by Trevor Cox
50 “Beetham Tower Howls Again after Another Windy Night in Manchester,” Manchester Evening News, January 5, 2012. Before, the tower used to make noise at about 50 kilometers (30 miles) per hour; now it sings only when the wind speed exceeds 110 kilometers (70 miles) per hour.
51 G. Sargent, “I’m Sorry about the Beetham Tower Howl, Says Architect Ian Simpson,” Manchester Evening News, January 6, 2012. For other ways that buildings make noise, see M. Hamer, “Buildings That Whistle in the Wind,” New Scientist, no. 2563 (August 4, 2006): 34–36.
52 A. R. Gold, “Ear-Piercing Skyscraper Whistles Up a Gag Order,” New York Times, April 13, 1991.
53 Simon Jackson, of the acoustic-consulting firm Arup, tweeted, “Quick sound level measurement at Beetham Tower - 78dBLaeq,1s main freq in 250Hz 3rd/oct band” (@stjackson, January 3, 2012).
54 Nathalie Vriend, personal communication, February 17, 2012.
55 Curzon of Kedleston, Marquess, Tales of Travel (New York: George H. Doran, 1923), 261–339.
7: The Quietest Places in the World
1 C. J. Plack, The Sense of Hearing (New York: Psychology Press, 2014), 53.
2 J. J. Eggermont and L. E. Roberts, “The Neuroscience of Tinnitus,” Trends in Neurosciences 27 (2004): 676–82.
3 R. Schaette and D. McAlpine, “Tinnitus with a Normal Audiogram: Physiological Evidence for Hidden Hearing Loss and Computational Model,” Journal of Neuroscience 31 (2011): 13452–57.
4 C. Watson, “No Silence Please,” Inside Music (BBC blog), December 2006, http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/insidemusic/nosilenceplease, accessed June 1, 2009.
5 To be precise, it is –9.4 dBA. The A means this is an A-weighted decibel, where corrections are applied to allow for the fact that the ear is less sensitive at low frequencies.
6 It is still useful to make the halls very quiet, because audience noise is reduced in quieter auditoriums. C.-H. Jeong, M. Pierre, J. Brunskog, and C. M. Petersen, “Audience Noise in Concert Halls during Musical Performances,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131 (2012): 2753–61.
7 M. Botha, “Several Futures of Silence: A Conversation with Stuart Sim on Noise and Silence,” Kaleidoscope 1, no. 1 (2007), https://www.dur.ac.uk/kaleidoscope/issues/i1v1/sim_1_1. Stuart Sim authored A Manifesto for Silence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
8 J. A. Grahn, “Neural Mechanisms of Rhythm Perception: Current Findings and Future Perspectives,” Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2012): 585–606.
9 D. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music (London: Atlantic, 2006).
10 Charles Deenen, personal communication, June 24, 2012.
11 See either K. Young, “Noisy ISS May Have Damaged Astronauts,” New Scientist, June 2006; or C. A. Roller and J. B. Clark, “Short-Duration Space Flight and Hearing Loss,” Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery 129 (2003): 98–106.
12 Young, “Noisy ISS.”
13 T. G. Leighton and A. Petculescu, “The Sound of Music and Voices in Space Part 2: Modeling and Simulation,” Acoustics Today 5 (2009): 17–26.
14 A. Moorhouse, Environmental Noise and Health in the UK (Oxfordshire, UK: Health Protection Agency, 2010).
15 J. Voisin, A. Bidet-Caulet, O. Bertrand, and P. Fonlupt, “Listening in Silence Activates Auditory Areas: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study,” Journal of Neuroscience 26 (2006): 273–78.
16 D. Van Dierendonck and J. T. Nijenhuis, “Flotation Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy (REST) as a Stress-Management Tool: A Meta-analysis,” Psychology and Health 20 (2005): 405–12.
17 H. Samuel, “French Told Not to Complain about Rural Noise,” Daily Telegraph (London), August 22, 2007.
18 C. Ray, “Soundscapes and the Rural: A Conceptual Review from a British Perspective,” Centre for Rural Economy Discussion Paper no. 5, February 2006, http://www.ncl.ac.uk/cre/publish/discussionpapers/pdfs/dp5.pdf.
