Don't Touch That Dial
Math was never my strong suit, scholastically. I remember ditching Algebra II my sophomore year every day with Dan Hill so we could drive around and listen to Green Day. That might have contributed to my lack of enthusiasm for algebra. Thanks a lot, Green Day.
The difference between an acoustician and a musician is startling. Acousticians deal with the physics and mathematical principles of sound. Many acoustic scientists work in research and development and some conduct basic research to advance our knowledge of the perception of speech, music, and noise.
You ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?
We use ultrasonic (above the range of human hearing) frequencies to study the body while we use infrasonic (below the range of human hearing) noises to study the earth. It’s also true that sound travels slower than sight, which is probably related somehow to why we ‘can’t believe our ears,’ but we will ‘believe it when we see it.’ I thought the acoustical engineering of roman theaters to be particularly astonishing. Vitruvius, in about 20 B.C. wrote a treatise on the acoustic properties of them, discussing reverberations, interference, and echoes. In book V of his ten books on architecture, he writes about sound as comparable to a water wave extended to three dimensions, which when interrupted, would flow backwards, and disrupt the wave. He described the ascending seats in a theater to prevent this deterioration of sound. What I really liked was the idea of bronze vessels of appropriate sizes that resonate with the fourth, fifth, and so on, up to the double octave, to resonate with more harmonious notes. This must have driven Schoenberg crazy.
That last sentence was a side note. If you read a bit about Schoenberg, you learn why harmony would have been disruptive to his music. Sometimes I feel like my stories can sound a bit like twelve-tone harmony, what with all the digressions and grammar mistakes.
I took astronomy as my science course at Moorpark college, despite my failings in higher math. Partly because I was a night owl, mostly because as a musician I found myself pining over the sky quite often, and girls really liked it when I said stuff like, “stars” and “moon” and “night’s sky”. I did happen to meet a girl in that class and was astonished years later to discover that I got an A, as I really don’t remember much of it. That served to be a disadvantage years later when I went back to complete my degrees and discovered that I had neglected to take the lab associated with the course and would have to go back to finish. It also allows us to go back and get to the point of why I took us on this huge scenic divergence into my scholastic history in the first place.
The professor for my astronomy lab course had a big beef with astrology. In his mind, there was no greater insult than to mix the two up and citing some realm of astrology about the science of astronomy was a sure way to get on his bad side. I hence-forth, kept my mouth shut about it, but I disagreed then as I do now, that the two subjects have nothing to offer each other. Where did he think all the names for all that crap he was staring at every night came from? Why did he think mankind had ever taken interest in studying the sky in the first place, if not to know more about the legend that history proceeded them with? The sky was our radio, our television, our Nightly News with Dan Rather before we had anything else. Surely, all those stories had some relevance.
I love sound engineers. I don’t know if they prefer being called acousticians, but I know they must get pretty frustrated when some musician comes around and starts fiddling with their knobs and telling them how to “not make me sound like shit.” It is probably the same way my professor felt about astrologists telling him why Jupiter’s moons mean he’s going to have a bad day. I’m taking a class on Sound Engineering this summer, because as much as I have surrounded myself with the art and poetry of sound, I have a great respect for those who truly understand how to make what I do impact the people who get to listen to it. Until then, I remain your humble Aries, whom for which the carpenters will forever raise the roofbeam high.
Here’s my favorite movement of The Planets, by Gustav Holst, just to rub it in my astronomy professors’ eye: