Sebastian Rothwyn
CMT 31: 1604
Professor Haeyoung Kim
February 5th, 2012
Listening and Acoustics: A Summary
Although we all hear, we do not always listen. Listening requires us to move beyond the “involuntary act that happens through our primary sense organ” and receive the results of that sensory data through our attention and interpretation of it. Listening therefore requires focus and it is the question of how and the description of the process that Hill explores in Listening to Myself Listen. Wrightson, in An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology, argues for natural environments to be considered the same as musical compositions to better understand the sonic environments that every listener encounters, so that they may improve this skill.
Both suggest “ear cleaning” exercises to improve. Listening is a skill and, like all skills, it requires training to excel. Interest in the discipline and some physically predetermined talent is also required. Although Hill uses only himself as a research subject, the core principles apply to every human being who can hear, because it is this basic sense that one uses to achieve listening. In addition to the basic sense comes the basic environment. This may be comprised of many complexities such as the moment of occurrence and its ability to be heard leading to the particular receiver and every aspect of their culture, mind, age and gender, among other things.
Some environments may provide thousands of hearable sounds but, because of the complexities of our listening skill, we may only interpret a select number of them. Each group of these sounds can only be interpreted based on the specificity of the sound and the receiver’s purpose for receiving that sound. If the receiver is in noticeable danger, the only sound that they will listen to, once their mind is focused, will be the sound that helps them remove themselves from said danger. The same may hold true for the listener who may have been focused on a less emotionally taxing sound and is then interrupted by a sound that triggers a state of being too heightened to ignore. To refocus back to the former state requires a lot more effort.
Wrightson cited studies in which the experimenters used sounds from the natural and artificial environments to show the frequency of sound levels as they related to the individual. However, it is clear that that any study born out of data collection requires a significant amount of objectivity because the reasons for determining a specific result are as varied as the reasons for not getting involved in studying the soundscape as a means of determining mankind’s impact on the environment.
This study by Hill into the actual sonic environment, led to an understanding of what items may dominate the environment of the listener’s soundscape. This was determined by negotiating the disharmony of sound based on prioritization versus unification. This exercise made the understanding of natural listening focus on certain sounds such as voices, above an artificially created sound, that much clearer.
Ultimately it appears that the listener can delve into the environment created for them and either applies their own experiences to it or divorces from it and makes an effort to learn something previously unknown. Although there is some argument about what is artificial or not, Hill is fairly clear that manufactured sound requiring something that does not occur in the natural environment is determined as artificial.
Works Cited
Hill, Arden. “Listening to Myself Listen: The Performance of Listening in Actual Constructed Sonic Environments.” An Ethnography of Listening (2005). Web. 2012.
Wrightson, Kendall. “Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology.” Journal of Electroacoustic Music. (March 1999). Volume 12. Web. 2012.
CMT 31: 1604
Professor Haeyoung Kim
February 5th, 2012
Listening and Acoustics: A Summary
Although we all hear, we do not always listen. Listening requires us to move beyond the “involuntary act that happens through our primary sense organ” and receive the results of that sensory data through our attention and interpretation of it. Listening therefore requires focus and it is the question of how and the description of the process that Hill explores in Listening to Myself Listen. Wrightson, in An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology, argues for natural environments to be considered the same as musical compositions to better understand the sonic environments that every listener encounters, so that they may improve this skill.
Both suggest “ear cleaning” exercises to improve. Listening is a skill and, like all skills, it requires training to excel. Interest in the discipline and some physically predetermined talent is also required. Although Hill uses only himself as a research subject, the core principles apply to every human being who can hear, because it is this basic sense that one uses to achieve listening. In addition to the basic sense comes the basic environment. This may be comprised of many complexities such as the moment of occurrence and its ability to be heard leading to the particular receiver and every aspect of their culture, mind, age and gender, among other things.
Some environments may provide thousands of hearable sounds but, because of the complexities of our listening skill, we may only interpret a select number of them. Each group of these sounds can only be interpreted based on the specificity of the sound and the receiver’s purpose for receiving that sound. If the receiver is in noticeable danger, the only sound that they will listen to, once their mind is focused, will be the sound that helps them remove themselves from said danger. The same may hold true for the listener who may have been focused on a less emotionally taxing sound and is then interrupted by a sound that triggers a state of being too heightened to ignore. To refocus back to the former state requires a lot more effort.
Wrightson cited studies in which the experimenters used sounds from the natural and artificial environments to show the frequency of sound levels as they related to the individual. However, it is clear that that any study born out of data collection requires a significant amount of objectivity because the reasons for determining a specific result are as varied as the reasons for not getting involved in studying the soundscape as a means of determining mankind’s impact on the environment.
This study by Hill into the actual sonic environment, led to an understanding of what items may dominate the environment of the listener’s soundscape. This was determined by negotiating the disharmony of sound based on prioritization versus unification. This exercise made the understanding of natural listening focus on certain sounds such as voices, above an artificially created sound, that much clearer.
Ultimately it appears that the listener can delve into the environment created for them and either applies their own experiences to it or divorces from it and makes an effort to learn something previously unknown. Although there is some argument about what is artificial or not, Hill is fairly clear that manufactured sound requiring something that does not occur in the natural environment is determined as artificial.
Works Cited
Hill, Arden. “Listening to Myself Listen: The Performance of Listening in Actual Constructed Sonic Environments.” An Ethnography of Listening (2005). Web. 2012.
Wrightson, Kendall. “Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology.” Journal of Electroacoustic Music. (March 1999). Volume 12. Web. 2012.
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