Sound

Today was about sound! And we got out of the classroom once again.

We started by talking about how music theory is wrong, and I think that's true — but the lecture was very technical, and I think it also failed to mention a few other parts of music theory that suck with the current sheet writing practice. David spend approximately ~30 minutes was spent talking about how exactly the overtone series is always off, but the human ear cannot detect it at the high frequencies discussed when talking about tuning bowls and Chinese monastery bells. Instead, I think a better angle would be to use the user-side of sheet writing music and how it entirely visually disregards the simultaneity and harmonics between instruments due to its separated visual system. By having instruments written separately, the composer is prompted to focus on each instrument individually. In other cultures, like Australian Aboriginal culture, music is either replicated from spoken word/memory or written, overlaid in whatever music-taking system is available. Unless you're writing a solo piece, I think the separated system of sheet music is an absolute travesty — and talking about it in a purely technical sense will make sense to everyone, but is like talking about a war being bad without questioning why the war happened. Or like talking about architecture but only from the perspective of if one person moves through the space at the time. Maybe that's a crazy comparison.

Singing as a group today in that little hall was quite fun! I didn't know I could make those noises, and it seemed like a lot of other kids didn't either. Someone at the end laughed, and everyone else did, but I felt that everyone went a little bit from apprehensive to understanding the idea as a group fairly well. People are scared of what they don't understand — just like what I said in Week 1 - but people are coming around, and that's good.

The visuals of 3D air-acoustic manipulation gave me the feeling of an anime character's attack — maybe like Ramiel from Evangelion:

Archaeoacoustics was also mentioned in the lecture. The only example I knew was the temple in Athens, as they recreated it at the NGV for a while. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's now quite a growing field — a lot of caves that were thought to be simple shelters for palaeolithic life were actually carved for better acoustics. Another example of intersectionality helping find new things, and more proof that the learning model should be rebuilt.

The talk about sacred sounds and changing perception was interesting, but I highly doubt the claims. There's little to no actual science around those 'sacred Hz' ranges. After talking about the placebo effect only three weeks before, I think it's pretty funny to treat this genre so seriously. That said, it's a field that isn't well-understood, so maybe I'm wrong. I can't make too many judgements until I've researched it further.

Subliminal messages through tones and whispers have little to no actual effect other than irritance to a listener. But I think a different kind of subliminal message can now be created — a super-subtle confirmation bias, where recommending videos with certain ideas in social media can form biases over time without the viewer realising. Social engineering at a long-term scale. If you quieten people complaining about what a politician did over time, you don't notice that it's not there anymore, as the brain assumes it still is. It's a completely different kind of manipulation that just isn't talked about enough. You can, however, actually mess with AI speech detection systems with subsonic noises, incase you were curious.

Main takeaway of this week remains: music theory sucks. I didn't write as much for this week as it was mostly outside and practical, and I don't actually have too much else to say about what we did apart from enjoying it.