Schafer R Murray The New Soundscape
Schafer R Murray The New Soundscape
Schafer R Murray The New Soundscape
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THENEW SOUNDSCAPE
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R.-Murray Schafer
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R. MURRAY SCHAFER
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One of Canada's younger composers, R. Murray I~
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Schafer received his musical education at the
Royal Conservatory in Toronto where he studied
composition with John Weinzweig and later on a
Canada Council grant in England and Europe. In
1962 he returned to Canada where he helped to
found the celebrated Ten Centuries concert series
in Toronto, and became its first president.
. .
His compositions have been performed in Canada ,L.,
and abroad. He is also the author of numerous
articles on music, several of which have been
Berandol Music Limited /SCARBOROUGH, ONTARIO
anthologized and translated, and is the author of
the book British Composers in Interview. Associated Music Publishers, Inc. /NEW YORK
SOLE SELLING AGENTS
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13000725
A Handbook
for the Modern
Music Teacher
R. Murray Schafer
I
n BerandolMueh1Limited/SCARBOROUGH,ONTu10
A11ocl&&ed
IOlf
Mailo Pabll1here,Ina. /NEW YORK
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MUSIC: Art of combining sounds with a view to beauty of form and expression
of emotion; sounds so produced; pleasant sound e.g. song of a bird, murmur of
a brook, cry of hounds.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 1956
are proving unacceptable. Little by little throughout the 20th century studies are needed in the curriculum and they will carry us far out
all the conventional definitions of music have been exploded by the into the shifting contours of interdisciplinary knowledge.
abundant activities of musicians themselves. First with the huge
expansion of percussion instruments in our orchestras, many of which The new student will have to be informed in areas as diverse as
produce non-pitched and a-rhythmic sounds; then through the intro- acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, games and information theory.
duction of aleatoric procedures in which all attempts to organize the It is these last-named together with a knowledge of the form-building
sounds of a composition rationally are surrendered before the ''higher" an~ form-dissolving processes as observed in the natural sciences that
laws of entropy; then through the opening out of the time and space will be necessary to register the shapes and densities of the new
containers we call compositions and concert halls to allow the intro- sound-configurations of today's and tomorrow's music.
duction of a whole new world of sounds outside them. (In Cage's
4'33" Silence we hear only the sounds external to the composition More music is heard today by means of electro~acoustic reproduction
itself, which is merely one protracted caesura.) Finally in the practices than in its natural form, which leads one to ask whether music in this
of musique concrete it becomes possible to insert any sound from the form is not perhaps the more "natural" to the contemporary listener;
environment into a composition via tape; while in electronic music the and if so should not the student understand what happens when
music is so reproduced?
hard-edge sound of the tone generator may be indistinguishable from
the police siren or the electric tooth-brush. Today all sounds belong to The basic vocabulary of music w~J change. We will perhaps speak of
a continuous field of possibilities lying within the comprehensive 'sound objects,' of 'envelopes' and 'onset transients' instead of 'triads',
dominion of music. 'sforzando' and 'appogiatura'. Single sounds will be studied more
Behold the new orchestra: the sonic universe! attentively with attention paid to the formants of their overtone
spectra and to their onset and decay characteristics.
And the new musicians~anyone and anything that sounds!
Students will perhaps be trained to describe music in terms of exact
There is a shattering corollary to this for all music educators. frequencies or frequency bands rather than in the limited nomencla-
For music educators are the custodians of the theory and practice ture of the tonal system. Dynamics too might better be described in
of music. relation to some standard reference such as the phon (loudness) or the
decible (intensity) rather than in terms of a few ancient Italian intui-
And the whole nature of this theory and practice is now going to have tions on the subject.
to be completely reconsidered.
The psychology and physiology of aural pattern perception will
The teaching of traditional music has its special targets: the technical supersede many former musical studies in which musical soundings
mastery of instruments such as the piano, the trumpet or the violin were rendered mute by paper exercises. (Traditional theory books
for the performance of a literature existing back over several hundred deny all life to sounds, considering them as stationary cadavers.)
years. For the purpose of understanding the shapes of this music a Ultimately somewhere work might begin on a much-needed history
theoretical vocabularly has been developed enabling the student to of aural perception to show us how different periods or different
gloss any piece of Western music written between the Renaissance musical cultures actually hear different things when listening to music.
and our own time.
One of the purposes of this booklet is to direct the ear of the listener
There is nothing permanent or perfect about this practice or theory, ;~~ towards the new soundscape of contemporary life, to acquaint him
of course, and the music of the Middle Ages or of China cannot be . with a vocabulary of sounds he may expect to hear both inside and
measured by the rules of Classical theory any more than it can be .' ~. outside concert halls. It may be that he will not like all the tunes of
performed on the instruments of the classical orchestra. The historical.: this new music, and that too will be good. For together with other
and geographical cultural sweepout that characterizes our time has ':., ':i forms of pollution, the sound sewage of our contemporary environ-
made us very conscious of the fallacy of controlling the temperament , ~, ment is unprecedented in human history.
of all musical philosophies by the same tuning fork.
": This brings me to my other purpose. In recent years the science of
The new musical resources I shall try to bring into focus in the fol~: '. ~edicine h~s seen a dramatic shift of emphasis from the curing of
lowing pages will require quite new attitudes of study-stress. New .. disease to its prevention. This shift is so pronounced that the term
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Primitive
Cultures 690/o 26 50/o
Medieval,
Renaissance and
Pre-Industrial 34 520/o 1.4%
Cultures
Post-Industrial
Cultures 9D/o 2~/o 660/o
Peter Breughel's The Battle Between Camlval and lent. In the 17th-century town
human sounds still occupied the foreground of the soundscape.
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Ill
Concerning Silence
With the intensity of the sound barrage going on all around, it has
become fashionable to speak of silence. Therefore, let us speak of
silence.
We miss it.
In the past there were muted sanctuaries where anyone suffering from
sound fatigue could go into retirement for recomposure of the psyche.
It might be in the woods, or out at sea, or on a snowy mountainside in
winter. One would look up at the stars or the soundless soaring of
birdcraft and be at peace.
It was understood that each human being had an inalienable right to
stillness. It was a precious article in an unwritten code of human
rights.
As long as these traditions existed the concept of silence was real and The minuscule world of sound events which we have carelessly
had dignify. Silence was thought of figuratively rather than physically,
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assumed to be 'silent'. The moment these events flash into the fore-
for a physically silent world was as highly improbable then as it is ground we call them noise. Any reappraisal of music will have a good
now. The difference was that the average ambient sound level was de~l to say about noise; for noise is sound we have been trained
low enough to allow a man to contemplate without a continuous to ignore.
recital of sonic incursions into his thought-stream. (The sentences Qf
our thoughts have undoubtedly grown shorter since the inv~ntion of
the telephone!)
But to contemplate an absolute silence, that is a negative and terrify-
ing thing. Thus when the infinity of space was first suggested by
Galileo's telescope, the philosopher Pascal was deeply afraid of the Symphony NOS
prospect of an infinite and eternal silence.
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Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraye.
When one goes into an anechoic chamber - that is, a completely
soundproof room - one feels a little of the same terror. One speaks
and the sound seems to drop from one's lips to the floor. The ears
strain to pick up evidence that there is still life in the world.
When John Cage went into such a room, however, he heard two
sounds, one high and one low.
