My Favorite Sound

What's your favorite sound, someone asked once. This is not a question that I was able to answer easily, but I heard it again today, and that's when I realized: that's my favorite sound. I don't know how to embed audio files in a blog yet, and I don't know of any sounds on the web that I have permission to use, so I won't do that. I'll simply have to describe it for you.

It's the sound of a bite. The moment of my favor begins with the very rapid intake of breath, barely audible, as the mouth is opened. There's probably also a very small moistening noise as the lips part. Then, the teeth come down on the item in question, which should be somewhat brittle, but not too brittle. Think oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Apples are too moist. Chips/nachos are too crunchy. As the mouth is closed, some air is forced out of the mouth, and the back of the palette vibrates at a low frequency. I don't know why the palette is vibrating the way it does, but I think it has something to do with the change in moistness due to the proximity of food. Like Pavlov's dog, if you know you're biting into a cookie, your mouth automatically salivates. Once the teeth make contact, a crunching noise begins as the slightly brittle morsel is broken up into large chunks with regions of crumbs and smaller chunks in the areas of separation, especially where the hard teeth have gone to work. The first part of the crunch is audible directly through the air, but the majority of the sound is heard through the medium of the fleshy face and cavity of the mouth as well as other acoustical properties of the human head. This transition is very pleasing to me. I should mention here that I most favor this sound when it comes from an external source. I actually find it less pleasing to hear from within my own head. I don't think the acoustics are quite right. Also, when it's me doing the crunching, there are other senses competing with the audible sound, so I think it clutters my perception. Now, the reason I prefer something like a cookie to an apple or a chip, is that I favor a certain degree of complexity in the sound of the morsel breaking up. I don't want to hear too many crackles and pops, as with a chip, but I do need a bare minimum of crunches. Maybe this has to do with my brain's ability to process distinct crunches. When there's a lot going on, it just sort of all gets jumbled up in my brain, and it becomes "noise." But when there are fewer, clearer, crunches, my brain can sort them out. That's not to say "the fewer the better," because there have to be a lot of crunches present just to make the sound interesting. I don't particularly like the sound of subsequent chewing. The second bite might be of interest, but beyond that, my interest drops off rather rapidly. I'm really only interested in the initial bite. However, if you can fit in a swallowing sound almost immediately after the initial crunch, I find that quite satisfying also. I like to imagine the cookie being pulverized almost immediately, mixed with saliva, turned into a sludge, and washed down, all in one smooth motion.

So for an example, this is a sound often made by characters in The Simpsons, particularly Homer. My favorite Homer moments are when Homer is eating a number of items in rapid succession. At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I heard it recently, and that's where it was. Cookie monster also makes this sound. This sound also comes up in television commercials, especially for crunchy snacks, and especially with kids in mind. Kids seem to especially enjoy this sort of sound. I guess it's taught to them by their moms very early on, when they're learning to eat. It's pretty natural to use this noise when trying to entice them to eat their dinner. But that could just be my family.

What I find interesting about this sound is that it's almost a word, and there are a number of words trying to get at the concept.

Crunch
Munch
Nom
Om nom nom
Num
Yummy
Yum
Chomp

I could even make reference to the sacred sound of Hindus, which is "Ohm," but maybe that would be going too far?

Do you have a favorite sound?