A soundscape consists of events heard not objects seen.

I have always attempted to go directly to sources. Thus, a writer is trustworthy only when writing about sounds directly experienced and intimately known. Writing about other places and times usually results in counterfeit descriptions.

Keynote sounds do not have to be listened to consciously; they are overheard but cannot be overlooked, for keynote sounds become listening habits in spite of themselves.

The term soundmark is derived from landmark and refers to a community sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in that community. Once a soundmark has been identified, it deserves to be protected, for soundmarks make the acoustic life of the community unique.

Hearing is a way of touching at a distance and the intimacy of the first sense is fused with sociability whenever people gather together to hear something special.

The ear is also an erotic orifice. Listening to beautiful sounds, for instance the sounds of music, is like the tongue of a lover in your ear.

The sound of snow in barely freezing Italy is very different from that at 30 degrees below zero in Manitoba or Siberia. As one moves to the interiors of the great northern continents the soft padded step begins to crunch, then to squeak—even painfully.

The Illustrated Glossary of Snow and Ice contains 154 terms for snow and ice in English and matches them with terms in Danish, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Russian, French-Canadian and Argentinian Spanish. Many of the expressions—for instance, permafrost icebound, pack ice—are absent from the vocabularies of other languages.

The wind is an element that grasps the ears forcefully. The sensation is tactile as well as aural. How curious and almost supernatural it is to hear the wind in the distance without feeling it, as one does on a calm day in the Swiss Alps, where the faint, soft whistling of the wind over a glacier miles away can be heard across the intervening stillness of the valleys.

Evergreen forest, in its mature phase, produces darkly vaulted aisles, through which sound reverberates with unusual clarity—a circumstance which, according to Oswald Spengler, drove the northern Europeans to try to duplicate the reverberation in the construction of Gothic cathedrals.

In Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates tell how the cicadas were originally men who were touched by the muses so that they devoted their lives to singing and, forgetting to eat, died to be reborn as insects. In Taoism, cicadas became associated with hsien, the soul, and images of cicadas are employed when preparing a corpse for burial, to assist the soul in disengaging itself from the body after death. The importance of the cicada in the soundscape of the South, as well as the symbolism it has provoked, has been overlooked since the comparatively recent northern drift of European and American civilization.

For our purposes, however, one general feature of insect sounds is of interest. More perhaps than any other sound in nature, they give the impression of being steady-state or flat-line sounds. In part this may be an illusion, for many insect sounds are pulse modulated or varied in other subtle ways, but despite the “grainy” effect such modulations create, the impression with many insects is of a continuous, unvarying monotony. Like the straight line in space, the flat line in sound rarely occurs in nature, and we will not encounter it again until the Industrial Revolution introduces the modern engine.

In onomatopoeic vocabulary, man unites himself with the soundscape about him, echoing back its elements. The impression is taken in; the expression is thrown back in return. But the soundscape is far too complex for human speech to duplicate, and so it is in music alone that man finds that true harmony of the inner and outer world. It will be in music too that he will create his most perfect models of the ideal soundscape of the imagination.

The quiet ambiance of the hi-fi soundscape allows the listener to hear farther into the distance just as the countryside exercises long-range viewing. The city abbreviates this facility for distant hearing (and seeing) marking one of the more important changes in the history of perception.

In a lo-fi soundscape individual acoustic signals are obscured in an overdense population of sounds. The pellucid sound—a footstep in the snow, a church bell across the valley or an animal scurrying in the brush—is masked by broad-band noise. Perspective is lost. On a downtown street corner of the modern city there is no distance; there is only presence.

Thus the symbolism of the post horn worked differently from that of the hunting horn. It did not draw the listener out into the landscape but, working in reverse, brought news from far away to home. It was centripetal rather than centrifugal in character and its tones were never more pleasant than when it approached the town and delivered its letters and parcels to the expectant.

I have defined keynote as a regular sound underpinning other more fugitive or novel sound events. The keynotes of the farm were numerous, for farming is a life with little variation. Keynotes may influence the behavior of the people or set up rhythms that are carried over into other aspects of life. One example will have to suffice. In the Russia of Tolstoy, the peasants kept whetstones in little tin boxes strapped to their waists, and the rhythmic rattling of these boxes formed a vernacular keynote during the haying months.

The most salient sound signal in the Christian community is the church bell. In a very real sense it defines the community, for the parish is an acoustic space, circumscribed by the range of the church bell.

Perhaps no sound benefits more from distance and atmosphere. Church bells form a sound complement to distant hills, wrapped in blue-gray mist. … Traveling a similar route to that of Charles Burney, yet keeping to the rivers and canals and avoiding the cities, Robert Louis Stevenson experienced church bells transformed in this way.

