Originally posted by Osprey
Tribunada
Squall
Rain sounds are different at your place than they are at mine. We have different gardens, roofs, shades, patios. The range of the sounds is amazing
because there are so many kinds of rain, so many objects for the drops to hit.
My personal rains, the ones at my house, hit the palm thatch roof of my living room, my patio. They pelt the papayas, the arbol de fuego, the big
pistachios, the royal platano de gardin. They beat upon the adokin, the pavers that are my front drive, the large dirt yard, the fountain in my small
garden and they raise a hellious din on the tin roof of my bedroom. Each surface produces a slightly different sound, the slant, speed and volume of
the rain differs from storm to storm, changes each second.
The rare summer showers that slowly creep down from the canyons begin with a hissing sound; barely audible at first because the droplets are so
small, dewlike, just barely visible. Then, as the clouds darken, the drops grow larger, they begin to play their distinctive beat around the place.
The big leaves of the garden banana plant resonate under the pressure of the large drops while the fronds of thatch of the patio roof disperse each
drop, soften what could be a harsh pelting sound to almost a murmur.
As the huge anvil of water in the main part of the rainstorm becomes a dark dome above our village, the rain increases. The drops are huge and fall
with great force to make a mixing of all the sounds that preceded them; the increase in volume becomes another more powerful and furious white noise.
The passing of the clouds is not the end of the opus; the last drops fall from the sky and things begin to make new rhythms as they drip. The
dripping from the thatch hanging down around the patio becomes a rough pattern, each droplet having its own place in the scale, the distance to the
dirt marking the tone, the cadence with more order and finally less sound. Then, when I’m sure I’ve heard the very last drop, a profound and lonely
silence hangs like a pall over a sad and soggy place that, for a few minutes, I don’t quite recognize. |
