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“Heartbeat”

Proper Definition: “The pulsation of a heart” (Oxford Dictionary)

My Definition: It was extremely difficult to capture the sound of my own heartbeat so here is the sound of a heartbeat I found on Youtube. 

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“Cat”

Proper Definition: “a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractable claws. It is widely kept as a pet or for catching mice, and many breeds have been developed“ (Oxford Dictionary)

My Definition: This is the sound of my cat while she was watching me prepare her food. 

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“Piano”

Proper Definition: “A large keyboard musical instrument with a wooden case enclosing a soundboard and metal strings, which are struck by hammers when the keys are depressed. The strings' vibration is stopped by dampers when the keys are released and can be regulated for length and volume by two or three pedals” (Oxford Dictionary)

My Definition: This is the sound of me playing the beginning of the theme song for the movie The Notebook on the piano. 

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“Nature” 

Proper Definition: “The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the Earth, as opposed to humans or human creations” (Oxford Dictionary) 

My Definition: This is the sound of a small creek I found on my last hike in Colorado Springs with some birds chirping in the background. 

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“Conversation”

Proper Definition: “A talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged” (Oxford Dictionary)

My Definition: This is the sound of a conversation my family was having as we ended a board game on day 3 of our corona virus self-isolation. 

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1. Differences

Sie: other people, building’s heating system, more absorption of the sound

Chapel: more outside sounds, quieter, more echo

*Similarities: quiet, spacious (I could hear the sound traveling)

2. What I heard

Sie: heating system of building, noises from other people (coughing, shifting, moving their things, etc.)

Chapel: rustling leaves, wind, birds, my breathing, my heartbeat (more felt than heard), building creaking

3. What I did not hear

Sie: natural sounds (wind, rustling leaves, birds, etc.)

Chapel: other people and their byproducts 

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Within, Around and Underneath

While we have been learning to pay attention to and explore the almost infinite number of sounds—common and uncommon—I’ve had to remind myself, more than a few times, not to forget the sounds that are constantly happening within, around and underneath us. Some of these sounds can be a constant rhythm while others happen once, happen loud, and happen quickly. These were the concepts that we investigated in this week’s readings: the chapter “Rhythm and Tempo in the Soundscape” in The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer and the chapter “Sound of the Underground” in Earth Sound Earth Listening by Douglas Kahn. This first of the two aforementioned readings explores, as the title might imply, various rhythms found throughout the universe. It explores sounds ranging from a human’s heartbeat to those projected by radio signals. I particularly enjoyed the bit about the noises that occur within our bodies because so much of this quarter has focused on the sounds happening around us rather than within. An interesting point made by Schafer was his argument that humans use the tempo of the heart to measure the speed of other sounds around them. He states, “the heartbeat is nothing more than a rhythm module, roughly dividing humanly perceived rhythms into fast and slow” (Schafer 227). By this of course he means to explain that everything with a tempo gentler than that of the human heartbeat is deemed by us a slow sound, while those with a swifter tempo are categorized as fast. The constant, continuous rhythm of our heartbeat differs significantly from other noises we hear because, though it may be quiet, it is always present—from our first breath to our dying one. A noise that significantly contrasts this is that of an earthquake. This sound comes into being for only a short period of time and is described as Alexander von Humbolt through Kahn’s novel as, “a moment [that] destroys the illusion of a whole life” (Humbolt, Kahn 133). Unsurprisingly, these loud, one-time sounds can still have an effect on us internally, though not quite as one might expect. Thomas Ashcraft states in regard to earthquakes that an, “excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and fill it with terror” (Ashcraft, Kahn 133-134).