When I described them 10 the engineer in charge, he informed me I Fago\U
that the high one was my own nervous system in operation, the low
one my blood in circulation.
Cage's conclusion:
There is no such thing as silence. Something is always happening
that makes a sound.
Cage had detected the relativity of silence and in ~hoosing Silence as
the title for his book he emphasized that henceforth any use of this
word must be qualified or assumed to be ironical.
The myth of silence has been exploded. From now on in traditional ,
music, for instance, when we speak of silence we will not mean :;
absolute or physical silence, but rather merely the absence of tradi- ,
tional musical sounds.
In the psychology of visual perception one talks of the alternation
between figure and ground, either of which can become the visual
message for the eye depending on what it wants to see. In certairi'
drawings the identical forms combine to produce two subjects eithe'
of which may be seen in relief against a neutral ground. For a Ion
time we may see only one image, then with a sudden flicker th
relationship is reversed. Similarly the sound engineer speaks of th ...... ...._ ...
..___ ,,, .....
.....
difference between signal and noise, the wanted sounds from th
unwanted. Behind every piece of music lurks another piece of mu( The figure-ground relationship In vision also applies to the ear.
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If one listens carefully to the spaces between the cyclopean chords IV
that open Beethoven's Eroica symphony he will discover a dense
population of quite 'unheroic' sound events - coughs, shufflings, A New Definition of Noise
record scratches or whatever. Like the distinction between figure and
ground in a drawing, we may also now distinguish between figure and
ground in music listening. Try, for instance, to listen to a musical
performance focusing not on the music itself but on all the extraneous
non-musical sounds that surround the music and crowd forth during We walked around for a while talking about noise. Doug carried the
its momentary pauses. My class did this. It is a strangely -'Sensitizing sound meter, measuring, measuring. At a residential street comer
exercise to refocus the ear. {35_db)we.stopped and I asked Jeff why he regarded his neighbour's
radio as noise.
But we began by speaking of quiet sanctuaries, a student reminds us.
Should we not try to protect great music from intrusions by continu- - Because it goes on all day, and I don't like their choice of programs.
ing to build better rooms for its performance and demanding more
- Well I didn't find it disagreeable, Barbara reaffirmed (at 40 db) .
. scratch-free records7
-Well then, I said, how would you define noise7
Indeed. Perhaps, another student suggests, the n~w concert hall will
be the stereo set in the livingroom. - Ugliness, she replied.
Certainly it is a new concert hall. Then doesn't it follow that our A bus passed by (80 db).
living room or music room should receive the same careful attention
to insulation and acoustics as the present concert hall 7 How many of - Did you find it ugly7 I asked after a while.
us have soundproof rooins in our houses7 How much would it cost -What7
builders to create them7 And so we found ourselves an assignment:
to approach the building trade to discover what the present sound- -That bus.
proofing regulations are and how they could be improved.
- Well, it was loud but not nearly as ugly as the sounds in that piece
After our investigation we found we had learned a lot about sound- you played to us the other day. (We had been listening to Edgar
proofing materials, sound transmission through wood, glass and other Varese's Deserts.
materials. We discovered, for instance, in our city that there are no
minimum reiulations for the acoustic treatment of walls in houses Jeff thought that was very funny and laughed (68 db).
and apartments. We decided that in our 'ideal home' we should be -What m~es a sound ugly, I persisted.
able to specify to the builder what noise le'l(el we were prepared to
tolerate indoors. So we took a sound meter deep into the woods to Just then we were passed by a motorcycle going all out (98 db).
,. measure the quiet there. At first, peace; then an airplane buzzed us.
;1 - That's a Harley-Davidson, Jeff said, who knew about motorcycles ..
After it left, we took a reading: 15 decibels.
~ - Sixty-two horsepower. What a beauty!
"I Then we went to the home of Jeff 8., who said he lived in a terribly . ~}
noisy apartment, to measure the noise level there. A radio was play- 'f - Ugly7 I asked.
ing in the next apartment. Children were shouting ill the hall. Our :;:
reading: 64 decibels. - No, beootifull
Then we got into an argument about whether that was noise or not, . -Ohl
There were five of us: Barbara, Donna, Jeff, Doug and myselE,
Barbara liked the music on the radio ... For a while we walked without speaking. Turning a comer we
entered a park and sat down (3S db). From the distance the saw-tooth
sound of a lawn mo~er proceeded towards us pushing the meter up to
A sound meter is a device for measuring the Intensity or sound In decibel :: 75 <lb.I began to think of the many confusions surrounding the word
with O db established as the threshold of hearing.
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The biologist has brought a white rat into the room in a small cage. The rat
is running around the cage, looking unhappy about all the noise. But his
worries don't last long. The biologist lilts the cage into the sound field. The
rat stiffens, rises up to the full stretch of his legs, arches his back, opens his
mouth wide and falls over. He is dead. An autopsy will reveal that he had
died of instant overheating and a massive case of the bends. There are
bubbles in his veins and internal organs.2
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration wants to know what
loud rocket noises do to people around a launching-pad, and why such
noises occasionally cause nausea, fainting and epileptic-like lits.2
Scientific tests ... reveal that changes in the circulalion of the blood and
in the action of the heart take place when a person is exposed to a certain
intensity of noise. Even snatches of loud conversation are enough to affect
the nervous system and thereby provoke constrictions in a large part of the
blood circulation system . . Workers in a boiler factory, for instance, thus
suffer from a constantly impaired circulation in the epidermis.3~
,, Professor Rudnick and his colleagues built the most powerful siren ever
conceived to that date. It made what was, as far as anybody knew, the
loudest continuous sound ever heard on earth up to that time: 175 db,
some 10,000 times as s(rong as the ear-splitting din of a large pneumatic
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riveter. The frequency range of this enormous ~owl was from about.3,000 The familiar exclamation ... "quiet please" can be translated into scientific
cycles per second (near the top range of a p,ano) to 34,000 cps, m the terminology as follows: "My work demands great concentration and I must
ultrasonic range. d . d f h. therefore preserve the connective functions of my cerebral cortex. I cannot
Strange things happened in this nightmarish soun f,el . I a man put ,s afford to weaken the inhibitory processesand I have to preserve the work-
hand directly in the beam of sound, he got a painful burn between the ing capacity of my nervous system.".lb
fingers. When the siren was aimed upwards, !14. inch marbles wo~ld float
lazily about it at certain points in the harmonic field, held up and m by the
outrageous acoustic pressure. By varying the harmonic st~ucture of t!ie If you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely lose the value
field, Professor Rudnick could make pennies dance on a s.1lkscreen with it had as a whole; and an army if divided up into small bodies of soldiers,
chorus-like precision. He could even make one P;nny rise slowly to a loses all its strength. So a great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary
vertical position while balancing another penny on ,ts edge. A cotton. wad one, as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted from
held in the field would burst into flame in about six seconds. "To satisfy a the matter in hand; for its superiority depends upon its power of concen-
skeptical colleague", reports Professor Rudnick, "we lit his pipe by expos- tration - of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme, in the same
ing the open end of the bowl to the field." 2 way as a concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light that
strike upon it.1
