Class 15: 15 Mar
Why is sound important? How do you close your “ear-lids” when you go to sleep? Is sound our first evolved sense that is effectively an interrupt for an external event not touching our skin?
If you’re interested in a deep dive in to sound design:”Designing with Sound: Fundamentals for Products and Services” starts out with a vocab for sound design: https://amzn.to/3JiAikD
We’ve been thinking about sound as philosophy for quite awhile, how do we learn to make sounds as children? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHi36dvTdE&feature=youtu.be&t=920
We learn to make some sounds as children but can never learn them as an adult learning another language. The Russian vowel Bbl is one example
You can learn to have “perfect pitch” if you start as a child: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=816VLQNdPMM
Close your eyes after following links in this section. don’t worry about the visual details and information, this is learning to understand sound and signals
Some of these examples are long, 10-20min. I’m only including ones worth listening to from start to finish.
classes of sounds (one view)
Signals and alerts – short sounds that transfer information
- automobile warning buzzers
https://www.soundsnap.com/tags/car_interiors - walk/don’t walk beep boop and how crazy we were about it at CMU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcE6gn-JLbw - fire department / police codes on dispatch channels
http://www.policeinterceptor.com/emerg.htm - Emergency Broadcast System, a pre-cursor to things like “Amber Alert” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb5KZnNvXBM
- collection that includes a game tone https://www.zedge.net/find/ringtones/dispatch
- doorbell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbCyxgLgmEE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUVj0BnC8Gw - ringing phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GnoCz5mw3M
INSERT photo of our doorbell
Information over time – songs and patterns
– information, many of them skeuomorphic
– air raid siren, dual pitch:
( my borough uses this as the 15 minute warning on curfew for minors!)
– tornado sirens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djqi86jMl5g
– Victorian houses used remote bells to alert servants and family, bell pull at the front door to let people know someone has arrived
DIY air raid siren, there are a lot of these on Thingiverse (equiv) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVDmbFXFTj0
Music and entertainment
- ringing phones are so unique that we map and learn our own ringtones using songs. Golan Levin’s mobile phone concert was only possible because phones had ring tones that couldn’t be changed.
- Star Trek had one of the earliest catalogs of special effects sounds used to alert viewers of plot elements and activity.
- Professional companies that sell sound libraries. sizzling fajitas podcast
- Chili’s used the sound of sizzling fajitas to sell them, not their flavor:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-sizzle/
We like things that reflect heartbeat rhythm, this goes back to dance for thousands of years, continue to do this in today’s music with multiple tempo compositions
Orbital and Underworld are two electronic bands using dual internal tempos, one near the rate of resting heart beat the other near the rate of active (dancing) heart beat.
mini-assignments:
Reading: Make it So Chapters 6, 10
Make your Teensy make some noise