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An American viewpoint
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Littlestone
Littlestone
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Edited Mar 30, 2013, 14:15
Re: An American viewpoint
Mar 30, 2013, 14:07
Monganaut wrote:
On a slightly different slant to that, I was listening to the first omnibus edition of the Radio 4 documentary 'Noise, A Human History' again the other day, and had thoughts about rock art maybe pointing to places where lithophones or places which echo or have weird 'sound' characteristics may have once, or indeed still be... I'm often astonished at some of the amazing sounds coming out of my echo chamber, and I have a basic knowledge of how it works. Imagine how baffling/intriguing it must be to a culture steeped in superstition and the supernatural.


Well worth listening to aren’t they (the Radio 4 progs).

One of the most surprising sound experiences I ever had was inside a Japanese temple gong. They don’t have a clapper (if that’s the right word) inside like a Western bell but are struck from the outside by a log suspended on ropes. There are nodules on the top of the gong to help dissipate the sound (or maybe modify it in some way). Anyway, it’s possible to stand inside one of these buggers while it’s being struck from the outside :-) Sheer madness you might think but no, when the gong’s struck most of the sound gets radiated outwards while the only thing you hear inside is a gentle hum that seems to travel round and round the inner space that you're standing in. Very, very weird!

For sure our ancient painter ancestors were not only creating the illusion of movement on cave walls, they were also using the acoustics within the caves to their advantage.
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