The sound only 2% of people hear.

[odysseus2000]

The sound that only 2% of people hear (35 mins):

https://youtu.be/zy_ctHNLan8?si=xRRyucbyEjCRZYVU

This was big in the 1970’s in the uk & has no clear explanation, but this video gives a lot of very interesting observations & commentary. Interestingly too, the researcher begins to be,ieve that his research can be funded by subscribers on YouTube.

Regards,

[XFool]

The sound that only 2% of people hear (35 mins):

https://youtu.be/zy_ctHNLan8?si=xRRyucbyEjCRZYVU

This was big in the 1970’s in the uk & has no clear explanation, but this video gives a lot of very interesting observations & commentary. Interestingly too, the researcher begins to be,ieve that his research can be funded by subscribers on YouTube.

Ah. 'The Hum'. Big in the 1970s, making a comeback?

Liked some of the Comments:

"I'm an electrician and I was called out to a house we're a lady heard a humming she believed it was her smart meter. At first I thought she was crazy, when I got there she was walking around the street with a geiger counter, you know one of those radiation meters... So anyway after about 2 hours of looking over the electrical system I asked her if she hears it right now? She said do you hear it right now? Nope.. she clearly still did. So I asked her if she ever thought it might be in her head? not like imagining it, but I said sometimes people can have a tumor pushing on a certain part of the brain and they'll experience auditory hallucinations. So I went on my way disappointed I couldn't solve the problem, I've always prided myself on my diagnostic abilities but I had to accept defeat as I was unable to solve that particular problem, until about a month later when she called me back. She took my advice and went to a doctor, she had a brain tumor.. Most memorable diagnostic I've ever done."

Goodness!

"You did the tube demonstration and I thought my head would explode. I'm all the time hearing noises like electrical currents and buzzing lights, so no one takes it seriously when I talk about pipes humming or the ground vibrating. I am so glad you made this video!"

Right...

"As a student in public school I was 'inundated' by the sound and vibrating of fluorescent lights. I stuck to incandescent lights until LEDs became affordable."

Interesting. This has some connection to me - not sound; vision. (By "vibrating", I wonder if he means flickering?) For some reason, as a teenager, I was frequently very aware of or sensitive to flickering lights - including fluorescent lights (which you were supposed not to be aware of - I was). Accompanying my mother on shopping trips to large department stores in central Birmingham I used to find that I would gradually go doolally in some stores, but seemingly not in others. I started paying attention to both types - one day I noticed a difference. This was the 1960s and while some stores used fluorescent lighting others still used large globes with filament lamps. I realised I only went doolaly in the stores with fluorescent lighting.

Other things could also 'send' me, such as sunlight reflected off the waves in a recently vacated swimming pool.

[odysseus2000]

It is interesting how people’s sensitivity to stimuli are very variable.

It has always puzzled me how music works & why some frequencies are agreeable & others not. It was once suggested that listening to classical music was a good preparation for the sounds of heaven.

Regards,

[88V8]

It has always puzzled me how music works & why some frequencies are agreeable & others not. It was once suggested that listening to classical music was a good preparation for the sounds of heaven.

If Schoenberg is involved, I'll go to the other place!

V8

[9873210]

Is there a place without a soundtrack? I'd settle for 4'33" on a continuous loop.

[bungeejumper]

It has always puzzled me how music works & why some frequencies are agreeable & others not. It was once suggested that listening to classical music was a good preparation for the sounds of heaven.

I think there's a long and honourable history to the study of how musical pitch and key can affect the emotions. Even though it seems like a mathematical nonsense to suggest that you could turn a merry little ditty into a nail-biter, simply by playing your 33 rpm records at 38. (Or, more probably, vice versa.)

Here's a listing of keys and moods that I think is pretty representative of the consensus: https://ledgernote.com/blog/interesting ... -emotions/

Personally, I can't bear to have Brahms on the radio when I'm in the car. Too many doubts and questions, too few answers! Whereas Mozart could get me safely through Hyde Park Corner on a saturday afternoon.

BJ

[bungeejumper]

Returning to the point (sorry), I believe it's a proven fact that teenagers can hear high pitched sounds that would drive the rest of us potty. Shopping malls have been known to use them as a way of dispersing groups of yoofs away from their doors.

And those sonic pest deterrents that can be tuned to different frequencies often come with an admonition that children might be bothered by the lower of their high frequency settings.

In my own youth (well, up to about ten years ago actually), I had particularly high-pitched hearing which has now moderated somewhat - thank goodness! I really couldn't bear the sound of a high soprano, apparently because I was listening with a teenager's ears. (And I was getting all the squeaks and wheezes that nobody else could hear.)

Oh, and I still buy CDs. There's no MP3 in the world that can compete with the extended sound range of the outdated medium. To me, violins lose some of their edge at the top, and bass notes can often wobble. (Acceptable in the car, but not at home.) I've never yet heard a piano recording on MP3 that didn't sound ever so slightly drunk!

Bats' Ears BJ

[odysseus2000]

Returning to the point (sorry), I believe it's a proven fact that teenagers can hear high pitched sounds that would drive the rest of us potty. Shopping malls have been known to use them as a way of dispersing groups of yoofs away from their doors.

And those sonic pest deterrents that can be tuned to different frequencies often come with an admonition that children might be bothered by the lower of their high frequency settings.

In my own youth (well, up to about ten years ago actually), I had particularly high-pitched hearing which has now moderated somewhat - thank goodness! I really couldn't bear the sound of a high soprano, apparently because I was listening with a teenager's ears. (And I was getting all the squeaks and wheezes that nobody else could hear.)

