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Noise pollution can have serious effects on mental and phisical health. This is why I need to clarify this opinion is based on a more conceptiual study of sound. This is based on places like lausanne where our noise pollution is not as bad as other cities.

NOISE POLLUTION

Noise is an element that is part of our every day life. We learned how to live with it, how to use it and even how to communicate with it. However it seems like our environment is getting noisier by the day. Noise pollution adversely affects the lives of millions of people. Studies have shown that there are direct links between noise and health. Problems related to noise include stress related illnesses, high blood pressure, speech interference, hearing loss, sleep disruption, and lost productivity, and so on...

There are many different ways to minimise noise and even though some of them can definitely help I personally don’t think these solutions are the most effective way of fighting noise pollution. Considering how much noise is part of our every day activities and how it sometimes is necessary, finding complete silence seems impossible. But how do you analyze a sound? Timbre is an important term to understand in order to be capable of truly understanding and analyzing to sounds.

WHAT IS TIMBRE?

In music, timbre, also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musical instruments. It also enables listeners to distinguish different instruments in the same category.

In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a piano playing the same note at the same volume. Both instruments can sound equally tuned in relation to each other as they play the same note, and while playing at the same amplitude level each instrument will still sound distinctively with its own unique tone color. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish between different instruments of the same type based on their varied timbres, even if those instruments are playing notes at the same fundamental pitch and loudness. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include frequency spectrum and envelope. Singers and instrumental musicians can change the timbre of the music they are singing/playing by using different singing or playing techniques. For example, a violinist can use different bowing styles or play on different parts of the string to obtain different timbres. On electric guitar and electric piano, performers can change the timbre using effects units and graphic equalizers.

The richness of a sound or note a musical instrument produces is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of distinct frequencies. The lowest frequency is called the fundamental frequency, and the pitch it produces is used to name the note, but the fundamental frequency is not always the dominant frequency. The dominant frequency is the frequency that is most heard, and it is always a multiple of the fundamental frequency. For example, the dominant frequency for the transverse flute is double the fundamental frequency. Other significant frequencies are called overtones of the fundamental frequency, which may include harmonics and partials. Harmonics are whole number multiples of the fundamental frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4, etc. Partials are other overtones. There are also sometimes subharmonics at whole number divisions of the fundamental frequency. Most instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones, such as cymbals and other indefinite-pitched instruments.

Often, listeners can identify an instrument, even at different pitches and loudness, in different environments, and with different players. In the case of the clarinet, acoustic analysis shows waveforms irregular enough to suggest three instruments rather than one. David Luce suggests that this implies that certain strong regularities in the acoustic waveform of the above instruments must exist which are invariant with respect to the above variables". However, Robert Erickson argues that there are few regularities and they do not explain our "...powers of recognition and identification." He suggests borrowing the concept of subjective constancy from studies of vision and visual perception. Psychoacoustic experiments from the 1960s onwards tried to elucidate the nature of timbre. One method involves playing pairs of sounds to listeners, then using a multidimensional scaling algorithm to aggregate their dissimilarity judgments into a timbre space. The most consistent outcomes from such experiments are that brightness or spectral energy distribution, and the bite, or rate and synchronicity and rise time, of the attack are important factors.

MY SOLUTION

Trying to fight the noise in order to find silence and there, for peace seems counterproductive as it would surely result in stress and anger. I think the most effective way to find some kind of peace and comfort would be to accept the noise and actually listen to it. To do so, I think it is important to understand what noise is. In my opinion noise is an accumulation of different sounds. A noisy street is noisy because of the many different perceivable types of sound. Engine noises, car horns, people talking, ventilation sounds… All these sounds make noise pollution and we identify that noise as one element when it actually is a multitude of different sounds.

My solution to finding peace in a noisy environment* is to truly listen to the noise and analyze it in order to find the separate sounds and hopefully find some kind of beauty or particularities in those sounds. On top of that one can truly listen by separating the sound of the object that creates it in order to have an unbiased and new opinion of the sound. Next time noise makes you feel anxious and/or oppressed just accept it and listen to it.

*As mentioned, noise is an accumulation of different sounds

Noise
Pollution

analyzing
noise

What is
noise?

Composing
noise

Top

01 Noise pollution

LISTEN BEYOND THE NOISE

01. Click on the noise to access the button
02. Click on the button and scroll down.

02 analyzing noise

Noise 01

Noise 02

Noise 03

Noise 04

Noise 05

Noise 06

Noise 07

Noise 08

1: Analyse the noise in order to identify each sound.
2: Click on each video in order to turn the sound off.

STOP

03 understanding noise

Trying to fight the noise in order to find silence and there, for peace seems counterproductive as it would surely result in stress and anger. I think the most effective way to find some kind of peace and comfort would be to accept the noise and actually listen to it.
In order to analyse sound you first need to understand what timbre is. In simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical instrument or human voice have a different sound from another, even when they play or sing the same note.

To do so, I think it is important to understand what noise is. In my opinion noise is an accumulation of different sounds. A noisy street is noisy because of the many different perceivable types of sound. Engine noises, car horns, people talking, ventilation sounds…
All these sounds make noise pollution and we identify that noise as one element when it actually is a multitude of different sounds.
My solution to finding peace in a noisy environment* is to truly listen to the noise and analyze it in order to find the separate sounds and hopefully find some kind of beauty in those sounds.

*Noise pollution can have serious effects on mental and phisical health. This is why I need to clarify this opinion is based on a more conceptiual study of sound. This is based on places like lausanne where our noise pollution is not as bad as other cities.
On top of that one can truly listen by separating the sound of the object that creates it in order to have an unbiased and new opinion of the sound. Next time noise makes you feel anxious and/or oppressed just accept it and listen to it.
Once you are able to listen to the different particularities that compose each sounds, you can experiment with them and recompose each sound as you like.

04 Composing noise