Art by Zach Christy
This episode was written and produced by Fran Board.
There’s a reason we call tourists “sightseers”. As a society, we’re totally obsessed with the way things look. But our world is full of beautiful, fascinating and bizarre sounds. Join us on a sonic adventure around the world, as we climb up sand dunes, plunge into the Arctic Ocean, and even travel back in time. When we celebrate these treasures, we become better listeners and the world becomes a richer and more exciting place. Featuring Trevor Cox, author of Sonic Wonderland and Now You’re Talking.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Faded by Vesky
Flares (No Oohs and Ahhs) by Roary
Cherries by Sound of Picture
Theme in G by Sound of Picture
Little Black Cloud by Sound of Picture
Pineapple by Sound of Picture
Daydreamer by Sound of Picture
Lake Victoria by Sound of Picture
Lazy River by Sound of Picture
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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View Transcript ▶︎
You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.
[music in]
We’ve all heard of the Seven Wonders of the World. And there’s actually a bunch of these lists. There’s the Natural Wonders [SFX: jungle atmosphere], Underwater Wonders [SFX: underwater atmosphere], Engineering Wonders [SFX: heavy machinery], and Architectural Wonders [SFX: construction site]. But what about sonic wonders?
The truth is, we are obsessed by the way things look. After all, there’s a reason we call tourists “sightseers”. But there’s a wealth of amazing sound out there that’s totally being underappreciated.
So today we’re becoming sonic tourists, and we’re going to explore some of the world’s most magical sounding places.
This adventure is inspired by the book Sonic Wonderland. Its author, Trevor Cox, started coming across interesting and unexpected sounds during his work as an acoustician.
[music out]
[music in]
The eureka moment that inspired the book came to him in an unexpected way. Here’s Trevor.
Trevor: I was down a sewer of all [SFX: Sewer atmosphere] places and heard this really strange sound effect. [SFX: Voice effect on Trevor]
Trevor heard that the sound in the sewer was spiraling all around.
[SFX: Voice effect and swirling on Dallas]
Trevor: I was both amazed as a human being, what's that sound? But as a scientist, I'm going, "Oh, what's creating that?"
Trevor: And it got me wondering about what the most amazing sounds might be in the world.
But when Trevor looked for answers, he was surprised to find that there wasn’t much information out there.
Trevor: I mean, it's interesting that there's not that many books about sound really. There’s quite a lot of books about music, but sound in general; there's a few books on silence, a few books about noisy worlds and how everything's becoming awful and noisy. But actually writing about sounds is unusual.
It turns out, we don’t tend to celebrate interesting sounds. Trevor wanted to change this, so he set out on a mission to find the most unusual and mind-blowing sounds our planet has to offer. This is how Sonic Wonderland was born.
So buckle up, [SFX] because we’re on our way to the Kelso Dune Field in the Mojave Desert to find our first sonic wonder.
[music out]
[SFX: Wind]
[music in]
You have to be a very dedicated sound explorer to experience this sound in person. The Kelso Dune Field is vast. It covers over sixty square miles and it's biggest dune is an absolute monster at 650 feet tall.
If that wasn’t daunting enough, the dunes only sing under very specific conditions. First, the sand needs to be at its driest. So, this involves visiting the desert in the height of summer.
Trevor: It's incredibly hot in the middle of summer, so it's a struggle to walk [SFX: walking in deep sand] up them to start with.
Trevor: The sand has to be really dry and it has to be just the right dune. The grains have to be all fairly similar size and have the right coating for this to work.
Then, once you’ve found the perfect sand, it needs to move. Sometimes this happens spontaneously when the wind picks up and creates these mini avalanches.
[SFX: Sand dunes singing]
[music out]
If you’re not lucky enough to be there on a windy day, you’ll need to do the hard work yourself.
Trevor was prepared for the heat, but not for trudging up and down sand dunes all day while they’re at their most slippery. He was also holding his breath to keep from ruining the recordings.
Trevor: You know when you're in the right place almost immediately ‘cause you walk on the dune, you get this weird sort of… it sounds a bit like a bad played tuba.
[SFX: sand dunes burping]
After you’ve finally made your way up, sliding down the dunes is a lot more fun.