It was during the fourteenth century that the church bell was wedded to a technical invention of great significance for European civilization: the mechanical clock. Together they became the most inescapable signals of the soundscape, for like the church bell, and with even more merciless punctuality, the clock measures the passing of time audibly. In this way it differs from all previous means of telling time—water clocks, sand clocks and sundials—which were silent.

The association of clocks and church bells was by no means fortuitous; for Christianity provided the rectilinear idea of the concept of time as progress, albeit spiritual progress, with a starting point (Creation), an indicator (Christ) and a fateful conclusion (the Apocalypse). Already in the seventh century it was decreed in a bull of Pope Sabinianus that the monastary bells should be rung seven times each day, and these punctuation points became known as the canonical hours. Time is always running out in the Christian system and the clock bell punctuates this fact. Its chimes are acoustic signals, but even at a subliminal level the incessant rhythm of its ticking forms a keynote of unavoidable significance in the life of Western Man. Clocks reach into the recesses of night to remind man of his mortality.

Keynote sounds are, however, noticed when they change, and when they disappear altogether, they may even be remembered with affection.

The study of noise legislation is interesting, not because anything is ever really accomplished by it, rather because it provides us with a concrete register of acoustic phobias and nuisances. Changes in legislation give us clues to changing social attitudes and perceptions, and these are important for the accurate treatment of sound symbolism.

In the ultimate lo-fi soundscape the signal-to-noise ratio is one-to-one and it is no longer possible to know what, if anything, is to be listened to.

The inability to recognize noise during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution as a factor contributing to the multiplicatory toxicity of the new working environments is one of the strangest facts in the history of aural perception. We must try to determine the reason. It may be partly explained as a result of the inability to measure sounds quantitatively. A sound might be recognized as unpleasantly loud, but until Lord Rayleigh built the first practical precision instrument for the measurement of acoustic intensity in 1882, there was no way of knowing for certain whether a subjective impression had an objective basis. The decibel, as a means of establishing definite sound pressure levels, did not come into extended use until 1928.

During the Industrial Revolution, Sacred Noise sprang across to the profane world. Now the industrialists held power and they were granted dispensation to make Noise by means of the steam engine and the blast furnace, just as previously the monks had been free to make Noise on the church bell or J. S. Bach to open out his preludes on the full organ.

The association of Noise and power has never really been broken in the human imagination. It descends from God, to the priest, to the industrialist, and more recently to the broadcaster and the aviator. The important thing to realize is this: to have the Sacred Noise is not merely to make the biggest noise; rather it is a matter of having the authority to make it without censure.

The important thing to realize is this: to have the Sacred Noise is not merely to make the biggest noise; rather it is a matter of having the authority to make it without censure.

When sound power is sufficient to create a large acoustic profile, we may speak of it, too, as imperialistic. For instance, a man with a loudspeaker is more imperialistic than one without because he can dominate more acoustic space. A man with a shovel is not imperialistic, but a man with a jackhammer is because he has the power to interrupt and dominate other acoustic activities in the vicinity.

When sounds are projected visually on a graphic level recorder, they may be analyzed in terms of what is called their envelope or signature. The principal characteristics of a sound envelope are the attack, the body, the transients (or internal changes) and the decay. When the body of the sound is prolonged and unchanging, it is reproduced by the graphic level recorder as an extended horizontal line.

The principal characteristics of a sound envelope are the attack, the body, the transients (or internal changes) and the decay. When the body of the sound is prolonged and unchanging, it is reproduced by the graphic level recorder as an extended horizontal line.

Two new techniques were introduced: the discovery of packaging and storing techniques for sound and the splitting of sounds from their original contexts—which I call schizophonia. The benefits of the electroacoustic transmission and reproduction of sound are well enough celebrated, but they should not obscure the fact that precisely at the time hi-fi was being engineered, the world soundscape was slipping into an all-time lo-fi condition.

Originally all sounds were originals. They occurred at one time in one place only. Sounds were then indissolubly tied to the mechanisms that produced them. The human voice traveled only as far as one could shout. Every sound was uncounterfeitable, unique.

We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape.

Since the invention of electroacoustical equipment for the transmission and storage of sound, any sound, no matter how tiny, can be blown up and shot around the world, or packaged on tape or record for the generations of the future. We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape.

I coined the term schizophonia in The New Soundscape intending it to be a nervous word. Related to schizophrenia, I wanted it to convey the same sense of aberration and drama. Indeed, the overkill of hi-fi gadgetry not only contributes generously to the lo-fi problem, but it creates a synthetic soundscape in which natural sounds are becoming increasingly unnatural while machine-made substitutes are providing the operative signals directing modern life.

