The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World by R. Murray Schafer Page A
Authors: R. Murray Schafer
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American civilization.
When they become part of the farmer’s calendar, insects, like birds, arise out of the ambient soundscape to become signals for action: “May the fallows be worked for seed-time while the cicada overhead, watching the shepherds in the sun, makes music in the foliage of the trees.”
The sounds of insects thus form rhythms, both circadian and seasonal, but entomologists have so far not measured these in sufficient detail for the soundscape researcher to be able to derive clear sound patterns from them. Difficulties have also been encountered in the analysis of the precise intensities and frequencies of insect sounds. This is because individual specimens are hard to isolate for recording purposes and also because the sounds insects make are generally complex frequency structures or broadband noises, with harmonics often rising into the ultrasonic range. The locust Schistocera gregaria emits a sound of about 25 decibels when recorded very near the source, but the wing beat noise rises to 50 decibels when in flight. The flight noise of the desert locust has been measured as high as 67 decibels at a distance of 10 centimeters from the microphone. The sound output of many moths may be as little as 20 decibels quite near the source; while insects with hard wings and bodies, such as flies, bees and beetles, produce sounds up to 50 or 60 decibels. Since the human ear is more sensitive to sounds in the middle and upper frequency areas, insect sounds in the upper range (an average might be 400 to 1,000 c.p.s.) sound louder to the ear; but no human ear can hear the higher frequencies of the locust’s call, which have been found to contain frequencies of 90,000 c.p.s.—that is, about two octaves higher than the human ear can detect.
For our purposes, however, one general feature of insect sounds is of interest. More perhaps than any other sound in nature, they give the impression of being steady-state or flat-line sounds. In part this may be an illusion, for many insect sounds are pulse modulated or varied in other subtle ways, but despite the “grainy” effect such modulations create, the impression with many insects is of a continuous, unvarying monotony. Like the straight line in space, the flat line in sound rarely occurs in nature, and we will not encounter it again until the Industrial Revolution introduces the modern engine.
The Sounds of Water Creatures The sounds of the living are uttered only within a thin shell around the earth’s surface—much less than 1 percent of its radius in width. They are confined to the land surface, the sea a few score fathoms below the surface and the air immediately above. But within this relatively small area the diversity of sounds produced by living organisms is bewilderingly complex. It is not our purpose here to survey all the sounds of nature and we will only touch on a few of the more unusual.
While many fish have no sound-producing mechanisms and no developed organs to hear sounds, many do produce unique sounds and some of these are very loud. Some fish, like sunfish or certain kinds of mackerel, make sounds by grinding or snapping their teeth. Others make sounds by expelling gas or by vibrating the gas bladder. One fish, the Misgurnus , makes a loudish noise by gulping air bubbles, and expelling them forcibly through its anus. At least thirty-four genera of fish produce sound by vibrating the gas bladder.
The songs of whales have been a subject of considerable recent study and some recordings of the humpback whale were produced commercially in 1970. The immediate and spectacular attention they received was partially attributable to the poignancy that the singers were an endangered species; but more than this, the songs were hauntingly beautiful. They also introduced many people, who had forgotten that the fish were their ancestors, to the echoing vaults of the ocean depths and united the feedback effects of popular electronic and guitar
When they become part of the farmer’s calendar, insects, like birds, arise out of the ambient soundscape to become signals for action: “May the fallows be worked for seed-time while the cicada overhead, watching the shepherds in the sun, makes music in the foliage of the trees.”
The sounds of insects thus form rhythms, both circadian and seasonal, but entomologists have so far not measured these in sufficient detail for the soundscape researcher to be able to derive clear sound patterns from them. Difficulties have also been encountered in the analysis of the precise intensities and frequencies of insect sounds. This is because individual specimens are hard to isolate for recording purposes and also because the sounds insects make are generally complex frequency structures or broadband noises, with harmonics often rising into the ultrasonic range. The locust Schistocera gregaria emits a sound of about 25 decibels when recorded very near the source, but the wing beat noise rises to 50 decibels when in flight. The flight noise of the desert locust has been measured as high as 67 decibels at a distance of 10 centimeters from the microphone. The sound output of many moths may be as little as 20 decibels quite near the source; while insects with hard wings and bodies, such as flies, bees and beetles, produce sounds up to 50 or 60 decibels. Since the human ear is more sensitive to sounds in the middle and upper frequency areas, insect sounds in the upper range (an average might be 400 to 1,000 c.p.s.) sound louder to the ear; but no human ear can hear the higher frequencies of the locust’s call, which have been found to contain frequencies of 90,000 c.p.s.—that is, about two octaves higher than the human ear can detect.
For our purposes, however, one general feature of insect sounds is of interest. More perhaps than any other sound in nature, they give the impression of being steady-state or flat-line sounds. In part this may be an illusion, for many insect sounds are pulse modulated or varied in other subtle ways, but despite the “grainy” effect such modulations create, the impression with many insects is of a continuous, unvarying monotony. Like the straight line in space, the flat line in sound rarely occurs in nature, and we will not encounter it again until the Industrial Revolution introduces the modern engine.
The Sounds of Water Creatures The sounds of the living are uttered only within a thin shell around the earth’s surface—much less than 1 percent of its radius in width. They are confined to the land surface, the sea a few score fathoms below the surface and the air immediately above. But within this relatively small area the diversity of sounds produced by living organisms is bewilderingly complex. It is not our purpose here to survey all the sounds of nature and we will only touch on a few of the more unusual.
While many fish have no sound-producing mechanisms and no developed organs to hear sounds, many do produce unique sounds and some of these are very loud. Some fish, like sunfish or certain kinds of mackerel, make sounds by grinding or snapping their teeth. Others make sounds by expelling gas or by vibrating the gas bladder. One fish, the Misgurnus , makes a loudish noise by gulping air bubbles, and expelling them forcibly through its anus. At least thirty-four genera of fish produce sound by vibrating the gas bladder.
The songs of whales have been a subject of considerable recent study and some recordings of the humpback whale were produced commercially in 1970. The immediate and spectacular attention they received was partially attributable to the poignancy that the singers were an endangered species; but more than this, the songs were hauntingly beautiful. They also introduced many people, who had forgotten that the fish were their ancestors, to the echoing vaults of the ocean depths and united the feedback effects of popular electronic and guitar
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