Researchersat the Max Planck Institute in West Germany want to ~now
why workers in noisy places su~h as _iron foundrJes have more emotional Advancing civilizations will create more noise, not less. Of that we are
and family problems than those ,n quieter places. certain. In all probability the noise level will grow not only in urban
centres, but, with increasing population and the proliferation of machines,
noise will invade the few remaining havens of silence in the world. A cen-
But of all the noises of Mexico City the loudest and most individual was tury from now, when a man wants to escape to a quiet spot, there may be
made by the mechanical pile-driver opposite the Opera House. Thud- no place left lo go.le
1 shriek, thud-shriek; it worked day and night; the hammer fell, t~e com-
pressed air escaped and the great tree trunks sank foot by foot mto the
But ;ust over ten years ago organizations were set up in a number of
soft sub-soil. While, in the general slump, other major works ~ere. at a European countries to wage campaigns against the spread of noise. These
stand-still, this infernal machine pounded on incessantly, dominating a
i bodies .. decided to unite their action and in 1959 formed the Inter-
whole quarter of the city.4 national Association Against Noise . . . Since its directorate has always
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comprised a physician, an engineer, a speciali.ft in acoustics and two
jurists, the International Association is in a position to give prompt and
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The science of sound began to get some attention during World War T_wo
:I with the development of military applications such as sonar (So~!'d N~v,ga- authoritative opinions on questions of .international scope within its field}
tion and Ranging) for tracking enemy vesselsat sea. In the 19~0 s studies of
other sonic phenomena began to disappear one by one behind a cloud of
military secrPcy- perhaps the most sincere honor that can be granted to The most inexcusable and disgraceful of all noises is the cracking of whips
any researchproject. 2 - a truly infernal thing when it is done in the narrow resounding streets
. the effort now being made by the aeronautical indu~try to ~ersuade u.s
of a town. I denounce it as making a peaceful life impossible; it puts an
end to all quiet thought .. No one with anything like an idea in his head
that we shall enjoy the din of supersonic airliners. Pu?l1c relat!ons !"ach1- , can avoid a feeling of actual pain at this sudden, sharp crack, which p;ira-
nery and techniques are working on an unsuspecting public with the lyzes the brain, rends the thread of reflection, and murders thought. 1
slogan "learn ro live with the boom." 3
Motorcycles are our greatest problem. There is one motorcycle or motor-
James Watt once rightly remarked that to uned~cated pers~ns noi~e is { scooter for every 12 persons in our city .. In Cordoba, we have studied
suggestive to power. A machine which operates silently or without v1bra-: some of the psychological aspects of noise offences. Why, for example, do
tion is obviously far lessimpressive than a noisy one.lb drivers, and especially motorcyclists, remove or modify the mufflers on
their vehicles? Is it because a personality defect makes them enjoy exces-
sive noise/ Or does the noisy urban environment give them a kind of
There are people, it is true - nay, a great many people - who s!"ile a. 'thirst for noisei"3d
such things because they are not sensitive to noise; but they are 1ust th
very peopl~ who are also not sensitive to argument, or thought, or poe_trt:
or art, in a word, to any kind of intellectual influence. The rea~on of 1t1 There is something even more disgraceful than what I have ;ust mentioned.
that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality. On t!t Olten enough you may see a carter walking along a street, quite alone,
1 without any horses, and still cracking away incessantly; so accustomed has
I other hand, noise is a torture to intellectual people. \
I the wretch become to it in consequence of the unwarrantable toleration of
I this practice. 1
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In 1964 we set up Argentina's first Noise Abatement Council ... Firstly,our homes were more disturbing than the construction job. Blasting was muf-
new anti-noise municipal regulation distinguishes between 'unnecessary' fled by special steel mesh blankets weighing several tons each. Spread over
11 and 'excessive' noise: It classifies over 15 unnecessary noises which can be the blast site by cranes, they absorbed most of the sounds of the explo-
I penalized without recourse to noise level measurement or analysis. sions, and also kept flying debris safely within a confined area. All the
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~I Since the application of the anti-noise law we have classified as unneces- joints on the 14,000 tons of steel in the frame were welded silently to
I sary noises all public address systems that can be heard outside enclosed eliminate the hideous, shattering racket of conventional riveting or bolting.3
\,, premises, induding music, publicity and speeches.Jd
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The aim of technical development should bl! to serve man, to make his life
more agreeable and enrich it. So logically, technical progress should lead
Un/Electronics of Califomia makes a noise generator whose gigantic howl, to fess noise, not more.le
loud enough to tear electronic equipment apart, is used to test the tough-
ness of space-flight hardware.2
Still, superscreams are now being generated in military labs. Robert
Gilchrist, president of Federal Sign and Signal tells of tantalizing rumors
How many great and splendid thoughts, I should like to know, have been that hi1Vecirculated in the noisemaking business over the past few years.
lost to the world by the crack of a whip? If I had the upper hand, I should "We just heard about a siren of some kind, supposedly intended for
soon produce in the heads of these people an indissoluble association of Vietnam", he says. "It's said to produce something like 200 decibels". That
ideas between cracking a whip and getting a whipping. 1 would be several hundred times as powerful as Professor Rudnick's
monstrous screamer.2
The growth of motor transport in the past 20 years has led many countries
to revise their traffic codes - sometimes in the face of public opinion. The A sudden, very loud noise, such as gunfire, lasting only fractions of a
decision to forbid the use of motor horns in Paris was one such controver- second, may damage a person's hearing mechanism and produce a lasting
sial move, and motorists in particular predicted that street accidents would loss of hearing or partial deafness. But exposure to noise levels quite com-
increase. In practice the measure was remarkably successful. With a show mon in industry- and indeed characteristic of certain branches of heavy
of self-restraint that surprised the Parisians themselves the honking and industry such as forging and metal cutting- leads, progressively to 'per-
blaring of horns was stilled from one day to the next. Paris now wonders ceptive,deafness', depending in each case on the intensit}' of the noise and
how it ever managed to endure such a futile and nerve-racking din.3 i duration of exposure. Once a hearing detect of this kind has set in, nothing
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can be done. Protective devices can help to postpone it and to slow down
its development, but once the damage is done, it is irreparable.le
With all due respect for the most holy doctrine of utility, I really cannot
see why a fellow who is taking away a wagon-load of gravel or dung
should thereby obtain the right to kill in the bud the thoughts which may In the U.S.A. it is estimated that approximately 1,000,000 workers have
happen to be springing up in ten thousand heads - the number he will serious hearing loss due to high noise levels in their places of work.3
disturb one after another in half an hour's drive through the town. 1
DEARSTUDENTS:
rr IS TIMETO GETACQUAINTEDWITHA NEWSUBJECT:FQRENSICAcoumcs,
Another of our findings is that well educated people (scientists, scholars, .THE STUDY OF THE GROWING NUMBEROF NOISE-NUISANCEAND EAR
artists and members of the liberal profession) are far more susceptible to DAMAGECASESTAKENTO COURT. YOUR OW TEAOfERHOPES THAT YOU
the noise of traffic than relatively uneducated people.Jd MAYALSO BE INTERESTEDIN LEARNINGABOUTTHE WORK OF YOUR LOCAL
NOISE ABATEMENTSOCIETY,OR, IF YOUR COMMUNITYDOES NOT VET
POSSESSONE, THAT YOU MIGHT YOURSELVES FORM SUOf A SOCIETY.