On the old ten-inch shellac disc, the recording duration was limited to slightly over three minutes. As this was the first vehicle for popular music, all pop songs were abbreviated to meet this technical limitation. But curiously, when the long-play disc was introduced in 1948, the length of the average pop song did not increase in proportion. This suggests that some mysterious law concerning average attention span may have been inadvertently discovered by the older technology.

When we were studying the soundscape of the Swedish village of Skruv in 1975, we encountered a large number of these and plotted their profiles and pitches on a map. We were surprised to find that together they produced a G-sharp major triad, which the F-sharp whistles of passing trains turned into a dominant seventh chord. As we moved about the streets on quiet evenings, the town played melodies.

Absolute music is disengaged from the external environment and its highest forms (the sonata, the quartet, the symphony) are conceived for indoor performance. Indeed, they seem to gain importance in direct ratio to man’s disenchantment with the external soundscape. Music moves into concert halls when it can no longer be effectively heard out of doors.

The conscientious imitation of landscape in music corresponds historically to the development of landscape painting, which seems to have been first cultivated by the Flemish painters of the Renaissance and developed into the principal genre of painting in the nineteenth century. Such developments are explicable only as a result of the displacement of the art gallery farther and farther from the natural landscape in the hearts of growing cities.

It may well be that the peculiar value set on gardens in the later Middle Ages is a legacy of the Crusaders, who also appear to have brought back the arts of lyric poetry and song from the Middle East. It was in this diminutive meadow then, behind the protective wall of the castle, that the troubadour art flourished, and the voices of the birds were often woven into their songs.

Even the musical forms cultivated by the nineteenth century seem to have an imperialistic bias: thus, in the first-movement form of the symphony, home base is established (exposition), colonies are developed (Durchführung) and the empire is consolidated (recapitulation and coda). … The substitution of the punched-string piano for the plucked-string harpsichord typifies the greater aggressiveness of a time in which objects were punched and beaten into existence by means of new industrial processes. Material had once been stroked, carved or kneaded into shape; now it was slugged.

If there is a noise pollution problem in the world today it is certainly partly and maybe largely owing to the fact that music educators have failed to give the public a total schooling in soundscape awareness, which has, since 1913, ceased to be divisible into musical and nonmusical kingdoms.

Throughout the history of soundmaking, music and the environment have bequeathed numerous effects to one another, and the modern era provides striking examples. For instance, while the internal combustion engine gave music the long line of low-information sound, music gave the automobile industry the pitched horn, tuned (in North America) to the major or minor third.

When Mozart repeated a theme six or eight times, it was to help the memory store it for later recall. I do not think it was accidental, therefore, that Schoenberg and his followers sought to achieve a musical style which was athematic (i.e., without repetitions and recapitulation) about 1910, at the same time as recording became commercially successful. From then on the recapitulation was on the disc. … At first it seems paradoxical that in a dynamic and revolutionary era most people should prefer the music of the past, until we realize that for the vast majority of humans today music no longer functions as the antennae of the spirit but as a sensory anchor and stabilizer against future-shock.

The stone walls and floors of Norman and Gothic cathedrals produced not only an abnormally long reverberation time (six seconds or more) but also reflected sounds of low and medium frequencies as well, discriminating against high frequencies above 2,000 hertz owing to the greater absorption of the walls and air in that range. Anyone who has heard monks chanting plainsong in one of these old buildings will never forget the effect: the voices seem to issue from no point but suffuse the building like perfume.

The experience of immersion rather than concentration forms one of the strongest links between modern and medieval man. But we can look back farther still to determine a common origin. Where then is the dark and fluid space from which such listening experiences spring? It is the ocean-womb of our first ancestors: the exaggerated echo and feedback effects of modern electronic and popular music re-create for us the echoing vaults, the dark depths of ocean.

In introducing students to the properties of sound I have noticed frequent confusion between notions as elementary as frequency and intensity and have come to the conclusion that the standard acoustic diagram is not only ambiguous but for some people, at least, may not correspond at all with the natural instincts of aural perception.

Just as the notation of music is now being replaced by the record player, the tape recorder is pushing the physical study of acoustics into the human area of psychoacoustics. And for general field work in measuring the intensity of sound, the flat response of the sound level meter (the so-called C scale) has given way to the contoured A scale, weighted along the lines of the equal loudness contours of the human ear. Similarly, the numerous refinements in measuring aircraft noise in recent years have tended more and more to take human response into consideration. Thus EPNdB (Effective Perceived Noise in Decibels) takes into account the particular tone components of aircraft as well as the duration of the noise, while NNI (Noise and Number Index) uses the EPNdB as a basis and additionally calculates the number of aircraft per day (or night) as a key annoyance factor.

