I’m always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you’re drowning, and it’s there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music. Tom Waits, “Gravel Pit“
Tag Archives: sound
People usually show a right-ear (left-hemisphere) advantage for words, digits, nonsense syllables, Morse code, difficult rhythms, and the ordering of temporal information, whereas they show a left-ear (right-hemisphere) advantage for melodies, musical chords, environmental sounds, and tones of the voice. Similar differences have been found for other senses as well. Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide […]
I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself . . . . and let sounds contribute toward me. I hear the bravuras of birds . . . . the bustle of growing wheat . . . […]
Olympic Scupture Park, Seattle, Winter 2014 Malcolm Gladwell recounts the final days of the 1993 Waco, Texas standoff in his excellent article “Sacred and Profane” from the March, 31 issue of the New Yorker. He specifically cities a new memoir by Clive Doyle, a survivor of the incident and a follower of the millennialist Branch Davidians. Gladwell’s article […]
Walker Evans, Alabama Tenant Farmer Family Singing Hymns, 1936 Outside, from near, there is a new sound. It happens every night, and it is most sorrowful. It is the voice of a blond, fat, and craven rooster, a creature half-frightened of his own wives; and in this poor voice of his, lugubrious, almost surreptitious, he is […]
“I have nothing to say and I am saying it.” This is what I know about sound… for now. I’ll assume Earthlings have always thought critically about sound. I might be giving us too much credit… Bernie Krause, the author of The Great Animal Orchestra (2012), started his career as a session guitarist for Motown recordings–he […]