In August 1956 the use of motor homs was made illegal in Moscow and
the noise level in the streets immediately dropped by eight to ten phons.Jb ADDRESSOF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETYAGAINSTNOISE: SIHISTRASSE
17,
ZURICH,SWITZERLAND
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France forbids the playing of transistor radios on rail, bus and metro trans-
port as well as in streets and public places such as parks and beaches. Nor
is their use tolerated in restaurants and similar establishments.J
A New York skyscraper completed last year proved that buildings can be .
constructed quietly. People working in offices near the new 52 storey
building reported that power lawn mowers buzzing around their suburban
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at all, but want to boost it up to 'bigger than life' size. Amplifiers are, We also have sounds so high or so low that they cannot be heard.
I now available of sufficient strength to push sounds right past the.. , At about 16 cycles per second we cease to hear low sounds and
I begin to feel them as massive vibrations which may shake the room.
threshold of pain. ~
At 20,000 cycles per second or less, high sounds disappear as they
:1 - What's that?
;1; pass out of the human hearing range. These things can be demon-
-That's when the sound pressure becomes so strong on the ea~ strated with an oscillator, and young people are always a iittle proud
/( when they discover that they can hear sounds somewhat higher than
drums that it gives you physical pain or may even make your ea~
r, bleed. Ultimately you grow deaf.
. . old people - a purely physiological fact resulting from youth. Many
\. animals can out~hear men, of course, both in their sensitivity to very
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' soft sounds and in their ability to hear higher frequencies. The cat,
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,, Everyone looked a bit puzzled and scared. The amplifier as a letha for instance, can hear sounds as high as 60,000 cps.
weapon through which music could conceivably destroy the hum~
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We can draw a chart showing the perimeter of the humanly audible. to the audible limits in both directions, or as close to them as our
The ordinate shows the intensity of the sound in decibels with O db recording and reproduction equipment permits us to go.
fixed at the threshold of audibility; while the abscissa shows the
It is easy to see that those instruments we call warm or lyrical (the
frequency range.
cello, the viola, the horn, the clarinet) are precisely those which most
closely approximate the range of the human voice. But if a composer
I OfAfNfSS I wishes to suggest a sublime or superhuman event or sensation he
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THRESHOLD
Of l'AIN
makes considerable use of those instruments which lie far outside the
human vocal range. This is the most evident in church music where
I 13008 the extremely high and low notes of the pipe organ can be used to
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120 suijgest the voices of God and the celestial beings. Today if electronic
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music sounds eerie to some people it is partly because of its predilec-
z tion for 'transcendental' extrenUties in the frequency range.
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90 ~C Speaking approximately, we may say that while up to the Renaissance,
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z or even up to the 18th century, music occupied an area in intensity
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ao Q
6 and frequency range such as that shown in the core of our graph,
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,. since that time it has progressively pushed out so that it is practically
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coincidental with the shape representing the total area of humanly
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20
10
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16cp1 32 64 128 256 512 1,0U ~'8 ~96 8,192 1~384 20,000
THRESHOLDOf AUD181l1TY
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registering all the fluctuations in pitch and dynamics. Then by draw- Dissonance is tension and consonance is relaxation. Just as the human
ing an enlarged version of the graph on the board and using a number musculature tenses and relaxes alternately, you cannot have the one
of different sound-producers we tried to follow a moving. pointer in activity without the other. Thus, neither term has absolute meaning;
order to reproduce these sensations at least in a general way. each defines the other. Anyone who does not realize this should try
clenching his fist tightly for the rest of his life.
By jumping the pointer from one extreme position to another on our
chart (say, very loud and high to very soft and low) we led ourselves Consonance and dissonance are like two elastics, one stretched more
into the whole matter of contrast. tightly than the other. Their relativity is clarified by the addition of a
third elastic, stretched more tightly than the first two. Now describe
Any theory of music will sooner or later develop a sweeping series of the role of the middle elastic vis-a-vis each of its neighbors.
studies dealing with contrast. Traditional tonal music had many kinds
of contrast, of which that produced by the flickering alternation (I No matter what happens to music the words consonance and dis-
nearly wrote altercation) between consonance and dissonance inspired so.nance will still be central to our theortetical vocabulary and they
the most theorizing. will apply to any set of opposites, not just tonal contrasts. A short
sound, for instance, is dissonant by comparison to a sustained one.
Every dissonance demanded its resolution in a consonance. Every If you want some neutral words try Yin and Yang but you will
consonance demanded a dissonance to disturb its boring life. The two always need some vocabulary to describe and measure contrast, for
were intimate enemies. that is inevitable. But if we stick with the words consonance and
In the early days of atonal music it was thought that dissonance had dissonance we must expand the strictly limited meanings they had
murdered consonance and had imposed itself as the absolute despot when applied to tonal music only. For instance, a single example:
of music. We realize now that this was an illusion and that sounds
are only relatively consonant or dissonant depending on their context.
30 31
and relaxations, your instinct will show how desperately the textbooks VII
need revision.
Thus, to conclude, we can make three important observations: Beyond the Audible
1) The concept of the threshold now becomes important for musicians
because it divides in a very real sense the audibly possible from the
audibly impossible.
- What about the audibly impossible? asked Donna, smiling irresist-
2) We need to develop a new means for describing the sounds we
ibly. We saw what happened if you went beyond the pain threshold.
perceive ... I suggest this might be in line with the acoustic mea- What about the other directions?
suring standards of electronic instruments, which we could use to
check our subjective sensations. - OK, I said. We need an interlude, so let's indulge in some wild
speculations. If you go very low, below about 16 cycles you no longer
3) Any sound complex can be analyzed in terms of its relative con-
have a sensation of pitch but rather of vibratory tremblings. We call
sonance and dissonance within its acoustic neighborhood. Conson-
this the infrasonic range, as distinct from the range above about
ance and dissonance refer to variations in intensity, pitch, duration
20,000 cycles which we call the ultrasonic. You know the experience
or tone color anywhere within the perimeters of the audibly
when a very deep pedal note on the organ gets the whole church
possible.
vibrating. You could possibly imagine a kind of massage-music result-
The class was pensive. I began to feel like a theory teacher. ing from these very deep frequencies, for this is the area where the
sense of hearing and the sense of touch overlap. I've known some
young composers who became interested in this land of musical mas-
sage and they claim to have composed pieces using only these deep
frequencies.
\.
-What are they like?
- I've never felt them.
- It must be something like the 'feelies' that Aldous Huxley talks
about in Brave New World.
- Certainly various parts of the body resonate at various frequencies,
some in the audible range and some below or above.
ti, For instance, it has been discovered that the average human anal
sphincter resonates at about 77 cycles. If it resonates hard enough it
can no longer be controlled. Police have experimented in the control
of mobs by employing very loud sounds of this frequency.
An intriguing use of infrasonic waves forms the basis of a piece of
music by the American composer Alvin Lucier. This uses the alpha
waves of the brain as its sound-generating source. Alpha waves occur
when one doses one's eyes and indulges in non-visualizing thought.
A low-voltage brain-wave current, the alpha-wave signal is about 10
cycles. In Lucier's piece the performer has electrodes implanted on his
skull to pick up these waves. You may imagine how theatrical the
performance preparations could be! The waves are then amplified and
fed to a number of loudspeakers before which are placed some musical
32 33
instruments such as gongs which resonate sympathetically with these you call it? - the ultrasonic range is that of the bat. Bats use ultra-
very low signals. sonic echoes at about 50,000 cycles to fly around obstacles without
Doug: Now that's a piece I'd really like to hear! crack-ups. They bounce cries offobstacles and thus are warned to
beware of them. They do this at an amazing rate of 50 echoing ultra-
Schafer: What you really hear are the harmonics of the gongs. You can't hear sonic cries per second.
the alpha waves themselves; they are too low. Perhaps, as I just men-,.