We may call the sound object the smallest self-contained particle of a soundscape. Because it possesses a beginning, middle and end, it is analyzable in terms of its envelope. Envelope is a graphic term but the ear can be trained to hear its characteristics, which are defined as attack, body (or stationary state) and decay.

The middle portion of the sound object used to be called the stationary or steady-state portion, but it is better to call it the body, because nothing about sound is ever really stationary.

W. C. Sabine, the acoustician, has defined reverberation time technically. It is the time that elapses from the instant a sound source is switched off until its energy decays to one millionth of its original strength (a drop of 60 decibels). As far as the ear is concerned, it is the time it takes for a sound to melt and be lost in the ambient noise. Echo differs from reverberation in that it is a repetition or partial repetition of a sound, due to reflection off a distant surface. Reverberation is also reflected sound but no separate repetitions of the original are distinguishable.

The best way to appreciate a field situation is to get above it. The medieval cartographer did this by climbing the highest hill, and the Mannerist painters of the Renaissance expanded the vistas of their paintings by doing the same thing. Surely one of the greatest inventions of man was the aerial projection in cartography, which represented a far bolder leap of the imagination than the fumbling exercises that eventually resulted in the actuality of flight.

The isobel map derives from the contour maps of geographers and meteorologists, and consists of hundreds or thousands of readings on a sound level meter averaged out to produce bars of equal intensity, projected as if the observer were above the field of study. On such a map the quietest and noisiest sections of a territory can be immediately identified. … Material for the events map would have to be limited to a specific period of time and would be gathered by walking over or around the selected location.

Any classification system or taxonomy is surrealistic; for surrealistic art also depends on bringing together incongruous or anachronistic facts, which nevertheless somehow snap together to illuminate new relationships.

The mass of a sound is where its bulk seems to lie. It is regarded as the predominant bandwidth of the sound.

The mass of a sound is where its bulk seems to lie. It is regarded as the predominant bandwidth of the sound. Indeed both mass and frequency are often present in environmental sounds and they may sometimes occupy quite independent positions in the spectrum, as would be the case with a sound consisting of a low throb and a high warble. … Similarly, grain is a special type of internal fluctuation, one with a regular modulatory effect. It is accordingly contrasted with transients, which are isolated or irregular fluctuations. Grain gives texture; it roughens up the surface of the sound and its effects consist of tremolo (amplitude modulation) or vibrato (frequency modulation).

Similarly, grain is a special type of internal fluctuation, one with a regular modulatory effect. It is accordingly contrasted with transients, which are isolated or irregular fluctuations. Grain gives texture; it roughens up the surface of the sound and its effects consist of tremolo (amplitude modulation) or vibrato (frequency modulation).

Of all descriptions in our file for the decades 1810–30, 19 percent mention quiet or silence; by 1870–90 mentions had dropped to 14 percent, and by 1940–60 to 9 percent. Thus it would appear that while writers are not consciously perceptive of the accumulation of technological sounds, at an unconscious level they are noticing the disappearance of quiet and silence.

But we also notice a decline in the number of times quiet and silence are evoked in literary descriptions. Of all descriptions in our file for the decades 1810–30, 19 percent mention quiet or silence; by 1870–90 mentions had dropped to 14 percent, and by 1940–60 to 9 percent. Thus it would appear that while writers are not consciously perceptive of the accumulation of technological sounds, at an unconscious level they are noticing the disappearance of quiet and silence.

It is also clear that reactions to nature are affected by the degree of proximity to the elements. As people move away from open-air living into city environments, their attitudes toward natural sounds become benign. Compare Canada, New Zealand and Jamaica. In the two former countries, the sounds of animals were scarcely ever found to be displeasing. But every one of the Jamaicans interviewed disliked one or more animals or birds—particularly at night. Hooting owls, croaking frogs, toads and lizards were mentioned frequently.

There is one celebrated sound which seems to epitomize the interface dilemma which I have been describing: the sound of chalk or fingernails on slate. We have shown that it is an international sound phobia. Yet physical analysis fails to reveal why it should send cold shivers up the spine. It is not extraordinarily high or loud. It is not accompanied by any hurtful action. It does not even designate anything in particular. No single discipline then is capable of accounting for its remarkable effect. When sound enigmas like this are explained—and not until then—we will know that the missing interfaces are at last falling into place.

The general relationship between these three terms and a set I have been employing in this book is now obvious: the figure corresponds to the signal or the soundmark, the ground to the ambient sounds around it—which may often be keynote sounds—and the field to the place where all the sounds occur, the soundscape.

Whether a sound is figure or ground has partly to do with acculturation (trained habits), partly with the individual’s state of mind (mood, interest) and partly with the individual’s relation to the field (native, outsider). It has nothing to do with the physical dimensions of the sound, for I have shown how even very loud sounds, such as those of the Industrial Revolution, remained quite inconspicuous until their social importance began to be questioned.

