I have a clothes line in my yard. The other day, when hanging out the laundry, I noticed an odd sound. After a bit of confusion and exploration, I located the source of the sound as being the cloths line.
I find it very curious that a clothesline can create sound of any kind. I have contemplated this a considerable amount and come to many yet unfounded conclusions. The following is a description of what I see as the components involved in this which creates the unknown sound.
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The clothesline in question is one of those types that utilizes two pulleys at opposing points. This one in particular has a 1/4 inch diameter wove cotton rope, 100 feet long. This makes a 50 foot clothesline that is accessed from one point. In this instance the line is suspended between a cedar post attached to my patio deck on one end and a pine tree at the other end. The rope is quite taught. I have photos of the components which make up this cloths line in the hyperlinked photos on both sides of this paragraph. |
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After discovering this sound and puzzling over its quality for an unmeasured period of time I came to the decision that I had the technology to record the sound the clothesline created. To do this I placed a Shure SM57 microphone mounted on its stand within the space of 1/4 inch from the cedar post which supports the clothesline. The sound can be distinctly received by the microphone from this positioning. The microphone then was attached to a peavey public address system (PA) which is attached to a home computer audio mic in jack on the sound card. With these components I have made a wave recording of the sound. This wave recording I have converted to an MP3 recording to which is now available for the public to hear at the following link MP3. This particular recording has a duration of 8:41 minutes, but actually is two separate recordings, digitally spliced, one following the other.
Below are links to the visual wave form of the sound. I captured the images of the wave form while recording it to my computer. I used Cakewalk Pro Audio software for recording the sound to the computer. I captured the images and cropped them down to exclude all but the wave form and the measurement scale along the two axes. I have found there to be quite a variation in the wave form as presented in both the audio and the visual forms of the sound. The rapid pulse is clearly seen in frame 1_61-73.html.
As to the origin of the sound which seems to be amplified by the tension of the long cotton cord, I have no idea. It is totally a mystery to me. I have contemplated many possibilities. Wind, living trees, deep earth sounds, unknown cosmic resonance, microwave and signal delivered from space are some of the ideas which have come to mind. I have also gone to the far fetched thoughts of aliens, although I do choose to dismiss that as kooky. To me, the most likely candidate seems to be wind. In my observations and monitoring of the clothesline for sound I have found there to be no consistent pattern which follows logic. There may be a correlation with wind. Though I have not monitored it for sound consistently, it seems to me that there is wind of a measurable amount coming from a discernable direction when the sound is present. I have also noted that it can also be silent when there is wind blowing. I have no tools for measuring wind speed or direction. It seems to me that either, both and even neither, could play a roll. The living tree as a contribution seems so unknown and abstract to me that I can comment about it only from a state of ignorance. Then still that holds true for all of the reasons and possibilities herein.
In my home I have a very strange painting. It came up in conversation that this sound we hear could be the figures in the painting trying to communicate their will to be extracted. Again I have to discredit that kind of thought. Here is the painting which I am speaking of. I painted it a couple of years ago.
