EVERYDAY SOUNDS OF MUSIC
The music heard from a
jukebox is orchestrated. We don’t really
think about it, but there are all kinds of un-orchestrated musical sounds
surrounding us every day, all day – and night, for that matter. Cars and trucks honking. Sirens screaming. Cable car bells ringing. Train whistles whistling. Ship horns blowing. Propeller planes' and blimps' musical sounds as they fly by overhead. In season, if you live where it snows, sleigh
bells jingling, and in summer, the happy music of the ice cream truck (which is orchestrated), to name a few. There are, of course, the sounds of nature - birds singing & twittering, etc. - if you can hear them through all the other noise, er, I mean, music. J
We live right across the
street from a hospital so we hear siren tones all the time. Also helicopters landing & taking off
which have different tonal qualities depending on whether they’re taking off or
landing. You get used to it and after a
while, the sound barely registers. But
it’s there. And all we hear - the cacophony of honking horns, sirens, whistles,
bells, pulses - are based on musical notes of one sort or another.
Or the low droning musical pulse of the Goodyear blimp flying by.
I hope you had fun listening
to all these everyday sounds of music.
:->
La Nightingail
This is a GREAT topic about sound vs noise! Many times I've thought about how these pitched sounds influence our lives. A few years ago I discovered that there are collectors of antique locomotive whistles, bells, and horns. I found a website that had hundreds of sound samples of the diesel locomotive horns. Each model had different pitches that identified the specific train. Same thing for ship horns and other alarms. Those chords were deliberately arranged with diabolically dissonant intervals and for good reason. Look out! Pay attention!
ReplyDeleteAs for the ice cream truck, that has to be the worst job in the world unless you are deaf. The one in my neighborhood does only the first 16 bars of "The Entertainer" rag which would drive me mad if I had to listen to that all day long!
We get so used to the din of urban noise that it's very noticeable when we visit some rural or wild place and can hear nothing except the sounds of wind and water. Hello, silence, my old friend.
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Funny thing, I had not originally included the sound of a small plane flying overhead, or the blimp. But as I was working on my post, a small plane from nearby Columbia airport fortuitously flew by overhead and I realized it had a musical sound to it! And then I thought of blimps and their low droning sounds, so they got added to my post. Y'know, I never thought about the poor people driving the ice cream trucks having to listen to that music over & over & over as they drove along. I wonder if they hummed that music in their sleep every night? :)
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