Onward and upward (SFO -> JFK)
Call Bell
Newsletters aren't broadcast; they're magnets.
I always say one of the benefits of this newsletter, for me, is how it serves as a magnet for even more things that are the subject of the newsletter — a virtuous cycle. By way of example, my friend Susan Blue this morning shared this photo she took at York Minster of a “call bell” button with four ambigous switches.
*Originally posted in the March 28, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet)).*
This Week in Sound: The Speed(s) of Sound on Mars
A lightly annotated clipping service
These sound-studies highlights of the week are lightly adapted from the March 28, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet)).
As always, if you find sonic news of interest, please share it with me, and (except with the most widespread of news items) I’ll credit you should I mention it here.
▰ If you enjoyed the story [last week](https://disquiet.com/2022/03/22/this-week-in-sound-school-acoustics-sound-eclipse-bafta-bully-pulpit/) about the rooster making lots of noise in a San Franciso neighborhood that already has its share of challenges, then you’ll appreciate this update: the rooster has been moved two hours east, to the Parrot & Exotic Rescue Sanctuary in Modesto. “Their website says they take in ‘parrots, turtles, snakes, lizards and more,’” reports Joe Kukura. ➔ [hoodline.com](https://hoodline.com/2022/03/tenderloin-rooster-has-a-new-home-at-a-parrot-refuge-in-modesto/)
▰ “Google and Bolverk Games have published a new video game called Voice Attorney running solely on voice commands and available only on the Google Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max smart displays.” ➔ [voicebot.ai](https://voicebot.ai/2022/03/21/new-voice-attorney-video-game-exclusive-for-google-nest-hub-relies-solely-on-speech-controls/)
▰ Amazon wasn’t successful in reversing a suit by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute related to smart speakers. ➔ [bloomberglaw.com](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/amazon-fails-to-sway-judge-on-voice-tech-patents-validity)
▰ Nvidia has announced chip solutions for voice technology, including speech recognition. One market is the automation of menu trees for phone systems: “Synthetization could boost actors’ productivity by cutting down on the need for additional recordings, potentially freeing the actors up to pursue more creative work — and saving businesses money in the process,” reports Kyle Wiggers, in a final AI column for VentureBeat. ➔ [venturebeat.com](https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/25/ai-weekly-nvidias-commitment-to-voice-ai-and-a-farewell/)
▰ Interesting tidbit from a story about Spotify’s efforts in voice-only controls, for use in vehicles: “The jury is still out on whether hands-free voice recognition actually makes driving safer (some studies suggest drivers who use voice controls are more distracted).” ➔ [engadget.com](https://www.engadget.com/spotify-is-testing-a-new-car-mode-focused-on-voice-commands-201718184.html), [nbcnews.com](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/distracted-driving-study-finds-voice-activated-systems-can-be-dangerous-n449551)
▰ News from the Red Planet: “sound on Mars travels at 787 feet per second (240 meters per second), which is significantly slower than the sound of speed on Earth at 1,115 feet per second (340 m/s).” And it gets weirder: “the speed of sounds below 240 hertz fell to 754 feet per second (230 m/s). That doesn’t happen on Earth, as sounds within the audible bandwidth (20 Hz to 20 kHz) travel at a constant speed.” This has been dubbed the “Mars idiosyncrasy,” reports George Dvorsky. ➔ [gizmodo.com](https://gizmodo.com/the-speed-of-sound-on-mars-is-kinda-funky-new-evidence-1848704807)
Sound Ledger¹ (Too Much Sound in Brussels Edition)
Audio culture by the numbers
8: The number of months reduced of some Brussels residents’ lives due to noise pollution
64: The percent of people in Brussels who hear 55 decibels “at any given moment of the day, equal to a normal conversation”
5.5: The multiple of normal car noise produced by trucks
________
¹Footnotes
[brusselstimes.com](https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels-2/211995/noise-pollution-knocks-8-months-off-brussels-life-expectancy)
*Originally published in the March 28, 2022, edition of the This Week in Sound email newsletter. Get it in your inbox via [tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet).*
Easing into Max Richter
A conductor leads the way
The conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser pulled a fascinating fast one on his audience at the San Francisco Symphony on Saturday night. Or perhaps more to the point, he pulled a slow one. He was leading a crowd-pleasing collection of short pieces, a dozen total divided in half by an intermission. Midway through the second half of the program, he was due to introduce Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight.” The orchestra had just finished “Duel of the Fates” (minus the choral part), a John Williams cue from the first Star Wars prequel, *A Phantom Menance*.
To ease from the heavy drama of Jedi/Sith fighting to Richter’s ambient post-classical composition, Bartholomew-Poyser returned to something he had talked about earlier in the evening, how great music can connect to — can express — powerful human emotions. But unlike with, say, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (which the conductor naturally associated with the teenage experience of first love), after the Williams he seemed to go off on a tangent. He talked about how teens often feel “stressed,” and he recommended a “box breathing” exercise to center and calm oneself. Then he led the audience in the breathing exercise, and after cycling through it, he cued the orchestra to begin, while continuing to moderate the audience’s inhalations and exhalations, and the pauses in between. By the time the first few notes of “On the Nature of Daylight” were heard, the audience was fully in step with the piece’s glacial, peaceful pacing. He had prepared us physically and emotionally for what we were about to hear. It was quite a remarkable moment, especially because the audience didn’t know what was going on until after the music had begun.
It might help to understand that the audience on Saturday was largely middle school and high school students, there for a special Teen Night, which served up a range of greatest hits (by Holst, Rossini, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky), adjacent modern favorites (Richter, Williams), and less familiar contemporary spotlights (John Adams, Kev Choice, Anna Clyne, and Arturo Márquez, plus Bartholomew-Poyser himself), as well as George Walker, who fits in none of these categories, but whose gentle Lyric for Strings was quite lovely, and a fine pair to the Richter. Bartholomew-Poyser was an able ambassador for the young audience, and I dare say conductors for adult audiences might consider a similar introduction.