"you must be the only person to go to a fireworks display and close your eyes... apart from them kids that are scared of fireworks"
I had to close my eyes for periods of the display to focus myself on the sounds, something which can be hard to do in such a visually intense environment, and realised that hearing a fireworks display without seeing it can be a scary experience. And I have full sympathy with those kids that find it terrifying.
When you can see light firing off into the sky, the puff of smoke and the wonderful array of colour in the sky it is easy to place the sound that accompanies it. When you take away the visual element you are left with a succession of sporadic bangs, pops, fizzes and whistles.
The bangs just make you jump when you're not expecting them, but the screamers are trully terrifying as the constant change in pitch and intensity that accompanies their journey gives the impression that they are about plant themselves in your head at any second. Seriously give it a go.
I imagine this must be what it is like to live amongst war, the sound of explosions and rockets all around, often out of sight but sounding much closer than they are, a constant tension in your body caused by sonic vibration.
This physical affect on the body and mind is also evident within tonights display. The gathered crowd are notably calm and gently wowwed by the fireworks as they set off one at a time to be admired, but as more are set at once and the bangs become more frequent, less ordered and more intense you can feel the crowd becoming more overpowered by sound, drawn in, excited and intense.
The samba band begin to pick up the rhythm, to which the fireworks add a counter, extra beats thrown in to jerk the rhythm, crackles and fizzes to heighten the ambience. The crowd of strangers are physically closer to each other than they were at the start, exchanging glances, shoulders touching, legs moving to the rhythm.
To me this is the sign of sound physically affecting the human in a positive and beautiful way, bringing people together and helping them to lose their precomposed ideas of public behaviour. This makes me very happy indeed.
Showing posts with label crowds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crowds. Show all posts
Sunday, 3 May 2009
Friday, 10 April 2009
Welcome to the Jungle
With the trams currently kept out of the city centre and many of the roads blocked off for road works, there was a whole new soundscape in Manchester centre today. Instead of the usual fuzz, roar and heave of engines it was the confused mumble of a thousand voices that circled around my head.
A Bass heavy wave of cross rhythmic and incomprehensible voices swept through town, bubbling, jolting and circling in panorama, occasionally penetrated by clearer, higher pitched voices cutting through the mass, but still largely incomprehensible amongst the clutter.
It is a joy to hear the human voice in such a way, stripped of recognisable language but full of nuance, tone and interaction, telling the story of space and time through sound rather than words. It is the same when we communicate with people who we do not share a common language, through echoic mimicry we listen to and replicate tones, intonations and sounds rather than words.
By closing your eyes and listening to such scenes you can really sense the space around you, mood, size and materials are all audible if you listen carefully enough and you can draw a solid mental image of your surroundings.
Doing this today though I realised that things can easily get confusing when sound synonymous with another environment is suddenly inserted where it is not expected. People were selling whistles which replicated the various calls and screech's of the howler monkey, and they sounded fairly realistic amongst the noise of the crowds. So when I closed my eyes I had the bizarre sensation of hearing what sounded like a thousand people trekking through the jungle.
This demonstrates to me that although it is important to understand sound in relation to place, it is also good to think about sounds simply as sounds. Try not to always associate them with particular objects or settings, think as well about their pitches, rhythms, movements, moods, reverberations and timbres.
Think about how you can get a feel for your environment through sound without automatically converting your hearing into stored images and signified knowledge. Allow yourself to learn something new from sound as well as using it to better understand what you already know.
A Bass heavy wave of cross rhythmic and incomprehensible voices swept through town, bubbling, jolting and circling in panorama, occasionally penetrated by clearer, higher pitched voices cutting through the mass, but still largely incomprehensible amongst the clutter.
It is a joy to hear the human voice in such a way, stripped of recognisable language but full of nuance, tone and interaction, telling the story of space and time through sound rather than words. It is the same when we communicate with people who we do not share a common language, through echoic mimicry we listen to and replicate tones, intonations and sounds rather than words.
By closing your eyes and listening to such scenes you can really sense the space around you, mood, size and materials are all audible if you listen carefully enough and you can draw a solid mental image of your surroundings.
Doing this today though I realised that things can easily get confusing when sound synonymous with another environment is suddenly inserted where it is not expected. People were selling whistles which replicated the various calls and screech's of the howler monkey, and they sounded fairly realistic amongst the noise of the crowds. So when I closed my eyes I had the bizarre sensation of hearing what sounded like a thousand people trekking through the jungle.
This demonstrates to me that although it is important to understand sound in relation to place, it is also good to think about sounds simply as sounds. Try not to always associate them with particular objects or settings, think as well about their pitches, rhythms, movements, moods, reverberations and timbres.
Think about how you can get a feel for your environment through sound without automatically converting your hearing into stored images and signified knowledge. Allow yourself to learn something new from sound as well as using it to better understand what you already know.
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