Oh, and I still buy CDs. There's no MP3 in the world that can compete with the extended sound range of the outdated medium. To me, violins lose some of their edge at the top, and bass notes can often wobble. (Acceptable in the car, but not at home.) I've never yet heard a piano recording on MP3 that didn't sound ever so slightly drunk!

Bats' Ears BJ

I am amazed by what some people can hear & how it can change their mood.

Many years ago there was a radio 4 nature program where they played the screams of a small quadruped, hedgehog or similar, being attacked. Then a few weeks later they played the screams of a different species, maybe rat, also being attacked. I paid no attention but some one wrote in to points of view saying both screams were identical. The points of view came across openly, saying the screams were there as representative & had nothing to do with the species being talked about.

From that moment I lost all faith in nature programs & in the by & by I decided that what ever was on media might be right, but couldn’t’t be relied upon, an observation that has proved extremely useful although it does require cross checking anything interesting to me.

The ability of musicians to spot wrong notes, slightly wrong beats & easily tell the difference between cd & mp3 & often to prefer vinyl is like a super power that I don’t have. But even I can tell when I play a chord a little out of what it should be & recently I bought a midi to usb converter that shows me what keys I have played which as I try to learn simple things is quite useful. What has amazed me is the number of versions of very popular songs. E.g. if you look up McCartney’s Yesterday on YouTube there are numerous suggested ways of playing it on a keyboard & even the sheet music for sale is not consistent. When I started I thought there would only be one version of the song, but the reality is very many versions & I still find that weird. Whether this is done to avoid copy right or just to make something easier to play I have no idea, but presumably there is some logical explanation & Paul McCartney always says he can’t read or write music, but listening to some of the Beatles, Wings etc tracks leaves me feeling that these folk are so extraordinary that I might never understand their thought process.

Regards,

[XFool]

I am amazed by what some people can hear & how it can change their mood.

The ability of musicians to spot wrong notes, slightly wrong beats & easily tell the difference between cd & mp3 & often to prefer vinyl is like a super power that I don’t have.

I don't think being able to spot "wrong notes" is a super power. I am not musical, have never played an instrument but spotting wrong notes is very easy and I would have thought the case with most people without any special ability.

I don't know about CDs vs mp3, but I used to believe I had a thing going where I convinced myself I could somehow accurately tell the difference between a 'real' string piano and a professional electronic one! But have never actually been able to put it properly to the test.

Remember the DAB wars? When BBC people were being pushed forward to assure us that DAB really was 'high quality sound' compared to FM - against lots of Hi-Fi types (whatever happened to them?) decrying DAB in favour of FM. At that time and for most of my life having far from perfect hearing even I, by then in my 60s, could hear the flaws in DAB compared to FM even on speech! (Curiously, male speech at that). Leaving aside that BBC R4 DAB used to quietly drop out of stereo transmission unannounced - presumably when there was a lack of channel capacity. Amusingly, at the time, I naively emailed the BBC about this, thinking it was a technical oversight rather than a 'feature'. Never did get a reply.

Once I heard an amusing musical 'challenge' broadcast on the radio. A musical improvisation(?) that ran 'backwards' - that is, rather than starting from a piece and diverging from it by improvisation, it ran the other way round. Ending up with the piece it was based on. The challenge was: "What is this improvisation based on?". Somehow I managed to correctly identify 'Oranges & Lemons' seemingly early on and long before it became obvious. Well, that's how it seemed to me.

The 'Hum' thing is interesting because although I would certainly not rule out UAP/UFO aspects to the phenomenon (i.e. imaginary!) it also has many quite simple real world explanations. Indeed I have had more than one Hum experience myself - very local I should add. The explanation is usually simple and relatively obvious. One aspect of it is, I think, that many people are likely unfamiliar with basic acoustics and how sound 'behaves'.

[bungeejumper]

I don't think being able to spot "wrong notes" is a super power. I am not musical, have never played an instrument but spotting wrong notes is very easy and I would have thought the case with most people without any special ability.

Beginners start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nNGlaiVypU

On the other hand, there have been performers whose whole art lies in their ability to grab fistfuls of notes and make them sound good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KshrtLXBdl8 . (Monk said that there were were "no wrong notes on the piano".)

Another weird thing about notes is that some people's brains have "perfect pitch" - which is to say, they could sing you a perfect A at any time, even if there was no music going on at the time. It's hard not to conclude that some part of their brains must be resonating at a known pitch, and that they can triangulate their way to an A from there.

Whereas other people (including the majority of professional musicians) couldn't do that if their lives depended on it. Instead, they'd need to hear a known note (a C, perhaps) that somebody else was playing before they could figure out the pitch for the A and produce it. If every musician had perfect pitch, orchestras wouldn't need to tune up (collectively) before they started playing. Each one of them would be able to adjust his or her instrument by themselves.

Ob musicians' joke: Perfect pitch is when your banjo (or viola, or piano accordion) hits the side of the skip at exactly the right angle and breaks its bloody neck.

BJ

[kempiejon]

Ob musicians' joke: Perfect pitch is when your banjo (or viola, or piano accordion) hits the side of the skip at exactly the right angle and breaks its bloody neck.

I heard Willie Nelson when asked what's the definition of perfect pitch replied - Someone tossing out a banjo and it lands on an accordion!

Willie said he and his sister did ear training with their grandparents when they were kids and other musicians have said Willie has a great ear. Perhaps perfect pitch can be trained then? Relative pitch certainly can be, I learnt to hear intervals but you have to keep it up.