The only way to check perceptions is to devise routines by which listeners can reproduce exactly what they hear. … As part of the ear cleaning program, I devised many exercises of this sort; for instance, imitate with your voice the sound of a shovel digging into sand, then into gravel, then clay, then snow.

By comparison, the sonological competence of Western peoples today is weak. We have ignored our ears, hence the noise pollution problem. But in addition to our ears and voices we have today an instrument which can be used to assist in reclaiming the abilities of aural discrimination—I mean the tape recorder. With this device sounds can at last be suspended, dissected, intimately investigated.

Just as objects are rank-ordered in perspective painting, depending on their distance from the viewer, so musical sounds are rank-ordered by means of their dynamic emphasis in the virtual space of the soundscape. It is an equally deliberate illusion which centuries of training turned into a habit.

If typologies are systems for classifying sounds according to their various forms or functions, morphology allows us to gather together sounds with similar forms or functions in chronological or geographical sequence in order that variations or evolutionary changes might become clear. Thus morphology gives us the techniques for both depth-boring and cross-sectioning.

As I shall be using the term, I intend it to apply to the changing forms of sound across time or space. If typologies are systems for classifying sounds according to their various forms or functions, morphology allows us to gather together sounds with similar forms or functions in chronological or geographical sequence in order that variations or evolutionary changes might become clear. Thus morphology gives us the techniques for both depth-boring and cross-sectioning. In other words, we might use the morphological technique to study the evolution of, say, factory whistles—showing how the physical parameters of the sound were altered over time; or we might compare the factory whistle with alternatives employed in different societies for a similar purpose; that would also be a morphological study.

Since the introduction of the disc siren in North America, the principal change has been in the volume of sound output. We have measured the siren on a 1912 vintage vehicle at 88 to 96 dBA at 3½ meters. By 1960 siren intensity had risen to 102 dBA at 5 meters. In recent years a new type of yelping siren has been introduced for emergency vehicles, measuring 114 dBA at the same distance. The United States is now manufacturing a yelping siren for police car use which measures 122 dBA at 3½ meters.

The primal chaos of Okeanos is well served by the sound of a stormy sea. When the sea is worked into anger, it possesses equal energy across the entire audible spectrum; it is full-frequencied white noise. Yet the spectrum always seems to be changing; for a moment deep vibrations predominate, then high whistling effects, though neither is ever really absent, and all that changes is their relative intensity. … It is only in a boat that wave motion becomes audible, for the bulkheads groan and shudder violently as the ship rolls and pitches. (By this means I once timed the waves at between 6 and 11 seconds in a gale on the Pacific.)

Sirens and church bells belong to the same class of sounds: they are community signals. As such they must be loud enough to emerge clearly out of the ambient noise of the community. But while the church bell sets a protective spell on the community, the siren speaks of disharmony from within.

Perhaps all sound memories turn into romances. And the more quickly new sounds are hurled at us the more we are thrust back into the wells of memory, attractively fictionalizing the sounds of the past, smoothing them out into peaceful fantasies.

Of the four general definitions, probably the most satisfactory is still “unwanted sound.” This makes noise a subjective term. One man’s music may be another man’s noise.

A study on a tribe of Mabaan Africans in the Sudan showed very little hearing loss due to presbycusis. Africans at the age of sixty had as good or better hearing than the average North American at the age of twenty-five. Dr. Samuel Rosen, a New York otologist under whose supervision the study was made, attributed the superior hearing ability of the Africans to their noise-free environment. The loudest sounds the Mabaan heard were the sounds of their own voices singing and shouting at tribal dances.

When a simple solution to a problem exists, an administrator will usually prefer a gummy one. I have already suggested that a simpler way to calculate the ambient noise increase would be to measure the sound signals of the community. The assumption would be that the level of ambient noise would rise in proportion to social signals, which must always remain above it. We did this for Vancouver by measuring the sound levels of different fire engine sirens, beginning with a 1912 La France device (88-96 dBA) and concluding with the newest 1974 siren (114 dBA), all measured at a distance of 3½ to 5 meters. This showed that the signals of emergency vehicles had risen some 20 to 25 decibels in sixty years, or nearly half a decibel per year on the average.

How the Study of Noise Legislation Reveals Cultural Differences Noise by-laws are not created arbitrarily by individuals; they are argued into existence by societies. Hence they can be read to reveal different cultural attitudes toward sound phobias. For instance, along with articles dealing with well-known noise sources, the city of Genoa (Italy), in its Regolamento di Polizia Comunale (1969), identifies some unusual problems. Article 65 states that from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m., shutters must be opened and closed as quietly as possible. A keynote for the European, the shutter is a soundmark for the outsider.

