Opposition was that  technology was affecting people’s social interaction because of how much technology time people were consuming, and people miss out on information, new conversations,new relationships, etc.

In “Living with Music,” how does Ralph Ellison describe how music affects his living experience in his New York City apartment building?

What does he mean by the first sentence of the piece? (“In those days it was either live with music or die with noise…”)

Can you think of points of comparison between Ellison’s essay and either R. Murray Schafer’s “The Soundscape” or Episode 2 of Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing?

The difference between hearing and listening is that hearing is just noticing words that are put out there without giving them much thought, while listening is paying close attention to each word and analyzing what is said. We make choices about what we listen to through our lives. People tend to guide themselves by very well-known characters in media or citizens who have experience and high education levels or even wealthiness because it gives them a sensation of credibility due to their status. The government or celebrities can also influence people due to the support and loyalty they give to them.

Shafer and Krukowski explained that the relationship between space and sound is represented differently, reflecting our environment and what we are trying to express. But now, since things are changing and technology is advancing, new ways of interpreting these relationships have been created. It doesn’t change the fact that we prioritize the public spaces surrounding us due to the influence of audio. Still, it works differently, like digital media generates specific sounds that disconnect us from the worldmaking us focus on what’s in front of us. They think it can also be harmful because the more the technology evolves, the fewer skills we develop.