In reporting auditory impressions, writers seldom name sounds without also specifying what the sounds come from: the murmur of a voice, the rustle of the wind, the squeak of a hinge, the sputter of an engine. Onomatopoeia is the term for names of sounds that echo the sounds themselves: squeak, murmur, hiss, boom, plink, tinkle, twang, jangle, rasp, chirr. Sometimes writers make up words like sweesh and cara-wong to imitate sounds they wish to describe. Qualitative words like powerful and rich as well as relative terms like loud and low often specify sounds further. For detailing sounds, writers sometimes use the technique called synesthesia, applying words commonly used to describe one sense to another, such as describing sounds as sharp and soft; they sometimes also use simile or metaphor to compare one sound to another.
To write about the sounds along Manhattan’s Canal Street, Ian Frazier uses many of these describing and naming techniques:
The traffic on Canal Street never stops. It is a high-energy current jumping constantly between the poles of Brooklyn and New Jersey. It hates to have its flow pinched in the density of Manhattan, hates to stop at intersections. Along Canal Street, it moans and screams. Worn brake shoes of semitrucks go “Ooohhhh nooohhhh” at stoplights, and the sound echoes in the canyons of warehouses and Chinatown tenements. People lean on their horns from one end of Canal Street to the other. They’ll honk nonstop for ten minutes at a time, until the horns get tired and out of breath. They’ll try different combinations: shave-and-a-hair-cut, long-long-long, short-short-short-long. Some people have musical car horns; a person purchasing a musical car horn seems to be limited to a choice of four tunes—“La Cucaracha,” “Theme from The Godfather,” “Dixie,” and “Hava Nagila.”
—IAN FRAZIER, “Canal Street”
Frazier uses metaphor, onomatopoeia, and other vivid detail.
Find a noisy spot—a restaurant, a football game, a nursery school, a laundry room—where you can perch for about half an hour. Listen attentively to the sounds of the place, and make notes about what you hear. Then write a page or so describing the place through its sounds.