The siesta is a time of reduced energy and many by-laws restrict noisy activities during this period. It is interesting, however, to observe how the siesta expands as one moves south into the stronger sun. In northern Europe it is generally two hours: 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. In Italian cities it often extends from 12 noon to 4 p.m.; but in North Africa it runs to 5 p.m.

But there is much more to the question of blasphemy than first meets the ear, for the fact is that taboo words will always exist in a society. No society has ever had the courage to expose all the dark regions of its psyche to the freedom of daylight and none ever will. Thus, as certain four-letter expressions are released into public garrulity, others take their place as unutterable shockers. The new four-letter words of the English language are “grace,” “virtue,” “virgin,” “tenderness.”

There is a deep-bonded relationship between noise abatement and taboo which cannot be abandoned, for the moment we place a sound effectively on the proscription list we do it the ultimate honor of making it all-powerful. It is for this reason that the petty proscriptions of the community by-law will never succeed, indeed must never succeed. The final power then is—silence, just as the power of the gods is in their invisibility. This is the secret of the mystics and the monks; and it will form the final meditation of any proper study of sound.

Acoustic ecology is therefore the study of sounds in relationship to life and society. This cannot be accomplished by remaining in the laboratory. It can only be accomplished by considering on location the effects of the acoustic environment on the creatures living in it.

Ecology is the study of the relationship between living organisms and their environment. Acoustic ecology is therefore the study of sounds in relationship to life and society. This cannot be accomplished by remaining in the laboratory. It can only be accomplished by considering on location the effects of the acoustic environment on the creatures living in it.

The best way to comprehend what I mean by acoustic design is to regard the soundscape of the world as a huge musical composition, unfolding around us ceaselessly. We are simultaneously its audience, its performers and its composers. Which sounds do we want to preserve, encourage, multiply? When we know this, the boring or destructive sounds will become conspicuous enough and we will know why we must eliminate them.

The basic modules for measuring the acoustic environment are the human ear and the human voice. Throughout this book I have been thumping the theory that the only way we can comprehend extrahuman sounds is in relationship to sensing and producing sounds of our own.

There are few sounds in nature that interfere with our ability to communicate vocally and almost none that in any way pose a threat to the hearing apparatus. It is interesting to consider, for instance, that while the naked voice can be raised to quite a loud level (say about 80 decibels at a distance of a few feet), it cannot be raised in-normal human intercourse to a point where it might endanger the ear (over 90 decibels).

For noise represents escaped energy. The perfect machine would be a silent machine: all energy used efficiently. The human anatomy, therefore, is the best machine we know and it ought to be our model in terms of engineering perfection.

Ear Cleaning The first task of the acoustic designer is to learn how to listen. Ear cleaning is the expression we use here. Many exercises can be devised to help cleanse the ears, but the most important at first are those which teach the listener to respect silence. This is especially important in a busy, nervous society. An exercise we often give our students is to declare a moratorium on speech for a full day. Stop making sounds for a while and eavesdrop on those made by others. It is a challenging and even frightening exercise and not everyone can accomplish it, but those who do speak of it afterward as a special event in their lives.

In one soundwalk a student asked participants to enter a store and to tap the tops of all tinned goods, thus turning the grocery store into a Caribbean steel band.

The soundwalk is an exploration of the soundscape of a given area using a score as a guide. The score consists of a map, drawing the listener’s attention to unusual sounds and ambiances to be heard along the way. A soundwalk might also contain ear training exercises.

Modern technology has given each individual the tools to activate more acoustic space. This development would seem to be running a collision course with the population increase and reduction of available physical space per individual.

Today acoustic space has important environmental and legal implications not fully appreciated. The acoustic space of a sounding object is that volume of space in which the sound can be heard. The maximum acoustic space inhabited by a man will be the area over which his voice can be heard. The acoustic space of a radio or a power saw will be the volume of space in which those sounds can be heard. Modern technology has given each individual the tools to activate more acoustic space. This development would seem to be running a collision course with the population increase and reduction of available physical space per individual.

At the moment a man may own the ground only; he has no claim on the environment a meter above it and his chances of winning a case to protect it are slender.

But I am about to propose that the ideal community may also be defined advantageously along acoustic lines.

In his model Republic, Plato quite explicitly limits the size of the ideal community to 5,040, the number that can be conveniently addressed by a single orator.

If a man speaks there slowly in a deep voice, the low-frequency components of his speech will be considerably amplified and a deep, ringing sound will fill not only the oracle chamber itself, but also the circumjacent rooms with an awe-inspiring sound. (A child or a woman will not be able to produce this effect, the fundamental pitch of their voices being too high to activate the resonator.)

