Listen to the city like it’s a beat. Bus brakes, sirens, sneakers on wet pavement. It’s all rhythm.

Sound is the layer most people filter out to get through the day. Underneath the filtering, an ordinary street is full of rhythm: the hiss of a bus kneeling at a stop, a cart on bad pavement, the interval between two crossing signals. Musicians who sample the world are not inventing that texture, they are listening to what was already playing. It is free, and it is different in every place you stand.

Record thirty seconds of somewhere ordinary on your walk. Play it back and find the pulse in it. Build something on top of that loop, even if the only place it goes is your own headphones.