Craft of Writing: Audio Noise Filtration Is Your Friend

 Dear Reader,

If you're in a situation like I am, you have a young person in the room with you digging through a bin of blocks, Legos, or something equally obnoxiously noisy despite their very efforts to be quiet. Now, Beloved bought me a pair of noise cancelling headphones. They work alright except for the fact that the sound of my youngest son digging into a bin of Legos manages to be at a pitch that it cuts right through the noise cancelling effect of the headphones by themselves. This is where coming up with some kind of audio noise filtration is vital.

White noise is a popular method. I find it gives me a headache if I listen to it for too long. I use the sound of rain falling on a tin roof at about 85% volume. It gives the effect of sitting on a porch listening to one hell of a rainstorm as someone is doing stuff inside with a window open. There are a ton of playlists that work for background noise to filter out ambient sound. Beloved finds Lo-Fi Hip Hop music playlists to be really helpful at work to cut down on the audio distractions of his environment. There are other writers I know who put on classical music.

There are free resources on the internet that allow you to play an ambient atmosphere on loop that can act as your audio filter. I like www.ambient-mixer.com. That link takes you to the atmosphere that I use the most and find to be the most helpful for keeping me focused. (I confess, I am currently using it because there is the construction of a Great Work in progress by the master builder of the household.) Music streaming services also offer ambient playlists that can help mitigate the noise of the environment. You can stay in the same room as your noise factory and work with the help of the right sound-scape. Just remember to take the headphones off from time to time to check on your environment to prevent you missing something important happening, like the announcement of your child's latest building masterpiece.