19 Publisher’s note from G. Hempton and J. Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Search for Natural Silence in a Noisy World (New York: Free Press, 2009).
20 “What Is One Square Inch?” One Square Inch: A Sanctuary for Silence at Olympic National Park, http://onesquareinch.org/about, accessed July 5, 2013.
21 R. M. Schafer, The Tuning of the World (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977).
22 US National Park Service, Management Policies (Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, 2006), 56.
23 The research underpinning the campaign is given in great detail in S. Jackson, D. Fuller, H. Dunsford, R. Mowbray, S. Hext, R. MacFarlane, and C. Haggett, Tranquillity Mapping: Developing a Robust Methodology for Planning Support (Centre for Environmental and Spatial Analysis, Northumbria University, 2008).
24 B. L. Mace, P. A. Bell, and R. J. Loomis, “Aesthetic, Affective and Cognitive Effects of Noise on Natural Landscape Assessment,” Social & Natural Resources 12 (1999): 225–42.
25 M. D. Hunter, S. B. Eickhoff, R. J. Pheasant, M. J. Douglas, G. R. Watts, T. F. Farrow, D. Hyland, et al., “The State of Tranquility: Subjective Perception Is Shaped by Contextual Modulation of Auditory Connectivity,” NeuroImage 53 (2010): 611–18.
26 S. Maitland, A Book of Silence (London: Granta, 2008).
27 S. Arkette, “Sounds like City,” Theory, Culture & Society 21 (2004): 159–68.
28 Jackson et al., Tranquillity Mapping.
29 Based on findings in the UK. C. J. Skinner and C. J. Grimwood, The UK National Noise Incidence Study 2000/2001, vol. 1, Noise Levels (London: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2001).
30 “Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 June 2002 Relating to the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise,” Official Journal of the European Communities L189/12, July 18, 2002, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2002:189:0012:0025:EN:PDF.
31 For the acoustic geeks, the first is Lden = 55 dB [Research into Quiet Areas: Recommendations for Identification (London: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2006)]; and the second, LA,eq = 42 dB [R. Pheasant, K. Horoshenkov, G. Watts, and B. Barrett, “The Acoustic and Visual Factors Influencing the Construction of Tranquil Space in Urban and Rural Environments Tranquil Spaces-Quiet Places?” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123 (2008): 1446–57].
32 Hildegard Westerkamp, personal communication, April 19, 2009.
33 Other studies have come up with sets of terms similar to vibrancy and pleasantness. W. J. Davies and J. E. Murphy, “Reproducibility of Soundscape Dimensions” (paper presented at InterNoise 2012, New York, August 19–22, 2012).
34 Stuart Bradley, personal communication, April 2009.
35 W. Hasenkamp and L. W. Barsalou, “Effects of Meditation Experience on Functional Connectivity of Distributed Brain Networks,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6 (2012): 38.
36 Wendy explained to me that while older studies focused on individual brain regions, newer brain-imaging techniques have shown that no region of the brain is solely responsible for any given function, and that functions are distributed across multiple brain regions called networks.
37 K. A. MacLean, E. Ferrer, S. R. Aichele, D. A. Bridwell, A. P. Zanesco, T. L. Jacobs, B. G. King, et al., “Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention,” Psychological Science 21 (2010): 829–839.
8: Placing Sound
1 For an analysis of randomness in musical rhythms over four centuries, see D. J. Levitin, P. Chordia, and V. Menon, “Musical Rhythm Spectra from Bach to Joplin Obey a 1/f Power Law,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 109 (2012): 3716–20.
2 “New Organ Will Be Played by the Sea,” Lancashire Telegraph, June 14, 2002.
3 S.-H. Kima, C.-W. Lee, and J.-M. Lee, “Beat Characteristics and Beat Maps of the King Seong-deok Divine Bell,” Journal of Sound and Vibration 281 (2005): 21–44.
