The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World (42 page)

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, L
_A,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.

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 missing 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.

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
52
nd 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).

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

Benslow Music Trust

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

“Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe”

“Canvasser's Tale, The” (Twain)

Capitol, US

Carlyle, Angus

cars

Castlefield Wharf

casuarina

cat

“Cataract of Lodore, The” (Southey)