But echo suggests a still deeper mystery. Acousticians will explain that the reflection of a sound off a distant surface is simply a case of the original wave bouncing back, the angles of incidence and reflection being equal. In order to understand this effect one may project a mirror image of the original sound deep behind the surface, at exactly the same distance and angle from the surface as the original. In other words, every reflection implies a doubling of the sound by its own ghost, hidden on the other side of the reflecting surface. This is the world of alter-egos, following and pacing the real world an instant later, mocking its follies.

The early builders built with ear as well as eye. The exceptional acoustics of the Greek amphitheaters, of which the Asclepius theater at Epidaurus is perhaps the best example, do not prove that acoustics had been totally mastered in ancient Greece, but they do show that a general philosophy of building existed in which acoustic considerations helped determine the form and siting of the structure. In the empty amphitheater at Epidaurus the sound of a pin dropping can be heard distinctly in each of the 14,000 seats—an assertion I have put to the test.

Man is an anti-entropic creature; he is a random-to-orderly arranger and tries to perceive patterns in all things. In its broadest sense, rhythm divides the whole into parts. An appreciation of rhythm is therefore indispensable to the designer who wishes to comprehend how the acoustic environment fits together. To do this a scale or module is needed. The possession of such a scale does not imply that all things must be governed by it; only that through it they become more comprehensible. Just as the body of the human being gives us the scale by which architects and designers plan human settlements and by extension can measure uninhabited spaces beyond our reach or control, so the body also gives us modules for comprehending the acoustic rhythms of the environment and universe.

The heartbeat has had a strong influence on the tempo of music. Before the invention of the metronome, the tempi of music were determined from the human pulse, and the difference between a saturnine or frenetic beat in music depended on how far it departed on one side or the other from this modulator. Thus tempi which lie close to the human heartbeat have an obvious appeal for man.

Normal breathing is said to vary between 12 and 20 cycles per minute, that is, 3 to 5 seconds per cycle. But breathing may be slowed down during relaxation or sleep to cycles lasting 6 to 8 seconds. Part of the sense of well-being we feel at the seashore undoubtedly has to do with the fact that the relaxed breathing pattern shows surprising correspondence with the rhythms of the breakers, which, while never regular, often produce an average cycle of 8 seconds.

Part of the sense of well-being we feel at the seashore undoubtedly has to do with the fact that the relaxed breathing pattern shows surprising correspondence with the rhythms of the breakers, which, while never regular, often produce an average cycle of 8 seconds.

It is important to realize that the lo-fi state is not a natural corollary to higher density living or population increase. A visit to the bazaars and traditional towns of the Middle East will impress one by the quiet, almost furtive manner in which large numbers of people manage to go about their business without disturbing one another. The sound sewer is much more likely to result when a society trades its ears for its eyes, and it is certain to result when this is accompanied by an impassioned devotion to machines.

The outright prohibition of sound being impossible, and all exercises in noise abatement being consequently futile, these negative activities must now be turned to positive advantage following the indications of the new art and science of acoustic design.

The acoustic designer may incline society to listen again to models of beautifully modulated and balanced soundscapes such as we have in great musical compositions. From these, clues may be obtained as to how the soundscape may be altered, sped up, slowed down, thinned or thickened, weighted in favor of or against specific effects. The ultimate endeavor is to learn how sounds may be rearranged so that all possible types may be heard to advantage—an art called orchestration.

It is the less ostentatious soundmarks that need the special vigilance of the acoustic designer, for despite their originality or antique charm, they are more likely to be unceremoniously excised from the soundscape. Often it will take the visitor to point out the value or originality of a soundmark to a community; for local inhabitants it may be an inconspicuous keynote.

The fact was that the music not only slowed down operational efficiency, but it also slowed down telephone users. “Even before the modification we realized that people telephoning in other parts of France, where there was no music, made their calls more quickly than the Parisians, who presumably were lulled by the fine music of Louise or the’Ode to Joy’ of Beethoven and paused to listen to it.”

There is but one principle to guide us in this purpose: always to let nature speak for itself. Water, wind, birds, wood and stone, these are the natural materials which like the trees and shrubs must be organically molded and shaped to bring forth their most characteristic harmonies.

The mere fact that water sounds differently when played on different surfaces and materials could be a subject of rich inventions. Imagine a specially contrived parterre, fashioned out of all kinds of materials—woods, bamboos, metals, scalloped stones, shells—arranged with sounding boxes beneath them, under such a common natural event as a rainstorm.

There is a hint here, perhaps not yet fully developed technically, of a water concert which could become the objective of an exciting collaboration between a sculptor and an acoustic designer.

In Bali there is an ingenious irrigation system in which large pieces of bamboo on hinges fill up with water from a stream then flip over, spilling water into the rice fields. As each tips back it produces a hollow tapping sound and one may hear amid the continuous bubbling of water a delicate and irregular recital of taps from fifty or more of these little water mills in operation at once.

