The beauty of sound
I’ve been going to the local basketball courts every morning for the last year or so for a couple hours each day. I started by shooting 100 three-pointers every day and tracking my progress. One day I decided to shoot a second 100 shots. Now I am to the point where I shoot three sets of 100 three pointers as a standard practice. I’ve done five sets a handful of times.
That is not important to this article. Neither are the results. I make an average of about 30% of my shots which I think is pretty good for a 51-year-old who can only elevate about two inches off the ground. I work up a good sweat. I like to think I am burning some fat. But is that enough motivation to get me to go out every morning and play.
It got me thinking- why do I do this every day? Why haven’t I gotten bored with it? I tend to get bored with things very easily. Hence, I like to say I go through phases, but, in reality, I just get bored of doing the same things over and over. So why do I keep going to shoot 100, 200, 300, or even 500 three-pointers every morning.
I wrote in another article about how I took to filming myself on my phone to spice things up a little bit. I spoke about the visual stimulation of seeing myself succeed. I talked about having those videos, literally, in my pocket in case I ever viewed myself as a failure. I could watch these videos and say to myself, “Hey, look, you don’t always fail.” Although, now that got me thinking that I do fail 7 out of 10 times when I shoot, but let’s not think about that.
What I like to focus on is the 30% of shots I do make. Yes, I will edit out the misses and only show the made shots to make it look like I hit 100% of them, and some are very from very far out. It makes me feel like Steph Curry.
But beyond that, there is something else that keeps me playing. I discovered I am in love with the audio stimulation of hearing the ball go cleanly through the net - a sound which I refer to as a “twick” or a "swoosh." For me, it is one of the sweetest sounds in the world.
To get the perfect twick, or swoosh, you need a few things. Of course, the shot itself has to be perfect. The ball has to come in at the perfect trajectory to not touch the rim at all. However, a good rattle home is effective as well to my ears, when the ball will bounce (“rattle’) back between the back rim and the front rim a few times before dropping through. But a twick is a purer, more accurate shot.
The second thing you need to achieve the perfect sound is the right net. There can be no tears or holes in the net. I hate when the net has a hole in it and you make a beautiful shot and there is absolutely no sound because the ball went cleanly through the hole. Sometimes you can’t even tell if the ball went in or if it was an air ball. How much fun is that? I have purposely refused to play on a court if it has a ripped net.
The net also can’t be too small or too tight. The ball needs to be able to go through unencumbered. It can’t struggle to fall through the net. It can’t nestle into the net and then be dropped down gently like a baby into a mother's arms. No, the ball needs to go through the net like a race car whooshing by a pit team.
It is that sound I live for every day. And it proves the power of sound. As I write this, I am listening to some meditation music/sounds on my TV. It is soothing. And it drowns out the negativity of traffic sounds, or lawn mowers, or dogs barking, or neighbors arguing.
Sound improves everything. That is why soundtracks are so important to movies. A great soundtrack can take a movie from very good to great. Try imagining Rocky without the training montage music, or Titanic without Celine Dion belting out “My Heart Will Go On,” or Jaws without the foreboding sound as the shark approaches its victim. Those movies would just be another movie about a struggling boxer, a big boat sinking, and a shark attack.
That is the power of sound. Sports has plenty of examples beyond my basketball one. A baseball player lives for that pure sound of a bat crushing a ball. A billiards player longs for the sound of a ball being pocketed cleanly. A hockey player longs for that sound of a pure slap shot. Ultimately, every athlete longs for the sound of applause after successfully achieving a goal. The louder and more enthusiastic, the better.
If you’ve ever been to a casino, hopefully you’ve experienced that rush of winning at a slot machine and hearing all the bells and whistles go off. As casinos have modernized, slot machines rarely, if ever, give out coins anymore. Now they just print out tickets which you go to redeem at the ticket window. I hate it. Even if I wasn’t playing, I used to enjoy walking past the slot machine area and just hearing all the sirens going off and the coins clinking into their metal trays. It was just something about that sound.
If you really stop to think about it, you can probably think of hundreds or thousands of sounds which are associated with winning. The question needs to be posed here- is quiet sex better than loud, enthusiastic moaning sex? That is probably the ultimate example of doing something well and being audibly congratulated, and who doesn't love that sound?
So it is up to each and every one of us to find those successful sounds in the world. Surround yourselves with those sounds. Go out and find that sound, such as a ball swishing through a net, that stimulates your mind and try to reproduce it every day of your life. Go out there and get your applause.