This is something that I posted a couple of years ago that’s worth posting again.
It’s the 10 things about sound, some of them which you probably didn’t know.
They come from Julian Treasure, the author of “Sound Business” and chairman of the the UK audio branding company The Sound Agency.
He speaks internationally about the affect of sound on people, business and society.
The following comes from a CNN article outlining Julian’s TED Conference presentation.
Especially be aware of number 7!
1) You are a chord. This is obvious from physics, though it’s admittedly somewhat metaphorical to call the combined rhythms and vibrations within a human being a chord, which we usually understand to be an aesthetically pleasant audible collection of tones.
But “the fundamental characteristic of nature is periodic functioning in frequency, or musical pitch,” according to C.T. Eagle. Matter is vibrating energy; therefore, we are a collection of vibrations of many kinds, which can be considered a chord.
2) One definition of health may be that that chord is in complete harmony. The World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” which opens at least three dimensions to the concept. On a philosophical level, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras and Confucius all wrote at length about the relationship between harmony, music and health (both social and physical).
Here’s Socrates: “Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful.”
3) We see one octave; we hear ten. An octave is a doubling in frequency. The visual spectrum in frequency terms is 400-790 THz, so it’s just under one octave. Humans with great hearing can hear from 20 Hz to 20 KHz, which is ten octaves.
4) We adopt listening positions. Listening positions are a useful set of perspectives that can help people to be more conscious and effective in communication—because expert listening can be just as powerful as speaking. For example, men typically adopt a reductive listening position, listening for something, often a point or solution.
Women, by contrast, typically adopt an expansive listening position, enjoying the journey, going with the flow. When unconscious, this mismatch causes a lot of arguments.
Other listening positions include judgmental (or critical), active (or reflective), passive (or meditative) and so on. Some are well known and widely used; for example, active listening is trained into many therapists, counselors and educators.
