For those of us who can hear, the world is filled with sound. Our environment surrounds us with sound: leaves rustling in the wind, traffic on a busy street, people talking, music from a radio. Sound surrounds us constantly, and we often take it for granted. We use the information sound provides to us, but we seldom think about the sound itself.
Science of Sound is an exploration of the many facets of the phenomenon we experience as sound. Sound is the product of hearing, one of our senses. Through our senses we gain knowledge of the world around us. Hearing is one of the two senses – the other is sight – that give us perceptions of our surroundings at a distance, without physical contact.
Each of our senses produces a perception of some component of our environment. The sense of sight produces visual images of our surroundings through the perception of light that enters our eyes. The sense of smell produces a perception of odors in reaction to the presence of various chemical substances that enter our noses with the air we inhale. Taste is the sense that produces perceptions of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami in response to chemical substances that come in contact with the tongue inside the mouth. Touch is the sense that gives us a sensation of hardness or softness and texture when our skin comes in contact with objects in our surroundings.
What is sound? Fundamentally, it is a perception of an occurrence in our environment. That occurrence is a change in pressure as detected by our ears. The pressure changes in air that we perceive as sound are generally tiny and very fast. Variations in the size and speed of the pressure changes produce a wide variety in the qualities of the perceived sound they generate.
Sound is particularly important because not only does it provide knowledge of what is happening around us, but by generating sound and perceiving sounds generated by others we can converse with others. Animals use sound to interact with each other, but no animal has as complex and effective a means of sound communication as humans, namely human language. Language is not the only type of sound used by humans to connect with each other. Humans produce another type of sound unique to themselves, namely music. All human cultures produce music. What is communicated through music is not as precise as what can be conveyed through language, but it is often much more emotionally powerful. Appreciation of the power of music is one of the characteristics of humanity.
January 1970