Are The Sounds Around You Helpful or Hurtful?

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Sharon

Few people know that sound travels THROUGH the fleshy, more fluid parts of the human body four and a half times FASTER than it goes through the air. Sound travels through the bones twelve times faster than it goes through the air.

The human body is a natural resonator for sound. And we have no off switch for this response.

We are at the mercy of the sounds around us.

Sound is defined as vibrational energy. And sound affects how matter itself vibrates.

And that includes us.

If you have been reading my articles for a while, you will have seen the videos on cymatics that show clearly how specific sounds affect matter.

And here’s another thing. We usually ignore the sound around us. Sometimes the brain even categorizes this sound as unimportant.

This common characteristic is called ‘habituation.’ A new sound in our environment can capture our attention initially. But if it keeps on repeating, we gradually lose interest and pay no attention to the sound. This is the process of habituation.

I remember a mantle clock my husband’s parents had. It had the “Westminster” chimes and rang every 15 minutes – day and night. Whenever my husband and I visited them, I would be up most of the night the first night there – the ringing of the clock really disturbed my sleep. By the second night, I hardly noticed it and even less after that.

Unfortunately, habituation does not stop the effect of a disturbing noise on us. For example, we can get used to traffic noise on a busy street in front of our home through habituation – BUT the noise will still raise our levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.

And that, especially over the long run, is extremely detrimental to our overall health and wellbeing.

The European Union has studied the effects of traffic noise on people in their member countries and the results are sobering:

  • 200,000 people die every year due to the effects of traffic noise
  • 16 million people can’t sleep
  • the health of 125 million people is affected (that’s 4 times the population of Canada)

So, it can be useful for us to become more aware of the sounds around us.

Here is a simple exercise to explore and journal on.

Choose one day this week. Listen more intently to the sounds around you as you go through your day.

Make a list of the sounds that annoyed you and why.

Make a list of the sounds that you really enjoyed and why.

Let me know what you discovered.

 

Posted in Consciousness Room | Leave a comment

The Sound of the Spheres

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Sharon

The Music of the Spheres is an ancient concept that has captured humanity’s most brilliant minds for thousands of years – and it still does. Especially now that NASA has recordings of the sounds of the planets in our solar system.

The main principle behind the concept is that the movements of the sun, planets, moon etc. create a harmonic and mathematical order. Not something that could be heard, but which they believed had direct relationship to the mathematical relationships between the most harmonious audible sounds. Particularly what musicians call the intervals of the octave, the fifth and the fourth.

The Harmonic Series is a series of sounds or frequencies that occur when you divide a string (a guitar string, for example) into equal parts.

monochordThe Greek philosopher, Pythagorus, developed the mathematics of the series around 600 BCE. He created what was called a mono-chord, a wooden box, upon which he put one string. It is believed that the string was secured on one end, and a weight was tied on the other end, which was carried over a rounded bar.

By adjusting the weight, the tension and the pitch of the string could be adjusted.

In the middle was a moveable bridge. He used this to determine the mathematical relationships of sound.

sample waveforms

Pythagorus found that the most harmonious sounds had whole number relationships. That is 2:1, 3:2 and so on.

The following information comes from course material for a mathematics course at Dartmouth University at:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/unit3/unit3.html

“Quoting Aristotle again… “[the Pythagoreans] saw that the … ratios of musical scales were expressible in numbers [and that] .. all things seemed to be modeled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of number to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number.”

It seemed clear to the Pythagoreans that the distances between the planets would have the same ratios as produced harmonious sounds in a plucked string. To them, the solar system consisted of ten spheres revolving in circles about a central fire, each sphere giving off a sound the way a projectile makes a sound as it swished through the air; the closer spheres gave lower tones while the farther moved faster and gave higher pitched sounds. All combined into a beautiful harmony, the music of the spheres.

This idea was picked up by Plato, who in his Republic says of the cosmos; “. . . Upon each of its circles stood a siren who was carried round with its movements, uttering the concords of a single scale,” and who, in his Timaeus, describes the circles of heaven subdivided according to the musical ratios.

Kepler, 20 centuries later, wrote in his Harmonice Munde (1619) says that he wishes “to erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system of the musical scale . . . as God, the Creator Himself, has expressed it in harmonizing the heavenly motions.”

And later, “I grant you that no sounds are given forth, but I affirm . . . that the movements of the planets are modulated according to harmonic proportions.””

