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Music taps the soul, but you can`t hear it: The Economic Times
Mumbai, Sept 09: Scientists waving sound meters instead of batons have unravelled the secret of music`s power to inspire transcendental or even spooky feelings. In a controlled experiment in which infrasound was pumped into a concert hall, British scientists found they could instil strange feelings in the audience at will. These included an extreme sense of sorrow, coldness, anxiety and even shivers down the spine.
Mumbai, Sept 09: Scientists waving sound meters instead of batons have unravelled the secret of music’s power to inspire transcendental or even spooky feelings. In a controlled experiment in which infrasound was pumped into a concert hall, British scientists found they could instil strange feelings in the audience at will. These included an extreme sense of sorrow, coldness, anxiety and even shivers down the spine.
Infrasound, which is sound in the low frequencies below the range of human hearing, has become a hot area of research in recent years, particularly since Katy Payne discovered by chance in the ‘80s how elephants communicated infrasonically over long distances using ‘silent thunder’.
Dr Payne, who’s an acoustic biologist, was flying home after a week of listening to elephants at a Portland, Oregon, Zoo, when the throbbing of the airplane reminded her of the throbbing in the air she’d detected a few days earlier when the zoo’s 11 elephants greeted their grain-bearing zookeeper at dinnertime. She recalled sitting in church 30 years earlier as the powerful notes from a pipe organ caused the air to shudder and throb. The discovery of infrasonic communication eventually cleared up many old mysteries about elephant societies.
In the current research, scientists seized upon the fact that many churches and cathedrals have organ pipes that are so long that they emit reverberating sounds at a frequency lower than 20 hertz (hz), which is largely inaudible to the human ear. To test the impact on an audience of extreme bass notes from an organ pipe, researchers constructed a seven-metre-long “infrasonic cannon” which they placed at the back of the Purcell Room, a concert hall in South London.
They then invited 750 people to report their feelings after listening to pieces of contemporary music intermittently laced sound from the cannon, played at 17 hz at levels of 6-8 decibels. The results showed that odd sensations in the audience increased by an average of 22% when the extreme bass was present.
“It has been suggested that because some organ pipes in churches and cathedrals produce infrasound this could lead to people having weird experiences which they attribute to God,” said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire. “Some of the experiences in our audience included ‘shivering on my wrist’, ‘an odd feeling in my stomach’, ‘increased heart rate’, ‘feeling very anxious’, and ‘a sudden memory of emotional loss’. “This was an experiment done under controlled conditions and it shows infrasound does have an impact, and that has implications... in a religious context and some of the unusual experiences people may be having in certain churches.”
Sarah Angliss, an engineer and composer in charge of the project, added: “Organ players have been adding infrasound to the mix for 500 years or so; maybe we’re not the first generation to be ‘addicted to bass’.” Details of the organ infrasound study are being presented at the British Association’s annual science festival, which this year is in Salford, Greater Manchester.
Infrasound, which is sound in the low frequencies below the range of human hearing, has become a hot area of research in recent years, particularly since Katy Payne discovered by chance in the ‘80s how elephants communicated infrasonically over long distances using ‘silent thunder’.
Dr Payne, who’s an acoustic biologist, was flying home after a week of listening to elephants at a Portland, Oregon, Zoo, when the throbbing of the airplane reminded her of the throbbing in the air she’d detected a few days earlier when the zoo’s 11 elephants greeted their grain-bearing zookeeper at dinnertime. She recalled sitting in church 30 years earlier as the powerful notes from a pipe organ caused the air to shudder and throb. The discovery of infrasonic communication eventually cleared up many old mysteries about elephant societies.
In the current research, scientists seized upon the fact that many churches and cathedrals have organ pipes that are so long that they emit reverberating sounds at a frequency lower than 20 hertz (hz), which is largely inaudible to the human ear. To test the impact on an audience of extreme bass notes from an organ pipe, researchers constructed a seven-metre-long “infrasonic cannon” which they placed at the back of the Purcell Room, a concert hall in South London.
They then invited 750 people to report their feelings after listening to pieces of contemporary music intermittently laced sound from the cannon, played at 17 hz at levels of 6-8 decibels. The results showed that odd sensations in the audience increased by an average of 22% when the extreme bass was present.
“It has been suggested that because some organ pipes in churches and cathedrals produce infrasound this could lead to people having weird experiences which they attribute to God,” said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire. “Some of the experiences in our audience included ‘shivering on my wrist’, ‘an odd feeling in my stomach’, ‘increased heart rate’, ‘feeling very anxious’, and ‘a sudden memory of emotional loss’. “This was an experiment done under controlled conditions and it shows infrasound does have an impact, and that has implications... in a religious context and some of the unusual experiences people may be having in certain churches.”
Sarah Angliss, an engineer and composer in charge of the project, added: “Organ players have been adding infrasound to the mix for 500 years or so; maybe we’re not the first generation to be ‘addicted to bass’.” Details of the organ infrasound study are being presented at the British Association’s annual science festival, which this year is in Salford, Greater Manchester.