Honed, the most interesting aspect of the performance, would be the l also found something about the hearing of grasshoppers. Some of
fascinating spectacle of a solo performer sitting on the stage with them have little circular membranes like ears on their forelegs. The
electrodes on his skull, closing and opening his eyes to start and stop females are courted by the males who chirp or sing to them. If a male
the sounds, for alpha waves are only present when the eyes are chirps into a telephone, a female at the other end can be made to jump
closed - and sometimes not even then, to the misfortune of some up and down even without seeing him. Sex appeal among the grass-
attempts to perform the piece. hoppers definitely seems to have to do with hearing rather than seeing.
) J ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) 'Y
34 35
Schafer: Charles Darwin thought that even our music was nothing but a highly teristics of their position, and the molecule has a characteristic finger-
developed form of the mating call. print nuclearmagneticfrequencyspedrum.
Donna: (smiling debonairly): There are a lot of love songs in all music. If you want to hear a guitar you pluck the string. When it is plucked
it is removed briefly from its undisturbed position of equilibrium. In
Seeing no neat way to terminate this discussion it was my turn to doing so it emits its own characteristic note or frequency, which
shuffle my papers and light my pipe, Then, "What did you find out depends on the string tension, and the loudness of the note is
from Dr. Wells7" damped, or decays in lime, due to the frictional losses from the
vibrating string lo the surrounding air.
Jeff: We listened to nudear music in his laboratory.
Returning to our molecules, the nuclei acting in concert also can be
Schafer: You tantalize us. What does it sound like7 'plucked' away from their low energy orientation along the magnetic
field by a short pulse of radio-frequency with frequency close to
Donna: It makes little pinging sounds, very clear little pings, sharp at first the natural nuclear frequency. From this high energy state the nuclei
then dying away. I've never heard anything quite like it before. return to equilibrium and in doing so they emit their own damped
Schafer: Did Dr. Wells explain to you how he was producing it7 characteristic precession frequency as a radio signal. The damping
process here is quite different from that of the guitar string, but the
Jeff: Yes he did, and then he wrote out a little account. Perhaps I could result is quite similar. By standard radio-frequency techniques it is
read it. It's called Nuclear Music. possible to heterodyne out the high radio-frequency carrier signal,
and to make audible the small frequency differences between the
All matter is composed of molecules. Molecules are built from atoms. various nuclei in our sample.
An atom consists of a very small nucleus carrying a positive charge,
and a much larger charge cloud built of electrons, so that the total In general the more complicated the molecule the more complicated
atom is electrically neutral. The atoms in a molecule are held together is the nuclear frequency spectrum, and hence the more complex and
by chemical bonds, which are nothing more than directional electron more audibly interesting the modulated envelope of the lime
- clouds. Thus a molecule resembles a plum pudding - the nuclear spectrum. This modulation envelope is a pure molecular property,
plums are immersed in an electron cloud dough. and In a very real sense the method which produces 'nuclear music'
provides a new vehicle for impressing a unique characteristic of a
Now some nuclei spin on their own axis like tops. Those that do molecule on the ear. And since understanding comes from the com-
(the nuclei of the atoms of hydrogen, fluorine and phosphorus are plete human interaction, any method which increases the number of
examples) then behave like tiny magnets. As such they can be lined senses that can be brought lo bear can give new illumination.
up In a large magnetic field, just as a small compass needle is aligned
In the magnetic field of the earth. However, the alignment of the Donna: What does 'heterodyne' mean? 1 got lost in Dr. Wells' notes some-
axis of spin of a single spinning nucleus with the.magnetic field is where around there.
rot perfect. II turns out that for a single spinning nucleus, the axis of
spin rotates about the field direction with a frequency proportional Schafer: It refers to a practice of combining frequencies in the radio-frequency
to the field strength. The motion is called precession and the fre- range in such a way as to produce beats whose frequencies are the
quency is the precesslonalfrequency.For a given field strength, this sum and difference of the original frequencies. In the audio range this
frequency is a natural, well-defined nuclear frequency.
phenomenon is also well known, producing what are called difference
Now in a good strong laboratory magnet different kinds of nuclei and summation tones. It would take us well off course to go into the
precess in different frequency regions scattered through the radio- mathematics of this, but a good book on acoustics will explain it to
frequency spectrum. In an electromagnet with a field strength of
14,000 gauss the nuclei of hydrogen precess at about 60 million
you. It's enough to understand that the difference tone between two
"I cycles per second, those of fluorine at about 56 million cycles, and frequencies of, say, 1,000 cycles and 100 cycles would be 900 cycles,
I
those of phosphorus at about 24 mllllon cycles. Moreover the and the summation tone would be 1,100 cycles. Many difference tones
characteristic frequency of a single kind of nucleus Is modified can be heard quite easily with the naked ear; summation tones are
slightly by two subtle types of interaction with the surrounding usually rather more obscure.
electron cloud. It is found that the nuclear frequency depends slightly
on the density of the electron cloud surrounding the nucleus, i.e. Remember that the precessional frequencies of Dr. Wells' molecular
on the thickness of the dough around each plum In our pudding
model. This effect is of interest to chemists since all chemistry is due
nuclei are in the radio-frequency range; they oscillate at a speed of
lo the electron dough. Then if a molecule contains several nuclei of millions of cycles per second. He has made them audible by plucking
the same type, but In different architectural positions within the them with another radio pulse of almost, but not exactly, the same
molecule, these nuclei will have a precessional frequency charac- frequency, thus producing a difference tone in the audio range. He
36 37
has found it useful to store these sounds on recorded tapes for later VIII
analysis.
We might have thought that the world under the microscope would The Music of the Spheres
be a silent one, but even here we find that we can, with the aid of
electronic equipment, discover sounds.
So much, then, for the microcosmic world of molecules. What about
the macrocosmic world of stars and planets 7 Doug, what did you Doug began with alacrity.
discover about theMusic of the Spheres7
- The Music of the Spheres is a very ancient theory; it goes back at
least to the Greeks, particularly to the school of Pythagoras. It was
thought that each of the planets and stars made music as it travelled
through the heavens. Pythagoras, who had worked out the ratios
between the various harmonics of a sounding string; found that there
was a perfect mathematical correspondence between them, and as he
was also interested in the heavens and noted that they too moved in
an orderly way, he conjectured that the two things were merely
aspects of the same perfect mathematical law which governed the
universe. If this was the case then obviously the planets and stars
must make perfect musical sounds as they moved just as the vibrating
string gave off perfect harmonics.
Doug: He is supposed to have heard it, according to his disciples. But no one
else ever heard it.
Schafer: You've all seen children's tops so you know that when you spin them
they give off a certain tone. If you spin them harder what happens?
Schafer: And if l had a large top and a small top and spun them both at the
')
same speed what would be the difference?
,.
Barbara: The large one would produce a lower sound.
Schafer: Then you should be able to determine the sound any spinning body
sends out if you know its volume and the speed at which it is revolv-
ing. And as the heavens consist of millions of planets and stars, all
different sizes and spinning at different rates, you can see how the
Ancients thought there must be a whole symphony of such sounds.
