The Sound Book The Science Of The Sonic Wonders Of The World

A professor of acoustic engineering provides a tour of the world's most amazing sound phenomena, including creaking glaciers, whispering galleries, stalactite organs, musical roads, humming dunes, seals that sound like alien angels, and a Mayan pyramid that chirps like a bird.

As an acoustic engineer, Trevor Cox has spent his career eradicating unwanted noises – echoes in concert halls, clamour in classrooms. Until the day he heard something so astonishing that he had an epiphany: rather than quashing rare or bizarre sounds, we should be celebrating these sonic treasures. This is the story of his investigation into the mysteries of these Sonic Wonders of the World. In the Mojave Desert he finds sand dunes that sing. In France he discovers an echo that tells jokes. In California he drives down a musical road that plays the William Tell Overture. In Cathedrals across the world he learns how acoustics changed the history of the Church. Touching on physics, music, archaeology, neuroscience, biology, and design, Cox explains how sound is made and altered by the environment and how our body reacts to peculiar noises – from the exotic sonic wonders he encounters on his journey, or the equally unique and surprising sounds of our everyday environment. In a world dominated by the visual, Sonic Wonderland encourages us to become better listeners and to open our ears to the glorious cacophony around us. Listen to a selection of astonishing sounds here: https://soundcloud.com/sonicwonderland

Whether social, cultural, or individual, the act of imagination always derives from a pre-existing context. For example, we can conjure an alien's scream from previously heard wildlife recordings or mentally rehearse a piece of music while waiting for a train. This process is no less true forthe role of imagination in sonic events and artifacts. Many existing works on sonic imagination tend to discuss musical imagination through terms like compositional creativity or performance technique. In this two-volume Handbook, contributors address this tendency head-on, correcting the currentbias towards visual imagination to instead highlight the many forms of sonic and musical imagination. Topics covered include auditory imagery and the neurology of sonic imagination; aural hallucination and illusion; use of metaphor in the recording studio; the projection of acoustic imagination inarchitectural design; and the design of sound artifacts for cinema and computer games.

Forging new ideas about the relationship between race and sound, Furlonge explores how black artists--including well-known figures such as writers Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston, and singers Bettye LaVette and Aretha Franklin, among others--imagine listening. Drawing from a multimedia archive, Furlonge examines how many of the texts call on readers to "listen in print." In the process, she gives us a new way to read and interpret these canonical, aurally inflected texts, and demonstrates how listening allows us to engage with the sonic lives of difference as readers, thinkers, and citizens.

This book serves as a guide to developing and designing the right sound to enhance a product’s identity, its use, its affordance and its acceptance by consumers. It is of interest to designers, researchers, R&D departments, marketing experts and industries involved in the exploration of the new frontiers now offered by sound. We are all immersed in an intangible world of sounds; however, the fact that only an infinitesimal part of the sound to which we are exposed has been wittingly created is often ignored. An interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary approach encompassing design methods and design engineering, psychology and cognitive ergonomics, acoustics and psychoacoustics contributes to the improvement of product sound development. Providing readers with an overview of design methods in which sound becomes a new requirement, the book investigates the role of sound from the consumer viewpoint, presents several tools and practical examples of sensory design tools and projects, and lastly, introduces a new tool and method developed expressly to support the design of product sound.

An exploration of echo not as simple repetition but as an agent of creative possibilities. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amit Pinchevski proposes that echo is not simple repetition and the reproduction of sameness but an agent of change and a source of creation and creativity. Pinchevski views echo as a medium, connecting and mediating across and between disparate domains. He reminds us that the mythological Echo, sentenced by Juno to repeat the last words of others, found a way to make repetition expressive. So too does echo introduce variation into sameness, mediating between self and other, inside and outside, known and unknown, near and far. Echo has the potential to bring back something unexpected, either more or less than what was sent. Pinchevski distinguishes echo from the closely related but sometimes conflated reflection, reverberation, and resonance; considers echolalia as an active, reactive, and creative vocalic force, the launching pad of speech; and explores echo as a rhetorical device, steering between appropriation and response while always maintaining relation. He examines the trope of echo chamber and both destructive and constructive echoing; describes various echo techniques and how echo can serve practical purposes from echolocation in bats and submarines to architecture and sound recording; explores echo as a link to the past, both literally and metaphorically; and considers echo as medium using Marshall McLuhan’s tetrad.

Ticking clocks, claps of thunder, the human voice—sound is anything that can be heard. Hearing sound is one thing, but understanding just how it works and what its properties are is quite another. Answering these questions and others concerning supersonic speed and breaking the sound barrier, how the human voice and ear work, and the age-old question of whether a tree falling in the forest unobserved makes any noise, this volume provides an accessible yet detailed and amply illustrated guide to the science of sound. Also included are several fun projects, which allow readers to explore in a hands-on way the nature, quality, and behavior of sound.

This lavishly illustrated, multimedia, full-color you-are-there experience is a celebration of the annual Rainbow Gathering, a free non-commercial outdoor event held in remote locations building a loose-knit community of kindred spirits all around the world for over fifty years. This ethnographic and folkloric listener guidebook from author and radio and podcast producer Tenali Hrenak features over a hundred interactive aural experiences drawn from a quarter century of field recording at Rainbow gatherings, as well as copious illustrations and essays from nine contributors. * Internet connection required to listen to or download audio experiences * Full color images on applicable devices