Alter the lengths of the bamboo tubes and a continuous marimba melody would result.

A similar type of wind harp installed in a kite is known in Java. Unlike the European variety, which generally consists of a number of strings, sometimes tuned in a harmonic series, those of Java and China produced single tones, though they still possessed the same unearthly quality.

In Bali there are no professional musicians; the orchestras are staffed by all the able-bodied of the community, and they strike up in the evening after work and play late into the night.

There is no place for the unbalanced sound ecology in the park. The task of the acoustic designer is to find reinforcements of natural sounds in the same way as the trellis reinforces the presence of the rose. One of his special problems will be to return an area of the park to the state of a quiet grove in the midst of active city life. This will not be easy. For frontage on busy streets giant mounds of earth may be the only answer, and these should not only be of sufficient height to hide the traffic from sight, but of such construction as to refract the sound away from the park and of such thickness as to deaden ground vibrations. Sunken gardens, grottoes and other types of acoustic baffles will also be of value here.

Above all the acoustic park should be kept simple, and it is for this reason that its chief adornment may be nothing more than the Temple of Silence, a building with no purpose other than meditation. There is nothing special about the Temple of Silence except that in it all visitors will be expected to observe silence. It is to this place that the weary may come seeking nothing but the simplicity of the ultimate music on the other side of this world, the silence at the center of which may be heard the ringing of the great orbs of the Music of the Spheres.

When silence precedes sound, nervous anticipation makes it more vibrant. When it interrupts or follows sound, it reverberates with the tissue of that which sounded, and this state continues as long as the memory holds it. Ergo, however dimly, silence sounds.

No philosophy or religion catches the positive felicity of stillness better than Taoism. It is a philosophy that would make all noise abatement legislation unnecessary.

Still the noise in the mind: that is the first task—then everything else will follow in time.

If we have a hope of improving the acoustic design of the world, it will be realizable only after the recovery of silence as a positive state in our lives. Still the noise in the mind: that is the first task—then everything else will follow in time.

The same thing is true ofour ears. For the ear to begin vibrating, it too has first to overcome its own inertia, and accordingly it too introduces more distortions.

For man, the perfectly pure and mathematically defined sound exists as a theoretical concept only. The French mathematician Fourier knew and stated this when he was developing his theory of harmonic analysis. Distortion results the moment a sound is produced, for the sounding object first has to overcome its own inertia to be set in motion, and in doing this little imperfections creep into the transmitted sound.

For a sound to be totally free of onset distortion, it would have to have been initiated before our lifetime. If it were also continued after our death so that we knew no interruption in it, then we could comprehend it as being perfect. But a sound initiated before our birth, continued unabated and unchanging throughout our lifetime and extended beyond our death, would be perceived by us as—silence.

All the sounds we hear are imperfect. For a sound to be totally free of onset distortion, it would have to have been initiated before our lifetime. If it were also continued after our death so that we knew no interruption in it, then we could comprehend it as being perfect. But a sound initiated before our birth, continued unabated and unchanging throughout our lifetime and extended beyond our death, would be perceived by us as—silence.

This isobel map of Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia, shows average sound levels in different locations. Sound level measurements were taken on the footpaths at intervals of about 100 yards, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on several successive Wednesdays during May, June and July of 1973. The weather each day was similar—clear and bright with temperatures in the middle 60s and 70s F. At each point three readings were taken, ten seconds apart, and later averaged together for the construction of the isobels.

One possible form of a sound map, made during two different time periods on a “listening walk” around a city block. The different types of sounds are given graphic values according to whether they are soft, medium or loud, and tabulated to show the general activity and intensity. Using this method, it is simple to make comparisons of sound events historically or geographically.

Typically, while both the Muslim and Christian faiths have important signaling devices, the Jewish faith, which is not missionizing, does not.

The earliest study of industrial deafness that I have been able to discover was that of Bernardino Ramazzini, Diseases of Workers (De Morbis ArHficium), 1713.

The fact that numerous people tested (in Canada) also produced rounded drawings in response to steady-state drones such as those produced by air-conditioners is perhaps explained by my remarks to follow about the taming of natural sounds as man retreats into artificially controlled interior environments.

Eigenton is the German word used to refer to the fundamental resonance of a room, produced by the reflection of sound waves between parallel surfaces. It can be located empirically by singing different notes. The room (particularly an empty one) will resonate quite loudly in unison with the voice when the right note is sounded.

A Helmholtz resonator is a cavity-type resonator, so constructed that it will vibrate only at a particular frequency. It was developed by the German physicist Hermann Helmholtz in the nineteenth century to analyze the harmonic components of complex sounds.