If you had enough planets spinning around on themselves and in
) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) .) )
38 39
different orbits so that from wherever you listened they would con-
stantly be changing their speed and distance from you, you would
have a celestial harmony in stereo that was forever changing.
Barbara: But I don't hear it. How can we hear it7
Doug: Ssh/ Listen!
(Long pause)
Barbara: You're just fooling. I don't hear anything.
Doug: Well, apparently you're not supposed to be able to hear anything.
I don't know exactly why. But almost everyone in ancient times seems
to have believed there was a Music of the Spheres. l was reading
about this in a medieval writer, Boethius, who lived from 480 to 524
A.D. He said there were three kinds of music: vocal music, instru-
mental music, and Music of the Spheres. Here is what he said
about the Music of the Spheres:
.
How indeed could the swift mechanism of the sky move silently in
its course. And although this sound does not reach our ears, as must
for many reasons be the case ...
ftii- ti '. t - It
--::1:i-
I I
- ..-;;;;;,;;;;--fH-;-io-,.;;~~
" 0
Ii
no matter how complex, is capable of being resolved into a number of
these absolutely elementary sine waves; and the process of this
investigation is called harmonic analysis. But Fourier also stated that
the perfectly pure (mathematically defined) sine wave exists as a
theoretical concept only. Because the moment you switch on the
Le generator or strike the tuning fork you create little distortions called
I ,; 1; _,, onset transient distortions. That is to say, the sound first has to over-
S,o,,n -
~ come its own inertia to be set in motion, and in doing this little
imperfections creep into it. The same thing is true of our ears. For the
ear drum to begin vibrating it too has first to overcome its own
inertia, and accordingly it too introduces more transient distortions.
Everyone was anxious to hear these sounds, so we played them on the piano. Barbara: Couldn't you get rid of them by starting the sound a long time ahead?
Barbara: Is that all that Kepler heard? It's very disappointing. Schafer: Well, we're speaking purely speculatively today. The question is, how
far ahead? In order to get rid of onset transient distortion completely
Schafer: I don't think he actually heard it, He merely computed it mathemati- you'd have to start the sound before you were born. The universe
cally and conjectured that if you could hear the planets they might started before any of us were born. Maybe there are mathematically
sound like that. perfect sounds in the universe which have always been sounding.
Barbara: But didn't anyone hear them? Why can't you hear . . , And if so, perhaps we could never hear them just because they are so
perfect. All the sounds we hear are imperfect; that is to say, they
leff: Because there is no air in outer space and sound waves need air in start and they stop. And so they have tiny transient distortions in
which to travel. them. Is ir not possible that there might indeed be some kind of
Schafer: What would music sound like on the moon? Harmony of the Spheres which we can't hear because we are im-
perfect beings?
leff: It wouldn't.
Doug: That's just what the medieval writers thought.
Schafer: Because there is no atmosphere there. Sound waves need a physical
medium in which to move. You must have done the experiment in Schafer: We have for a long time dismissed this as a foolish thought. But
high school physics where you put a tuning fork in a jar and then sometimes it seems people have mysteriously intuited an idea with-
pumped out all the air. You can't hear the tuning fork any more. out knowing exactly why it should be valid, and only later has it been
rehabilitated and validated by science. What I'm saying is merely
But I've often wondered whether there isn't another reason too. Let what these ancient scholars believed, that a perfect sound would be
me try to explain without getting too technical.
perceived by us as silence!
If we want to speak of the most elementary sound possible we will There was a moment orquiet as that crazy idea sank in.
have to consider what is called the sine wave. The mathematician
Schillinger has described this eloquently: 'One sine wave is the limit Schafer: If something is with you all your lives you take it for granted because
of sim~licity in action'. The sine wave is the wave formed by a pure you can't get outside to measure it. for instance, we've all been
tone without any harmonics. It is the sound of the tuning fork and breathing air since birth, but what is the smell of air? It seems per-
looks like this on an oscilloscope: fectly natural and odorless to us because we can't get away from it.
All we can smell is the impurities in it. Well, perhaps it's somewhat
the same with the Music of the Spheres. It is perfect and our music is
just an imperfect human attempt to recreate it.
: Donna: 1.tsounds religious.
)
)
)
...
Schafer: Is that bad?
) .)
) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
42 43
Jeff: But there luroe been unidentified sounds picked up from outer space, IX
haven't there?
Schafer: Tell us about them. Schizophonia
Jeff: I don't really know except I've heard people mention that mysterious
radio signals luroe been picked up from outer space.
Schafer: There's an observatory in town. Why not phone up an astronomer
and ask him about lt7
Jeff did this and fifteen minutes lacer he was ready co report back. We left the radio on. The voice of a disc jockey puffed along:
Jeff: Astronomers have picked up signals from outer space but they are Hey men, the Big Boss with the hot sauce's gotta secret/
electromagnetic radiations, not sound waves. Electromagnetic radiations It's the Stevie Pinkus giveaway time. (blip-bloop-bleep)
do not require a medium for their propagation and thus can pass Yessir, Big Stevie's giving away free, free prizes again!
across the 'Oacuumof spate. They are of much higher frequency than Hold on men, we might be calling youhoo (fanfare).
the sound waves you have been talking about, impossible for the
- Schizophonic, I said.
human ear to hear. But they are still the longest of an entire range of
radiations progressing through micro-waves, radiant heat wat,es, - Schizo-what? the group asked.
infra-red, 'Disible light, and ultra-'Oiolet WO'Des,then to the X-ray - Schizophonic. It's a word I invented. You know that phono per-
spectra and finally to cosmic w@es which are the shortest and highest tains to sound. The Greek prefix schizo means split or separated.
frequency yet known to exist. All these wO'Desmove with the speed of I was thinking of Barbara's wonder at how a voice or music could
light and are about 100,000 times faster than sound waves. originate one place and be heard in a completely different place
miles away.
In 1955 the first radio waves were heard from Jupiter and those were
the first heard from any planet in our solar system. They seemed to . . And now for all the buddies on the buddy-line here's
be organized but according to astronomers this does not mean that the number one song in the nation at 4:10 p.m. 'Wah
the were transmitted by outer space creatures. In fact, they are Wah Wah' ...
bel,~ed .to. have been caused by disturbances in the atmosphere of - Mind if I tum it off? (They did but I turned it off anyway). The
Jupiter srm,lar to our thunderstorms. They sounded just like bursts of radio and the telephone have not always existed, of course, and
static on the radio. before they did this miracle of the instantaneous transmission of
sound from one place to another was quite unknown. Your voice only
Schafer: We certainly covered a lot of ground in our fanciful quest for music
travelled as far as you could shout. Sounds were tied indissolubly to
under the microscope and beyond the telescope. Are there any ques-
tions before we break up7 . the mechanisms that produced them. In those days every sound was
an original, repeated only in its immediate vicinity.
Barbara: How does the radio work? I mean, I've always wondered how it's Now all that has changed. Since the invention of electronic equipment
possible to have someone talking in one place and being heard in for the transmission and storage of sound, any natural sound, no
another without wires. ,.
r matter how tiny, can be blown up and shot around the world, or
The res~ of our session chat day and the nexc consisted of an enqul,y Into how packaged on tape or record for the generations of the future. We have
che radio worked. When we got conrused we Invited a radio cechnlclan to the split the sound from the makers of the sound. This dissociation I call
dass to straighten us out It wasn't music, but It was fascinating. schizophonia, and if I use a word close in sound to schizophrenia it is
because I want very much to suggest to you the same sense of aber-
ration and drama that this word evokes, for the developments of
which we are speaking have had profound effects on our lives.
