Sound Theory – Sound Practice

Our week eight lecture was all about sound, and what we think of sound.  The lecture opened with these two statements; the world of sound is an event world, and the world of sight is an object world.  We started by discussing our favourite sounds, for example some people like the sound of cars, others preferred songs or sounds of nature. This lead on to a discussion on what is sound. The questions asked were; what is sound, how do we hear sound, how do we confront it, what can be done with it, how does it create a reaction and cocktail party effect. This is hearing different in different places, i.e. hearing the person you are talking to in a crowed room. We also discussed the term “Foley”, this is creating a sound that we associate with a particular thing, but is not actually the sound generated by it.  An example of this was the sound of the tanks in the film Saving Private Ryan, the sound of the tanks was actually simulated by students banging metal trays of the ground.  We talked about the qualities of sound; Sound is vibration, it is immersive, it cannot be shut out, it contains depth, it has no directionality and it cannot be frozen.  We talked about how sound can also be physical, this is evident in some clubs, were the sound vibrations are actually fed through the floor, causing you to actually feel the sound. 

We discussed sound and perspective, in this we talked about Figure: which is the most import sound, Ground; The listener’s social world and the field; the physical world around the field, this lead on to sound and distance.  All sound interaction has forms of distance: Intimate, Personal, Informal, Formal and public.  We gave examples of each, for instance, the lecture being given would have fallen into the informal category.  The lecturer then played us a video of John Cage’s 4.33, which as most people know is a full orchestra performance of silence.  This provoked a massive reaction with some people feeling so annoyed that they were ready to leave, which I thought was quite funny.  The whole idea of the performance was to show that sound is music and music is sound.  I personally had a split opinion over the piece.  One the one hand I thought it was very smart and clever in the reaction it provoked, but at the end of the day they musicians actually played nothing, how hard can it actually be.

Overall I learned a lot about sound and music, and I also learned that I had a division between the two that didn’t really make sense.  In an essence the lecture opened my mind to new possibilities and ideas, regarding what sounds I use to make music, and also that humans seem to know what any given sound is, and that the sound it’s self is an event.