Johannes Kepler, a key figure in the scientific revolution of the 1600s, calculated the frequencies of the orbits of the planets. More information about his work is available at:

http://www.keplerstern.com/Music_of_spheres/music_of_spheres.html

In our times, NASA has continued the curiosity and discussion about the Music of the Spheres with actual frequencies of the planets picked up by Voyageur spacecrafts.

These frequencies are actually radio waves that are reduced in frequency to the audible range so we can hear them.

Check out the video below to listen to the sounds of the planets. Very interesting listening.

Posted in Science Room | 1 Comment

Bach, Beauty and Brilliance

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Sharon

Bach, Beauty and Brilliance: Human Ingenuity never ceases to amaze!

Put together a group of engineers, Bach’s beautiful “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” and a pile of wood and the result is a musical and creative marvel.

I have played this piece many times; it is one of my favorites. But I never imagined how beautiful it would sound, played by a little wooden ball in the woods.

Watch for yourself one of the most unusual and touching performances of this music I have ever heard – and seen.

In the following video, find out how they created such a marvel.

http://answer.nttdocomo.co.jp/touchwood/#making


Posted in Music Room | 1 Comment

The Amazing Smile of a 94 Year Old!

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Sharon

My father-in-law always says, “You’re never too old to learn something new.”

And he is living proof.

This past December, he decided he wanted to learn how to play the guitar. At the ripe young age of 94. Or is it 49. We’re never quite sure.

I thought that was a great idea and brought my old guitar upstairs and plunked it in his lap to see how it ‘fit.’

Dad playing the ukeeleWell, the guitar was too big and awkward for him to reach the frets.

So we went for the next best thing – the ukulele! It appeared under the Christmas tree this year for him, wrapped in bright paper. Plus a songbook with some of his favorite old-time songs. He was absolutely thrilled!

This is the same ukulele his grandson played when he was 3 and 4 years old. And it is just the right size for Dad.

Dad started his ukulele lessons a couple of days after Christmas and is making remarkable progress. He practices both at home and at our place daily when he is over for dinner.

The progress is remarkable for a number of reasons.

He has never played a musical instrument before.

For the past few years Dad has struggled with significant memory loss.

He was deeply saddened by the loss of his wife of 62 years about 3 years ago. We don’t see many happy smiles on his face.

He is a star pupil. He remembers what to practice and how to place his fingers. He remembers (with the help of some stickers on the frets) where to place his fingers.

He is discovering all kinds of rhythmic strums and chuckles gleefully as he plays. He remembers to bring the ukulele along, tucked into the basket on his walker, when he comes over for dinner.

He is looking forward to strumming along with some of his favorite songs.

Dad is a true inspiration and, for me, a testament to the joy that music and playing music brings.

And to the old saying that “you are never too old to learn something new.”

Posted in Music Room | 4 Comments

Songs That Get Stuck in Your Head!

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Sharon

This is probably the scariest article I’ve written yet.

The tune that gets stuck in your head and drives you nuts.

Yes!! That one!!!

This has actually been studied.

I found a fascinating article called “Scientists Study How Music Stirs Memories” by Robert Roy Britt at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7995265/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/scientists-study-how-music-stirs-memories/

The article even has the nerve to publish a list of songs that drive people mad the most.

Read at your own risk!

  • “The Theme from Gilligan’s Island”
  • “Mission: Impossible”
  • “We Will Rock You”
  • “The Macarena”

“These ditties, along with “Small World,” were cited in a 2001 study by James Kellaris at the University of Cincinnati as among the most common that get stuck in peoples’ heads.”

Brain imaging results of people listening to music IN THEIR HEADS actually show activity in the auditory cortex of the brain. As if they were actually listening to the piece on the radio!

Here’s a description of one of the studies from the article cited above:

“Scientists are beginning to figure out what’s behind the insanity. A study earlier this year used brain scans to reveal that musical memories are stored in the brain’s auditory cortex. It also showed that you continue to hear a familiar song in our head when the music stops playing.”

“We played music in the scanner, and then we hit a virtual ‘mute’ button,” explained David Kraemer, a graduate student in Dartmouth’s Psychological and Brain Sciences Department. “We found that people couldn’t help continuing the song in their heads, and when they did this, the auditory cortex remained active even though the music had stopped.”

The study was reported in the March 10 issue of the journal Nature.

This time of year is ripe for planting songs in your head, when we are inundated with Christmas music everywhere we go.

As a musician, I love Christmas music – especially the tunes I get to play myself or with others.

But when I am out shopping or meeting a friend, I always come home with a tune endlessly running circles in my head.

Posted in Music Room | Leave a comment