The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World (31 page)

The discrete impact sounds of footsteps are united in the continuous line of the wheel. Imagine the first wheel—the lumbering sound it made over the uncleared ground. Then think of its transformation to the light spoked wheel, the wheel belted with metal stripping, the heavy iron wheel of the cannon or the snorting wheel of the steam engine—halfway between impulse and flat line—for it was not until the invention of the internal combustion engine that rhythm was wholly disengaged from locomotion in the final speed-up to pitched noise. But even the air tire produces variations: the fizz of the wheels in rain or the heavier hum of snow tires and the clatter of studs.

From Horn to Telegraph
     Communications systems have undergone striking acoustic metamorphoses. All acoustic communications systems have a common aim: to push man’s voice farther afield. They share another aim also: to improve and elaborate the messages sent over those distances. One of the first acoustic devices to give man an extended voice was the horn. The first horns were aggressive, hideous-sounding instruments, used to frighten off demons and wild animals; but even here we note the instrument’s benign character, representing the power of good over evil, a character which never deserted it, even when it began to be used as a signaling device in military campaigns. We know that the Greeks and Romans used various kinds of horns and trumpets in warfare, but we have no precise knowledge of how they were employed. The first dialoguing horn with which we are familiar is the alphorn; it was the first telephone in Europe.

But in sheer sophistication the alphorn is surpassed by the telegraph drums of Africa. Two drums are used for this purpose (high and low) and although sometimes different types of strokes are used, more frequently the code employed is strictly binary. It might be supposed that such a limitation would make it impossible to communicate complex messages, but such is by no means the case. Whenever ambiguity might exist, redundancy is introduced to make the message clear. For instance, if the signal for
moon
and
fowl
is identical, consisting of two strokes on the high-pitched drum (as is the case with the Lokele tribe of the Congo), the meaning is made clear by adding an explanatory phrase to each word.

The moon looks down at the earth

songe li tange la manga

H  H  LH  H  L  LL  L L

The fowl, the little one which says
kiokio

koko olongo la bokiokio

HH  LHH  L  LHL  HL

Possessing both contour and impulse, the talking drums of Africa, which can be heard up to sixty miles on a quiet evening, fuse melody and rhythm together in what is probably the most elegant signaling system ever devised. By comparison, Roland’s mighty Oliphant was a piece of barbarism.

Melody was elevated over rhythm in European communications systems with the introduction of the festive embellishments of the baroque
cor de chasse
and the Thurn and Taxis postal signals, only to be flattened ut again by the tickertalk of Morse’s telegraph. It was about 1930, just as the last postal horns were fading out in Germany, that radio substituted the indoor concert for outdoor, just as it also introduced the commercial to synchronize with the disappearance of the street crier’s movable market. (Yawping over long distance had, of course, already been possible via the telephone.)

The introduction and dismissal of music in communications systems (or at least the preferences shown for rhythm against melody or vice versa) is a subject that should interest the acoustic designer, and it can only be studied when the various systems are hooked up in sequence.

From Ratchet to Siren
     Just as one can make interesting deductions about the most important social institutions in varying communities merely by noting the tallest buildings, studying changes in the most salient community signals could form an interesting theme for morphological research. For one thing, if the intensity of a historical set of community signals is measured, a pretty accurate idea of changes in the ambient noise level of the community can be obtained.
^t

Let us consider the way in which fires were signaled at various times in various communities. For this work to be truly revealing it should be restricted to a single depth study in one culture, or else take the form of a temporal cross-section comparing the devices of many contemporaneous cultures; but I have not got the facts at my fingers to do this, so I can only touch on the theme in a general way.

In Mozart’s day (1756–91), Vienna was quiet enough that fire signals could be given by the shouts of a scout mounted atop St. Stefan’s Cathedral. In early North America, fire halls also had tall watchtowers for scouting. As early as 1647 the governor of New Amsterdam appointed wardens to patrol the streets of Manhattan at night, armed with rattles or ratchets to sound the alarm. (An interesting posthumous example of the same device was the ratchet with which each civil defense warden was armed in wartime London and which was to be sounded in the event of a German gas attack. The sound generated by such instruments is surprisingly loud and we have measured one at 96 dBA at 3½ meters.)

On English fire vehicles, gongs were originally employed. The bell came into use early in the twentieth century with the advent of motor-driven appliances.

The siren was introduced only after World War Two by some brigades but the bell continued to be the traditional audible warning for fire appliances in the British Fire Service. … However, during the 1960’s, due to worsening traffic conditions and the increasing use of larger and diesel-engined commercial vehicles … a number of tests were carried out using four different warning devices. … Following these tests it was decided to standardize on the use of a two-tone horn for fire appliances. This was subsequently adopted for other emergency service vehicles, i.e., police and ambulance, and its use is now restricted to vehicles of the emergency services.

In 1964 the familiar two-tone horn was adopted and the intensity fixed at not less than 88 dBA at a distance of 50 feet under calm conditions.

Two newspaper clippings in my file show that Canadian cities shifted from bell to siren at a considerably earlier date.

Clang! Clang! See the fire apparatus clashing, dashing by in a shower of sparks; firemen hastily donning their helmets and rubber coats, men whose hearts beat vigorous and warm in life, men whose prospects are filled with bright hopes and expectancy!

The wild plunge down the streets, the frantic speed of the horses, the drivers strapped to the seats, men clinging to the hose carts, ladder wagons and engines like flies!