4 Some musical instruments produce notes that lack the fundamental, but in that case the brain fills in the missi
ng information.
5 The frequency is proportional to the wind speed divided by the wire thickness.
6 A. Hickling, “Blowing in the Wind: Pierre Sauvageot’s Harmonic Fields,” Guardian (London), June 2, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/02/harmonic-fields-pierre-sauvageot.
7 M. Kamo and Y. Iwasa, “Evolution of Preference for Consonances as a By-product,” Evolutionary Ecology Research 2 (2000): 375–83.
8 See N. Bannan, ed., Music, Language, and Human Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
9 A. Corbin, “Identity Bells and the Nineteenth Century French Village,” in M. M. Smith, Hearing History (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), 184–200.
10 My visit to St. James’ Church near Manchester took place on September 10, 2011.
11 The “brown bread” line was taken from a Daily Mail headline, June 26, 2012.
12 T. J. Cox, “Acoustic Iridescence,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 129 (2011): 1165–72.
13 P. Ball, “Sculpted Sound,” New Scientist, no. 2335 (March 23, 2002): 32.
14 A. Climente, D. Torrent, and J. Sánchez-Dehesa, “Omnidirectional Broadband Acoustic Absorber Based on Metamaterials,” Applied Physics Letters 100 (2012): 144103. My colleague Olga Umnova built a giant one of these to investigate how it can protect you from a blast.
15 Francis Crow, personal communication, November 7, 2012.
16 The sound propagation was probably similar to that of Echo Bridge, Massachusetts, which I discussed in Chapter 4.
17 The quotes in this discussion, with some additional minor changes by Davide Tidoni, were first used as notes to the exhibition “Bang! Being the Building,” which was at the Barbican, London, in 2012.
18 “Somerset Church Bell to Ring Again After Agreement Reached,” BBC News, December 2, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-20572854.
19 Angus Carlyle, personal communication, October 19, 2012.
20 Tony Gibbs, personal communication, October 23, 2012.
21 In North Wales there is a project called Bangor Sound City, which has a grand vision for a permanent sound art park, a sonic complement to sculpture parks. The project has staged a series of temporary interventions to examine people’s attitudes to public sound art. They found that people take sound exhibits at face value; there was no sense that they hanker after more conventional sculpture or a painting.
22 If you prefer a more eco-friendly version of a musical road, in Rotterdam there is a floor sculpture in Schouwburgplein that plays with footstep sounds by having different types of paving.
23 David Simmons-Duffin wrote his blog post on December 23, 2008.
24 The distances have been rounded; they were 12.3 centimeters (4.8 inches) for the lowest note and 8.0 centimeters (3.1 inches) for the highest.
25 In musical terms, the last note was between a fifth and a sixth above the first note.
26 There is at least one that does not use octaves, and some omit fifths. P. Ball, “Harmonious Minds: The Hunt for Universal Music,” New Scientist, no. 2759 (May 10, 2010): 30–33.
27 M. Hamer, “Music Special: Flexible Scales and Immutable Octaves,” New Scientist, no. 2644 (February 23, 2008): 32–34.
28 “Lone Ranger Road Music Heads into the Sunset,” CBC News, September 21, 2008, http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/music/story/2008/09/21/road-loneranger-theme.html. The quote is originally from “Honda Makes GROOVY Music,” Daily Breeze, September 20, 2008, http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_10514483.
9: Future Wonders
1 The food industry also manipulates product sound, to ensure that biscuits and snacks have the right crispiness and crunchiness. For crispiness, recipes need to create a brittle internal scaffold within the food that shatters in your mouth when you first bite.
2 P. Nyeste and M. S. Wogalter, “On Adding Sound to Quiet Vehicles,” in Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 52nd Annual Meeting—2008 (Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2008), 1747–50.
3 “Feedback: Cars That Go Clippetty Clop,” New Scientist, no. 2823 (July 29, 2011).