Let me suggest some of the drama of schizophonia by telling you a
story which is supposed to be true. But even if it is apocryphal it
won't matter.
45
44
into which he speaks his orders, then sends them around his kingdom
You have all heard about Dracula, the vampire. This is supposed to be for his subjects to carry out, which I gloss lo mean that there is
the origin of that legend:
authority in the magic of the captured sound.
About the turn of the century a certain Rumanian count went to Paris - Writing Is also a kind of captured sound, Barbara interjected. In
and fell madly in love with a young opera singer there. The young
ancient times only priests and monarchs knew its secret.
lady was quite famous and had made some recordings of operatic
arias. But to the count's great grief she died quite suddenly and he - And precisely because of this they managed to hold their power,
despondently returned to his castle in the Carpathian mountains with Jeff added.
a few recordings of her remarkable voice as his only souvenir. He had - Perhaps, I continued, something similar has happened in music.
a statue of the lady sculpted in white marble and placed beside the As musical notation became more and more precise the composer
fireplace of his drawing room, where in solitude each evening he became more and more powerful. The composer of the early part of
played the recordings. The count had many peasants on his estate. the 20th century tended to regard even the performers as push-button
These peasants, who, of course, had never seen a record player, automata; everything was specified exactly in the score. The pages of
peered into the windows on hearing a woman's voice, but saw only
such scores are black with editorializing.
the count alone before the shadowy statue, and they were terrified.
The count immediately became known as Dracula - dracul in Today we have the means for achieving even greater precision:
Rumanian means 'devil'. All the other evil associated with the name recording. So important is the recording of music that it has come to
springs fromthis simple misunderstanding. replace the manuscript as the authentic musical utterance. Igor
Stravinsky recognized this when he decided a few years ago to record
You mustn't imagine Dracula with a hi-fi set. He probably had very all his music as a documentary guide to future conductors.
poor quality cylinder recordings, for although the phonograph was
invented in 1877, just a year after the telephone, it took many But no recording is an exact reproduction of living sound. Distortions
decades before its quality had improved and the records sounded are introduced in both its production and its playback. Even on the
anything like natural. Radio is even more recent. It dates from the simplest home equipment there are devices for inRuencing the sound.
invention of the triode amplifier tube in 1906, and it also took many By twisting the volume control knob the diminutive sound of the
years before it was in everyday use and you could listen to it without clavichord can be made to bulk up to the dimensions of a full orch-
earphones and without making complicated adjustments. In spite of estra; or an orchestra may be reduced to the whisper of the grass.
that, some people soon realized its possibilities: the first public ampli- Most hi-ft setups also have filters for reducing or boosting bass or
fication of a political speech occurred in 1919, undoubtedly to the treble frequencies. In these ways selectivity is introduced into the act
great satisfaction of politicians everywhere, whose plangent voices of music listening and the listener is able to inRuence and control
could now reach limitless numbers of voters. matters which in the past conformed to natural laws and were quite
beyond his control.
Modem life has been ventriloquized.
What makes such a development spectacular is this: it is more
Through broadcasting and recording the binding relationship between natural for us today to listen to electrically reproduced music than to
a sound and the person making it has been dissolved. Sounds have listen to live music, which begins to sound quite unnatural.
been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and
independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to With tape recorders many other kinds of sound manipulations are
a hole in the head but it is free to issue from anywhere in the land- possible which may lead to unrecognizable transformation and distor-
scape. Now we can tune in on sounds originating from all over the tion of original sounds. Cutting and splicing tape, varying speed and
world in our homes, in our cars, in the streets, in our publicbuildings, frequency range, reversing sounds, and so forth; these are the tech-
anywhere and everywhere. And as the cry broadcasts distress, the niques and they can be performed on most tape recorders.
loudspeaker communicates anxiety. We spent about an hour experimenting with sound in this way trying
To catch and preserve the tissue of living sound is an ancient ambi- to discover the creative possibilities of the tape recorder.
tion of man. In Babylonian mythology there are hints of a specially First we had someone record an extended 'sh' very close to the micro-
constructed room in on~ of the ziggurats where whispers stayed phone with the speed of the machine at its highest setting. Playing it
forever. In an ancient Chinese legend a king has a secret black box
) ) ) ) ) )
) ) )
) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
46
47
back at its lowest speed we discovered we had produced the sound of - Are you worried about it? asked Doug.
an enormous steam engine. Then we recorded someone biting into an
apple at the same high speed and discovered at a slower speed we had - We are living with it, aren't we? Perhaps it will only be possible to
a perfect imitation of a large tree falling in a reverberant forest. look back at a later date and determine whether it did us good or ill.
But one matter does concern me. I wonder if I can explain it. Through-
Recording the middle and lower notes of a piano is such a way that out previous life there has always been a correspondence between the
the volume control was turned up only after the note had been struck physiological activity of producing a sound and the psychological
we were surprised at the organ-like or clarinet-like tones we had qualities we attribute to it. There is a bi}; energy output in a loud
on tape.
sound, a tensing in a high sound, a relaxing in a low sound and so
Reversed sounds gave the group other surprises. On the whole they forth. This is true whether you use your vocal chords or a musical
did not like them. A reversed sound has no natural reverberation; it J ' instrument. I would say this has helped us to feel into the depths of
'
expands backwards to burst in an echoless explosion. Without rever- sounds with our muscles and nerves .. And since we produce these
beration such sounds resemble those heard in an anechoic chamber sounds with our bodies we have an instinctive sympathetic feeling
sounds which drop lifelessly to the Aoor. I have concluded the reaso~ when others produce them for our benefit and pleasure.
human beings find such sounds disconcerting is that they imply a
world without air. Today there is no relationship really between turning the volume dial
on your radio up or down and the state of affairs that results. Elec-
Hav~ yo? ever ~~ard your voice recorded and played back to you? tronic music is composed almost exclusively in this way. The com-
T~ 1t. lt s. surpr1smg and educating. You can get outside yourself and poser sits in front of the dials governing his amplifiers and oscillators,
cr1hcally inspect your voiceprint. Is that stammering and quirky but the tiny pantomimic dancing of his fingers bears little relationship
sound really me, you say? You are a little more conscious of the way in physical terms to what he may be producing in sound. Will the
you speak afterwards. consequences of this schizophinc development be positive or negative 7
I leave you this debate. "Schizophonia" (its inventor says) is sup-
Through recording we can freeze sounds for study. Great progress
posed to be a nervous word.
has been made in the analysis and synthesis of sound since the inven-
tion of recording. Before this, pursuing sound was like trailing (cUck)
the wind. Well here we are again with the pops tops and the Big Boss
with the hot sauce t'spin 'em for ya. (Bloop-blip-bleep)
At this point I put on a sound-effects records and asked the group to
describe what they heard. Get set for the nation's choices at 5:10 p.m. this happy
afternoon in your town right af fer this impoooooooortant
Barbara: several knocks message ...
Donna: knocking
]elf: about a dozen knocks on a wooden door
Doug: ten knocks on a heavy door
If, as in the past, there was no way of repeating that sound we would
have to be satisfied With these descriptions, but today - listen again ...
Listening again we agreed that the sound consisted of six light rapid
knocks on a solid wooden door, followed by a short pause, the~ three
louder knocks . The ability to repeat the same sound pattern not only
helps us to study more accurately, but also to study our own process
of pattern perception.