That was an account of Vancouver’s first horse-drawn fire engine of 1899. But the motorized fire engines that emerged from the hall after 1907 were no longer the same.

A long wolf howl, a sudden stopping of traffic, and a motor fire truck goes screaming down the street, leaving behind a clear track into which people and vehicles pour as the waters of the Red Sea followed on the wake of the men of Israel. Over the steering wheel the driver bends. At his side crouches a man who whirls the crank of the siren, sending ahead its shivering cry of fear.

In North America the revolving disc siren is employed on all emergency vehicles: fire-fighting equipment, ambulances and police cars. Europe, on the other hand, relies on the two-tone siren, variously tuned to an interval of a minor third (common in Sweden), a perfect fourth (common in Germany) or a major second (common in England).

Since the introduction of the disc siren in North America, the principal change has been in the volume of sound output. We have measured the siren on a 1912 vintage vehicle at 88 to 96 dBA at
3½
meters. By 1960 siren intensity had risen to 102 dBA at 5 meters. In recent years a new type of yelping siren has been introduced for emergency vehicles, measuring 114 dBA at the same distance. The United States is now manufacturing a yelping siren for police car use which measures 122 dBA at
3½
meters. With such hectoring devices the police are hardly becoming more lovable.

Conclusions on the Value of Morphological Studies
     I hope the theme of morphological studies is suggestive enough that it will eventually inspire more systematic research. The tape recorder makes such work on the contemporary soundscape entirely feasible; and in connection ith laboratory analysis, recorded sounds could be assembled in sequence and their physical changes could easily be analyzed.

Sometimes changes seem to progress in a fairly orderly manner; at other times they are interrupted suddenly by what I can only call mutations. The replacement of the bell by the siren is an example. In view of the heavy symbolism which accrues to well-established sounds, the acoustic designer ought to weigh the matter very carefully before substituting a radically new sound for a traditional one.

Right now in many countries foghorns are being automated and the character of their sound is being quite transformed. The haunting bass of the familiar diaphone and typhon is to give way to an electric horn, higher in pitch, shorter in carrying power. Fishermen in Canada say they don’t like it and can’t hear it, but the Ministry of Transport has begun to dismantle the old horns on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Sometimes a new technique only partially transforms a familiar sound, as is the case with the electric siren which, while maintaining the same contour as the old disc siren, truncates the arc of its glissando by instant switch-on and switch-off. The tempo of the old siren is increased about fourfold in the yelp mode of the new electric model, and the grainy effect of the original device has disappeared as a new sound signal is gradually shaped out of the old.

It is still too early to know whether there are any morphological rules of soundscape change, such as have been observed in language development. Of equal value, as research proceeds, will be the detection of what might be called matrix sounds. I am thinking here of sounds with unvarying physical characteristics which occur in different cultures or recur throughout history, always with the same general meaning. A knowledge of matrix sounds could be as useful to the acoustic designer as a knowledge of geometrical forms is to the visual designer. Such sounds would also carry a powerful symbolism.

TWELVE

Symbolism

The sounds of the environment have referential meanings. For the soundscape researcher they are not merely abstract acoustical events, but must be investigated as acoustic signs, signals and symbols. A sign is any representation of a physical reality (the note C in a musical score, the on or off switch on a radio, etc.). A sign does not sound but merely indicates. A signal is a sound with a specific meaning, and it often stimulates a direct response (telephone bell, siren, etc.). A symbol, however, has richer connotations.

"A word or an image is symbolic,” writes C. G. Jung, “when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider ‘unconscious’ aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained.” A sound event is symbolic when it stirs in us emotions or thoughts beyond its mechanical sensations or signaling function, when it has a numinosity or reverberation that rings through the deeper recesses of the psyche.

In his book
Psychological Types
, Jung speaks of certain types of “symbols, which can arise autochthonously in every corner of the earth and are none the less identical, just because they are fashioned out of the same world-wide human unconscious, whose contents are infinitely less variable than are races and individuals.” To these “first form” symbols, Jung gave the name “archetypes.” These are the inherited, primordial patterns of experience, reaching back to the beginning of time. They have no sensible extensions themselves, but may be given expression in dreams, works of art and fantasy.

In this chapter I am going to try to show how certain sounds possess strong symbolic character and how some of the most ancient may act to invoke archetypal symbols.

Return to the Sea
     Of all sounds, water, the original life element, has the most splendid symbolism, and so we loop back to pick up the first theme of Chapter One. Rain, a stream, a fountain, a river, a waterfall, the sea, each makes its unique sound but all share a rich symbolism. They speak of cleansing, of purification, of refreshment and renewal.

The sea has always been one of man’s primary symbols in literature, myth and art. It is symbolic of eternity: its ceaseless presence. It is symbolic of change: the tides; the ebb and flow of the waves. Heraclitus said, “You never go down to the same water twice.” It illustrates the law of the conservation of energy: from the sea, water evaporates, becomes rain, then brooks and rivers, and finally is returned to the sea. It is symbolic of reincarnation: water never dies. Nor does water respect the law of gravity, for it flows downward and evaporates upward. When angry it symbolizes, in the words of W. H. Auden, “that state of barbaric vagueness and disorder out of which civilization has emerged and into which, unless saved by the effort of gods and men, it is always liable to relapse.” Auden continues: “The sea is where the decisive events, the moments of eternal choice, of temptation, fall, and redemption occur.”