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The Sounds of Jupiter

Now that we have trained our minds to focus on the sounds happening all around us every single day, we need to expand our hearing further. It is time to acknowledge that there are sounds happening on as small of a scope as our own bodies, and as large as a scope as that of outer space. It is in our reading this week that these topics were explored further. Both of the artists we studied appeared as chapters in Earth Sound Earth Signal, a novel by Douglas Kahn. The first sound artist we learned about was Alvin Lucier. He has done some amazing work in the world of brainwaves. He is fascinated by, and encourages his audience to be also, the authenticity and originality of the sounds of brainwaves. He describes them as “[performing] their own music. They didn’t wait for the symphony orchestra to ask” (Lucier, Kahn 85). In describing that this way, he accentuates their randomness and individual origin of the brain of the subject. The brainwaves Lucier was focused on recording are called alpha waves. These waves occur only when the subject at question’s eyes are closed and they are free of distraction. They are the brainwaves that come with relaxation and introspection. Kahn takes the studies of Lucier on brainwaves and applies them to another concept of sound widely debated—silence. He uses Lucier’s work to support the argument that true silence cannot be heard by human beings when he says, “The best-known small sounds for Cage were two, normally inaudible sounds of his body, a low one and high one, that he heard during his visit to an anechoic chamber, which provided a scientific foundation for his aesthetic of silence, that is, that no such thing as silence exists“ (Kahn, 89). While I see his argument, I would disagree with the notion that silence doesn’t exist. I would change his claim to state that the true concept of silence has yet to be experienced by human beings—not that it simply doesn’t’ exist. The other author we had the pleasure of meeting was Thomas Ashcraft. This artist was notable in his exploration of the sounds of space. He recorded a series of signals that he resounded off of passing meteors as well as performing live signals he sent to, and received back from, the surface of Jupiter. From these two artists, along with many others unmentioned, it can be seen that sound can be found anywhere, and when transcoded properly, can be listened to and analyzed by humans. 

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Our Unknowing Symphony

We live on a giant musical instrument that is constantly and continuously composing. Not only do we listen to this melody, we are playing a part in its creation. The vast array of sounds that are included in this symphony can be broken down into three categories: geophony, biophony and anthrophony. Geophony refers to the sounds made by the earth and its elements; biophony to the sounds made by animals other than human beings; and anthrophony to all sounds made by human beings and our actions. I read some interesting content this week on geophony and anthrophony and the combinations that those sounds concoct. In Trevor Cox’s novel, The Sound Book, he spends the chapter “Singing Sands” exploring the sounds of sand, water, ice, wind, lightning and so many more natural producers. He describes these sounds as, “geology in motion, an auralization of forces that shape our planet” (Cox 190). And this is just the base layer. If we add all of the sounds made by animals and humans we get a lot—it can become quite overwhelming. Unless we train our ears to focus on particular sounds we run the risk of letting all of these beautiful tones fade into the background. We can start to associate them with “unwanted sound” as noise is defined in The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer. He suggests we break down our complex sound world: “the only realistic way to approach the noise pollution problem was to study the total soundscape as a prelude to comprehensive acoustic design” (Schafer 181). We need to understand each element individually in order understand the soundscape as a whole. On top of the elements we can hear with our naked ear, there is a world of sounds we cannot hear. Technology has helped up be able to access this world and make sense of it. This happens through transduction. As described by Douglas Kahn in Earth Sound Earth Listening ‘transduction is the movement of energy within and between classes of energy’ (Kahn 54). It has opened a door into an entire new planet of sounds. Now all we have to do is, listen, understand, and compose.

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Stop and Listen to the Roses

This week’s readings made clear the inevitable relationship between sound and listening. They explained how, without one, the other would cease to exist and how we, as human beings, must train our ears to hear delicate and complex sounds. We must also practice describing, repeating and recording these sounds. R. Murray Schafer describes our interaction with sound by saying that, “the only way we can comprehend extrahuman sounds is in relationship to sensing and producing sounds of our own” (Schafer 207). In this way, our most reliable method for understanding sounds we hear in our environment is being able to attempt to reproduce those sounds and share them with others. Schafer says sounds are, “only comprehensible by comparison with what we can hear or echo back ourselves” (Schafer 207). Being able to mimic sounds as closely as possible gives human beings a way to discuss the sounds and categorize them in a universal way. The author Trevor Cox takes a more direct route to analyzing echoes in his novel, The Sound Book. He spends his 4th chapter, “Echoes of the Past”, discussing the sound phenomena and how they can be differently interpreted—through his discussion, one thing seems for sure, hearing your own voice come back at you can play tricks on the brain. While there are many different kinds of echoes, they have been something to fascinate the human race since their emergence. Another concept of fascination that has been around for awhile is that of “The Aeolian”. Directly, aeolian can be defined as, “relating to or arising from the action of wind” (Oxford Dictionary). This concept is discussed in Earth Sound Earth Listening by its author Douglas Kahn. His main dialogue is about whether the aeolian is music or not. The biggest debate stems from the fact that, “musicians disagree about the proper definition of the term music—indeed, almost every theorist gives a different one” (Kahn 42). In my opinion, this is exactly the reason why the aeolian should be considered music. If beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder than one could most definitely lose themselves in the aeolian in a similar manner someone else might lose themselves to the classical compositions of Bach.

