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Infrasound Music & Concerts

rynner2

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From The Times
Soundless music to make good vibrations
By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent

A CONCERT featuring “soundless music” that will be felt rather than heard is to be staged by scientists at the South Bank in London as part of an experiment to examine the effects of inaudible noise on human emotions.
The piano recitals at the Purcell Room will be laced with blasts of infrasound — very low frequency sound at the limit of the human ear’s normal range — to determine whether it can heighten the musical experience of the audience.

Infrasound, which encompasses sound below 20 hertz, the lowest frequency that the ear can comfortably detect, has been linked to phenomena such as haunted houses, motion sickness and the spiritual effects of some sacred organ music, and scientists and musicologists are keen to discover how it manipulates moods and feelings.

Physicists, psychologists, composers and musicians have joined forces to design the Purcell Room concerts, to be held on May 31, which will test the influence of infrasound in the first controlled experiment of its kind.

Although the organisers describe infrasound as “soundless music”, the recitals will not be silent. The Ukrainian pianist GéNIA will perform a selection of contemporary and classical works by composers such as Philip Glass and Arvo Pärt, while researchers from the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington generate infrasound at a frequency of 17Hz from a loudspeaker attached to a 7m (23ft) length of sewer pipe. The audience will be asked to complete a questionnaire on mood and emotion, designed by the psychologists Ciaran O’Keeffe and Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University, both before and after listening to each piece of music. The results will be analysed to determine whether and how the vibrations have an effect.

Infrasound is not always inaudible: though on the cusp of what the human ear can detect, some people find it easy to pick up and others cannot hear it at all. Those who can detect it, however, do not listen to it in the conventional sense. It is best described as a kind of “chugging” or “whooshing” hum, that is felt through the whole body.

“It is that shiver-down-the-spine effect,” said Sarah Angliss, a composer and sound engineer who is leading the project and who has written two pieces for the concert. “It’s often seen as quite an annoying effect, and has been used to explain why people living near factories, which often produce infrasound, can report an unpleasant ambience. It can feel a bit like tinnitus, and it’s associated with hauntings. But it’s not all negative. It’s been used in music for 500 years, in the deep organ pipes that give that wow effect to sacred music. You’d use it to add feeling to the last few bars of the Wedding March.”

Animals as diverse as capercaillie, elephants and whales use infrasound to communicate, as it can travel over vast distances.

Scientists also use it to monitor for earthquakes, and to detect illegal nuclear tests. It is the opposite of ultrasound — sounds at very high frequencies that are beyond human hearing.

The infrasound generator for the concerts is designed by Richard Lord, of the acoustics department at the laboratory. As infrasound is detectable only when played at very high amplitudes, it will be pumped into the auditorium at 86 decibels: the equivalent, for audible sound, of standing next to a busy road.

It will nevertheless be barely perceptible, because of the low frequency. “If the ear were sensitive to that range, it would be pretty loud,” Dr Lord said. “In a library, you’d expect 30 decibels, while a rock concert might go up to 120. This would be somewhere in between.”

The experiment will be a “double blind”. Only Dr Lord and Mr O’Keeffe will know when the infrasound is on. GéNIA, Ms Angliss and Dr Wiseman, who will be communicating to the audience, will be unaware so they cannot give clues as to when to expect it.

A lorry passes a window, but with added emotion

EVERYONE has experienced a piece of music that makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand on end. It would be hard to say, however, that a preview of the Infrasonic concert experiment did exactly that for me.

The dress rehearsal planned for yesterday, in front of National Physical Laboratory staff, had to contend with a major human handicap: the pianist, GéNIA, had hurt her hand and was unable to perform.

The organisers got round the problem by playing a video of one of her performances, still backed with infrasound.

It was fine, but the recording did not come close to capturing the emotion of a live performance.

That said, the infrasound added something, even if I could hardly describe it as “arousing” or “exciting”, as invited to on my psychological questionnaire.

At times I was aware of a sensation that was half sound, half tingling vibration. It is not unlike the feeling you get indoors when a heavy lorry passes the window, or a 747 passes overhead.

Allied to the music, however, it was much more satisfying than you might expect. It does accentuate the emotion, helping you to listen more acutely and bring out the nuances of the performance.

Aural range

Normal range of human ear: 20 to 20,000 hertz
Ultrasound: above 20,000Hz
Infrasound: below 20Hz
Frequency of NPL generator: 17Hz
Amplitude: 86 decibels
Length of infrasound pipe: 7.3m
Frequencies linked to motion sickness: 2Hz to 5Hz

“Infrasonic” concerts on Saturday, May 31, 3pm and 5pm, Purcell Room. Tickets £7, from 020-7960 4242
 
Anyone like to ask Evelyn Glennie exactly what is is she hears when playing, being deaf?
Certainly the skin and body responds to low freqs. as anyone who's been to a rock concert would agree. There has been discussion on another thread about the range of musical freqs ( but I can't find it) in which argument raged about the amount of compression you can apply to mpg's etc together with the removal of "redundant" freqs. before the quality is noticably debased.ie. chop off the lower and higher freqs. As a one time hifi buff I understood that freqs both above and below average hearing could combine to produce higher and lower frqs in any non-linear device such as your ear. So some of these sounds would be heard though not the original sounds that produced them, adding to the quality of notes heard.
That would increase the feeling of presence and liveness in itself.
Mind you, I'm half deaf with old age and years of banging drums so mpgs sound ok to me:D
 
py: no, but thanks for the link - some interesting stuff on that thread;)
 
This 2017 New Yorker article describes a subsonic performance by composer Ashley Fure ...
INFRASOUND OPERA

Enveloping dread, ambient unease, a kind of sensuous foreboding: the music of the thirty-five-year-old American composer Ashley Fure addresses feelings that are all too familiar in early-twenty-first-century life. Fure’s experimental music-theatre piece “The Force of Things,” which was recently staged at Peak Performances, in Montclair, New Jersey, is in part a study in infrasound, or sounds below the range of human hearing. For most of the work’s duration, twenty-four subwoofers, placed with their cones pointed upward, emit electronic tones that vibrate at a frequency of 10.67 hertz, or around ten oscillations per second.

FULL STORY: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/infrasound-opera
 
Do Sunn 0))) count as infrasound?
"The guitars are notable for their low register, frequently utilizing tunings as low as dropped A. "
I recall Mythbusters testing ultra-low freq noise to see if it makes you shit your pants. It doesn't.
 
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