We have two words that are most commonly used to discuss how we interact with sound: hearing, and listening.
Hearing is a passive act. Pressure waves move our eardrums, the motion is converted to an electrical signal, and our brain tells us that there is a sonic phenomenon in the space around us…perhaps it even provides us with identifying information. It’s what comes after that is fascinating, when we stop to LISTEN to the source. The act of directing attention allows us to focus in on the sound, to the (albeit sometimes limited) exclusion of others. Sometimes the steering of that attention is a subconscious mechanism, but the act of listening is always a conscious one.
That’s our focus this month; “Listening.”
We here at Designing Sound always appreciate the community’s enthusiasm and contributions to the discussion, and we know the community also appreciates anytime a member does. If you’d like to contribute to this month’s topic, drop us a line; either through the contact form, or to ‘shaun [at] this website’. If you prefer to plan ahead a little, next month’s topic will be “Space/Spatial.”
we actually talked a bit about that on the latest podcast we did.
Fantastic! We’ll post it sometime this week to direct people towards it.
Hi Shaun,
I follow your blog eagerly every day, but I’m no good enough to contribute with articles. Anyway I may I would like to suggest a couple of post regarding Listen and Spatial. BTW they happen to be my latest fav topics and I can’t wait to read about them in the following months.
Listen: last night I read an in depth article on the never ending “audiophile issues”. He clarifies everything about it, but still it could be a good topic of discussion: http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Listen: on the difference between hearing and listening, but also about “sentient listening”. E.g: “ear cleaning” (as per Schafer) and “careful/critical listening” (as in knowing what you are listening to, under a (e.g.) technical and theoretical POV). On this topic I’ve contacted a friend of mine, and asked him if he can contribute.
Spatial: when watching Utopia (a TV series from Channel 4, UK), I was flabbergasted by the soundtrack. The composition, the spatialisation and the integration into the scenes are amazing. So I’ve started reading about Spatial Sound/Music (on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_music ), and delving deeper into Ambisonics (something I would like to get into since a couple years but it’s so expensive). Of all the “surround” technologies, Ambisonics, it’s the one that offer the most possibilities, even at first order, with only 4 channels.
So I’ve started listening to spatialised music (especially Natasha Barrett’s works). Now (merging the two topics), when I listen to something “only stereo” it feels like jurassic. My ears (and my brain), my taste and my listening, now pretend that quality.
Ambisonics: it would be great to know if anyone here has bought and used the Brahma ambisonics mic. I found the cheapest setup in Brahma, Zoom H6 but I’m not convinced by it. It certainly could serve me well (and anyone with no budget) to start working with Ambisonics. Topic for an article?
Best,
Thanks for the suggestions, Aner. I’ll pass them around to the rest of the contributing editors, in case anyone has the inclination to pursue one of these.
Hi Shaun, amazing topic. Looking for clues on how we listen has been of great help in my work.
Attention driven ear brain interaction is what describes listening.
Psichoacoustic research is an actively growing field.
Not being a scientist I had been able to approach some interesting concepts from Albert Bregman’s book “Auditory scene analysis”.
He has developed an interesting theory on some aspects of auditory perception.
“Auditory scene” is for example one of his concepts.
I would like to bring the designing sound community a brief of his book in an article but I am not sure I can fulfill the task.
I hope you find the reference useful.
Best
Diego
I have a copy of that book myself, Diego. Considering its scope, I think writing up a brief is going to be pretty hard to do…especially since much of it is an analysis of psychoacoustic experiments. I’d also argue that his book may be less applicable to this month’s particular theme, as Auditory Scene Analysis (as function of the brain…not just the book title), is more about the factors that help us discriminate one sound from another…mostly at the subconscious level. Related, certainly, but a bit of a tangent. Have no fear though, Psychoacoustics is on our list of potential future topics. One of these days, we’ll focus in on that.
Back in October 2013, NetherRealm Studios published an interview they did with a guy who plays Mortal Kombat competatively in tournaments and on a team.
The kicker is that he’s blind.
http://www.netherrealm.com/news/203
Its a little old, but I thought it was worth sharing. Cuz, ya know… listening.