After travelling through the bush, returning to the cacophonies of the sonic city can be exhilarating. The body is immediately swamped with an energy that speaks of action, progress, and possibility.
The intensity and the consistent presence of sonic textures such as machine noise, distorted high-frequency sounds, midrange drones, sub-sonic hums and the like have significantly shaped the contexts of our hearing.
Sound waves are made of particles called phonons. New research shows they’re affected by magnetic fields, with researchers able to steer heat magnetically.
We live in an increasingly noisy world. Since even low-level noise can affect quality of life, new tools to deal with noise are welcome. “Auralisation”, the audio equivalent of visualisation, is now helping…
In 1889, an eight-year old boy made a recording of a Common Sharma using his father’s wax cylinder recorder. This boy, Ludwig Koch, would go on to become one of the great natural history broadcasters of…
Musicians often have curious minds, and the pianist and composer Horace Silver was no exception. An often overlooked musician in the public eye, Silver wrote some of the most performed jazz standards of…
It has been almost a truism of television, in the discussions of professionals and the analyses of academics, that television broadcasting is a sound medium with added pictures, while cinema is a visual…
The headlines The Los Angeles Times: People trust eyes - not ears - when judging musicians Classic FM: Classical singers judged by actions not voice Nature: Musicians’ appearances matter more than their…