I sat the recorder on the window sill of my Mudge House dorm while the window was open; I sat near the recorder on my bed. The loudest discernible noise is the sharp chirping of crickets in the courtyard. This is the case both in reality and in the recording. I recognize that the foreground sounds are supposed to be the loudest and should be the part of the composition that has the most variation. I hesitate to say that these chirps make up the foreground-- despite the fact that they are louder than the surrounding sounds-- because they occur constantly with a steady tempo. There is no variation. The whirring of cars as they race through the street, while technically considered the background, is softer but more interesting because the sound is less frequent.
Several other noises pop up throughout the ten minutes, including the closing of the door across the hall. It appeared that this sound cut through both the noise of the cars and the crickets in the courtyard, and this observation was reflected in the recording. The sound of me periodically typing on my computer wasn’t as loud as I thought it would be in the recording. I was worried that the sound would be too loud and overshadow all other sounds, but it was much softer than even the chirping of the crickets.
http://youtu.be/h1EmLupVVio