#soundscape

#soundscape

At the top, I lay down on my back, in what felt like complete silence. A few minutes later, I began to notice the sounds emanating from my own body. A cup of coffee sloshing around my stomach. The whoosh of blood circulating around my skull. After 15 minutes, what sounded like a helicopter flew over my shoulder. It turned out to be a hummingbird, which began hovering three feet from my face, the sound of its wings almost comically loud.

From 1969 to 1979, a series of field recordings appeared on the Atlantic label under the title Environments. Song titles included "The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore" and "Dawn in New Hope, Pennsylvania" (which would have made a dynamite title for a Ween album), presenting painstakingly recorded sonic representations of places and the sound-worlds they produce. The marketing capitalized on the hippie counterculture, stressing both the transportive and relaxing properties of the sounds. "Better than booze, safer than pot," as a quote from Life magazine put it.

Using paleomagnetic data from around the globe, researchers have constructed a model of the magnetic field before, during and after this historic reversal, also creating a musical piece.

Delia Derbyshire, a pioneer of electronic music, showed how tape machines could transform sound in 1965, influencing the future of radiophonic art.