Throughout our discussion one factor had been consistent: the cutting
free of sound from its natural origins; and it is this which J called
schizophonia.
48 49
Listen!
listen to the sound of your own eyelashes fluttering!
2
r--- What else can you hear7 Each of the things you hear is a sound
object. The sound object may be found anywhere. It is high, low,
long, short, loud, soft, continuous or discrete.
Sound objects may be found inside musical compositions and outside
musical compositions.
"Bring an interesting sound to school" is an exercise I often -give to a
f class. And they find sound objects at home, in the street, or in their
t> --
r.-----
~
5
_j
I
imaginations.
Let us understand the sound object as one completely self-contained
acoustic event. A unique event. It is born, it lives, it dies. In this sense
we may speak of the biological life of the sound object.
Often the sound object occurs circumjacently to other sound objects.
In this sense we may speak of the social life of the sound object.
When we speak thus, we speak metaphorically, for in reality sound
consists of dead mechanical vibrations. It is an anthropomorphic pre-
--i
t ference which inclines us to speak of music in such big metaphors as
s
the act of bringing sounds to life and giving them social existences.
Sound objects may differ in numerous important ways through varia-
tions in: 1) frequency (pitch) 2) intensity (loudness) 3) duration and
4) timbre (tone color).
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51
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PREPARATION
To begin at the beginning.
Often when we do theory exercises we tend to think of tones in this Every sound has a manner of preparation (the pianist raises his hands,
way. In an isomorphic system tones live mechanical rather than bio- etc.) which is a mimetic advance signal. If it does not have this (a
logical or social existences (if they live at all). radio suddenly switched on behind one's back) it surprises us as
much as would a birth not preceded by pregnancy. The mimetic
preparations for a piece may extend right out to the conductor's
dressing room. Ceremony, ritual, theatrics .
l1 .J 1 ATTACK
Elsewhere I have called the attack the 'ictus', that is, the instant of
sound-impact. It ought to be a traumatic experience. The still air is
cut with pristine sound. For an instant there is total confusion.
Compared with such a 'rational' theory of music, the multifarious The onset behavior of sound is a fascinating object for study. When a
sounds of the new music we have been studying may seem 'irrational'. system is suddenly excited a great enrichment of the spectrum takes
On the other hand, traditional music theory underestimated the place giving a sound a rough edge. Technically this is called onset
anarchic differences there are between different tones and tone- transient distortion. When a sound. is attacked more slowly less of
groupings through its addiction to the playing of scales and insistence this sudden spectral excitement is present and an even tone quality
on text-book graffiti. Great composers and performers certainly under- emerges. Any instrument can attack smoothly or sharply; but some
stood that the expressive potentials of tones are not at all the same instruments have a natural tendency to 'speak' more quickly than
when played in different registers, or by different instruments, or others and thus have more dissonance in their attack. (Compare the
when attacked and released differently, or with different durations, or trumpet and violin).
with different degrees of loudness.
In classical music ornaments such as the acciaccaturawere devices for
Supporting the intuitions of master composers and performers, recent emphasizing onset transient distortion. A nervous twitching at the
work in acoustics and psychoacoustics (from Helmholtz on) has helped head of a note. Addition of spice. Piquer les dorlneurs.
to make us all aware of the fascinating variety of the world of sounds
and the drama of their social life together.
STATIONARY SOUND
At the most abstract level there are the studies of mathematical
acoustics. Not all of these studies are relevant to the ear. But the Doesn't exist. In a sound everything is on the move. Nevertheless
sound object is an acoustic event, the features of which can be per- there may appear to be a period in the mid-life of a sound in which
S2
S3
The sound wearies; it dies away, perhaps to be followed by new a sudden inspiration
sounds. There are rapid decays and imperceptibly slow decays. It is
biologically natural for sounds to decay.
(The sound of the air conditioner does not decay. It rec~ives trans-
plants and lives forever.) A nervous life (function of the trill:
to sustain onset transients)
REVERBERATION
W. C. Sabine, the acoustician, has defined reverberation technically.
It is the time that elapses from the instant a sound source is switched o- --io- A serene life of reflection - Tao, Buddha
off until its energy decays to 1/1,000,000th of its original- strength I'
(a drop of 60db). As far as the ear is concerned it is the time it takes
for a sound to melt and be lost in the ambient sounds of the room.
Obviously the reverberation of the room affects the music played in
it. Thus music written for cathedrals (with a reverberation time of 6-8 Pictographs for sounds may be useful. Even the elementary class
seconds) is slower than that written for the modem, dry recording ought to be able to draw, analyze and classify sound objects by the
studio in which sounds must be quickly M>rgottento make way for pictography of their envelopes. Thus:
new ones.
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54
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A healthy sound object refusing to
surrender to the decrepitudes of age,
cut down suddenly at the height of his
powers.
But later they discover they have similar ideas and finally join hands in friendship.
Two noble lives In conflict; who will be victor, who vanquishedl
XI
The New Soundscape
1.:
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injury to the ears as a result of what is colloquially called 'boiler-
maker's disease'. It shows that ear protection is mandatory for workers
in sonic environments less loud than the sound produced by the bands
which play at my school on occasions too frequent to count.
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craft, amplified guitars, the sounds of warfare and power machinery .
~ l These are the big blocks of sound, the flat lines of sound, the lethal
weapons which now dominate the composition. They demonstrate the
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crudity of its orchestration.
Next the lesser leitmotives: the ubiquitous radios and television sets,
l
describes in Justine as 'a small, needle-like sound') the sounds of
plumbing, of furnaces and air conditioners. These are the jabber-
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sounds.
'.[,!
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And here in the centre of it all, like a viola in the finale of a trumpet
and drum allegro, are the sounds of our own voices. We no longer
.: .~; sing in the streets of our cities. Even speaking is often a strain. What
should be the most vital sound of human existence is little by little
being crushed beneath sounds which we may quite accurately call
"inhuman".
Portions of the world symphony have already been played and will
not be repeated: the steam engine, the horse-drawn carriage, the
Numerous articles have appeared recently on this subject. One which sum-
marizes the finding is that in Time, August 9, 1968, p.S1.
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62 63
Breathe history into our ears. p.9 Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco, New York, Simon and
For the activity has moved elsewhere, and you are too big to be Schuster, 1965, p. 189.
carried there . . .
p. 10 Pascal, Pensees, Ch. M. des Granges, ed., Paris, Garnier
Farewell slumbering piano . . . Freres, 1964, p. 131.
You have stated your case well.
p.10 John Cage, Silence; lectures and toritings, Middletown,
let now others state theirs. Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1961, pp. 8 and 191.
(2) "The Sonics Boom", Max Gunther, Playboy Magazine, May 1967.
(3) Noise Pollution, July 1967 issue or The Unesco Courier, including
(3a) "Down with Decibels!" 0. Schenker-Sprungli, (3b) "The Archi-
tects of Silence", Constantin Stramentov, (le) "Street and Air Traffic
Noise - And What Can Be Done About It", Leo L. Baranek, (3d)
"Cordoba (Argentina} Takes Noise Abatement by the Horns", G. L
Fuchs, (3e) "Noise and Health", Gunther Lehmann.
(4) Evelyn Waugh, Mexico,an Object lesson, Boston, Little, Brown &
Co., 1939, pp. 28-31.
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