4 The Museum of Curiosity, series 2, episode 1, BBC Radio 4, broadcast May 4, 2009.
5 “99% Invisible-15- Sounds of the Artificial World,” PodBean, February 11, 2011, http://podbean.99percentinvisible.org/2011/02/11/99-invisible-15-sounds-of-the-artificial-world.
6 S. Koelsch, “Effects of Unexpected Chords and of Performer’s Expression on Brain Responses and Electrodermal Activity,” PLoS One 3, no. 7 (2008): e2631.
7 The reproduction often suffers from the fact that the sound appears to be inside the head. Researchers are currently investigating how this problem might be overcome for all listeners. The story of the opera house comes from A. Farina and R. Ayalon, “Recording Concert Hall Acoustics for Posterity” (paper presented at the 24th International Conference: Multichannel Audio—The New Reality, June 26–28, 2003).
Index
Aalto, Alvar
Acentech
acoustic absorption
acoustic ecology
acoustic engineers, acoustic engineering
acoustic mirrors
acoustics:
Greek understanding of
of Mayan pyramids
of Neolithic burial mounds
see also architectural acoustics; echo(es)
acoustic shadows
Aeneid (Virgil)
Aeolian harp
Aeolus (Jerram)
Afghanistan
African cicada
Afton Canyon
aircraft, propellers of
Airy, George
Al-Ashkharah
Alejandro Selkirk Island
Alexander technique
Alien
Altiverb
aluminum nosing
Alvarsson, Jesper
Amtrak trains
Amundsen, Roald
anechoic chamber
Angel of the North (Gormley)
Anglican Church
Angoulême
animal calls
animal noise disturbances
animation, of sound
Antarctica
Apollonia
archaeoacoustics
arches
whispering
architectural acoustics
beginnings of
architecture
architraves
Arctic
Aristotle
Arnott, Neil
arts, silence in
artwork, sound
aspens
Asphaltophone
assisted resonance system
Astoria
attack
attention
auditory cortex
auditory neurons
aural conservation
auralization
Australia
avalanche
Avebury
Aventine Hill
Avery Fisher Hall
Avis, Mark
Aztecs
Bach, Johann Sebastian
back streets
backward masking
Bagenal, Hope
Bahamas
Baikal, Lake
baleen whales
balloon bursts
Bangkok
Bangor Sound City
Baptistry of St. John
Barbican
baroque music
Barossa Reservoir
Barrington, Daines
Barron, Michael
basal ganglia
bassy sounds
bathrooms
bat monitors
bats
Bay of Fundy
Bayreuth Festival Theatre
BBC
BBC Radio
beats
Beckett, Samuel
Beetham Tower
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Beijing
Belloc, Hilaire
bells
importance of
noise complaints about
Beranek, Leo
Berlin
Berlioz, Hector
Berman, Marc
Bernoulli, Daniel
Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park
Big Ben
Biggs, E. Power
Bilbao, Spain
Billboard
Bin Laden, Osama
birch trees
bird bones
birds
birdsong
adaption to habitat of
effects on people of
forests and
as reassuring
in urban settings
Birkrigg Common
bitterns
blackbirds
Blackpool
Blesser, Barry
Blitz
blood
“Blue Moon”
B Minor Mass
Boid, Edward
Boivin, Nicole
bombard fish
“Boogie Disease”
Book of Common Prayer
bore
geometry of
Boston, Mass.
Boston Globe
Boston Symphony Orchestra
bottlenose dolphins
Boult, Adrian
Bowen, David
Bowie, Md.
Bradford University
Bradley, Stuart
brain
melodies processed in
misinterpretation of whispering gallery by
music interpreted by
senses processed together in
sounds combined in
brain networks
brain stem
Brazil
breathing
Breiðamerkurjökull
bridge arches
Bridgewater Canal
Bridgewater Hall
British Library
British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)
Brixton Academy
brontidi
bubbles
Buddhism
buildings, singing
building shape
bullfrogs
Buncefield oil terminal
burping
Burtt, Ben
Business Academy Bexley
Butcher, John
Cage, John
cairns
California
“Calls from a Rusty Cage” (Butcher)
camel moans
Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)
Campbell, Andrew
Candid Camera