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Sound, Sound, All Around

Sounds have existed long before us humans were around and will likely continue to be present long after we are no longer in the picture. So, where do we, and our study of sound, come into play then? We can only try to learn as much as possible about acoustics with the time we’re given. We can continue to capture and discover new sounds, as well as keep old sounds alive through recordings. Through our vast exploration of this planet and beyond, we continue to find amazing sounds that come from the most unexpected things, we have learned how to manipulate stone to control the sound of a space, and we have used these discoveries to help the human race, several animal species, and the world as a whole interconnected system. One of these discoveries most notable in my eyes is that of Leland W. Sprinkle. He created “the largest natural musical instrument in the world” (Cox 66). This instrument is an “organ” that stretches over “1.4 hectares (3.5 acres) of the cavern” (Cox 66). Sprinkle created this natural organ by finding “stalactites that produced a beautiful ringing tone and also had a natural resonant frequency close to a note in a musical scale” (Cox 67). Another concept I found quite interesting in these readings was that of natural radio as presented in Earth Sound Earth Listening written by Douglas Kahn. I can tell you, even after reading two whole chapters on the subject, I’m still not exactly sure what it is. To my understanding, it is the natural signals put off by things. This means that one should not be so intensely focused on the sounds emitted by something that they lose sight of what the sounds are saying. Finally, I was intrigued by a third topic in R. Murray Schafer’s novel, The Soundscape. The quote that particularly caught my attention was “the double miracle of speech and music occurred” (Schafer 40). This quote implies that song has been around just as long as language itself. This means humans were using it as a mechanism of emotion as well as survival skills.

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Observed Sounds: 

1. (construction) footsteps: grt grt // car horn: beeep // wind: woo woo 

2. (fields) shouting: hey! //  I-25 traffic: whirr // leaves rustling: tck tck 

3. (calm) bell chimes: ding dong // kicked soccer ball: thud // bird: chirp chirp

4. (urban activity) truck engine: grr // truck backing up: beep beep beep // birds: chirp 

5. (quiet) tall grass plant: wshhh // I-25 traffic: whirrr // human cough: cough

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My Proper Introduction to Sound

Humans are amazingly unaware of the sounds that exist within, and without, our environments at every moment. We often let them fade into the background of whatever we happen to be focusing on—and too often that point of focus is something entirely unrelated to sound. Strangely enough, sound is often a factor of whatever we’re doing without being the main focal point. Do people typically watch a show without the sound on? Can people very easily read in an environment that is too loud? The sounds that occur around us are very important and serve many purposes. Our readings this week were from The Soundscape, by R. Murray Schafer, and The Sound Book, by Trevor Cox, and they touch on many subjects including the various purposes of sound, the plethora of noises the environments of the Earth make, how organisms other than humans communicate, and how humans currently interact and react to the sound that happens around them. I found two topics particularly interesting. The first was the way sound travels through different mediums and was discussed in Trevor Cox’s novel as he quoted a wildlife recordist, Chris Watson, when considering water in the oceans as “the most sound-rich environment on the planet” (Cox 105). It goes to show that just because humans can’t hear anything, doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to hear. According to Oxford Dictionary, silence is defined as “the absence of sound” and would truly mean that there isn’t anything to hear—something humans are not accustomed to. The idea of complete silence has sparked my curiosity and is the second topic of interest coming from R. Murray Schafer’s novel. He states, “It is difficult for the human being to imagine an apocalyptic noise as it is for him to imagine a definitive silence” (Schafer 28). Considering no one alive today has experienced the apocalypse, it is made easy to comparatively assume from this quote that this it true of ‘definitive silence’ as well.