Trevor: What you have to do is sit down in your backside [SFX], scoot down the side of the slope [SFX] and create the avalanche yourself. [SFX: sand dunes sliding] And when you do that, you can actually feel the dune vibrating under you.
[SFX: Sand sliding]
Trevor: And of course, being a desert, it's really quiet. So, it's really impressive to listen to.
Trevor: I think one of the wonders about trying to get these sounds is finding things that are unusual and out of the way and quite rare. And this is an example of quite a rare sound.
Singing sand dunes have historical significance too. Marco Polo and Charles Darwin wrote about them. And ancient texts describe how people in China would rush down the dunes as part of their dragon festivals, creating a huge roar of sound.
[SFX: Dragon sand dune roar]
So maybe in the past we were a little better at exploring sound? Trevor thinks this might be the case.
[music in]
Trevor: Partly it's because we’re visually dominated as a species, especially since writing happened, you know we conveyed lots of information for our eyes.
Trevor: In the past we've had more ways of sharing images and we've had more dependency on image for communication of information.
Before we could write, people had to listen very carefully to information. Nowadays, we can stop, pause, and rewind so it’s easier to take sound for granted.
People used to take more time to stop and appreciate sound. Trevor has even found 17th Century lists of sounds, describing different kinds of echoes. One type of echo that was written about a lot is known as a “whispering gallery.”
[music out]
Whispering galleries are great fun to explore with a friend. [SFX: Museum atmosphere] They owe their special sound to their curved shape.
Trevor: Whispering gallery effect is when you go to one side of, say a sphere or curve, and you whisper into it. And the sound whizzes around the inside of that curve to your friend on the opposite side.
[SFX: whispering on left and right]
Trevor: So, you can have lots of fun with your friends and actually make them think the sound is coming from the wrong direction.
[music in]
You can find whispering galleries around the world: The Mapparium in Boston, the US Capitol Building in DC, Grand Central Station in New York City, and St Paul’s Cathedral in London. But the most fun places are the ones that are less well-known. Because, well, they have less rules.
Trevor: When you get to religious sites you have to whisper, and it's actually much more fun to go to a place where you can really let rip and shout.
Trevor: You can go there and you can get your guitar, you can burst balloons, you clap your hands, you can whoop and you can make lots of sounds.
One place like this is an abandoned Cold War listening station in Germany that acts as a whispering gallery. It’s called Teufelsberg and sound aside, it’s quite an interesting place.
Trevor: It's up on a high hill and there's these spherical domes up there, which used to hide spy equipment.
Trevor: Teufelsberg's quite a strange place, partly because it's a health and safety nightmare. So, if you're up in the main dome, there's a great big hole missing. And a lot of the stuff is graffitied and in quite a mess.
Trevor: That's probably the most impactful aspect of going ‘round it, it is a sense of slight danger.
[music out]
Here’s Trevor talking inside the dome. Hear how his voice hugs the inside of the walls.
[SFX: Whispering gallery voice]
Trevor: [with echo from whispering gallery] It’s quite a, a weird place to talk; you can probably hear. And if I clap on the floor, bang with my foot [Trevor stomps his foot], you can hear the sound repeatedly bouncing and being focused back to me.
Of course, being an avid sound explorer that he is, Trevor’s made all sorts of noises in here. Bursting a balloon was one of his favourites.
[SFX: Whispering gallery balloon]
That reverberating noise you can hear is the sound doing laps around the dome’s curved walls, until it eventually dies away.
[SFX: Balloon reverberation dies out]
[music in]
Exploring sound is rewarding and entertaining. But there’s often more to these sounds than first meets the ear.
To find our next Sonic Wonder, we’re leaving Germany and whizzing across the ocean [SFX: airplane flying overhead] to Mexico, and the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá. You might’ve seen photographs of its iconic pyramid with steps running up each side. It’s actually one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. And its sound is pretty wonderful too.
[music out]
[SFX: Jungle atmosphere]
The sound of Chichén Itzá is no great secret.
Every year over a million people visit the ruins and, as tours reach the famous main pyramid, the guides stand a few meters back and ask everyone to start clapping their hands.
Trevor: When you clap your hands, what you get is you get a chirping sound.
[SFX: Chichén Itzá chirping clap sound]
We know from acoustic science how the noise is created. Each step gives a little reflection and these slowly space out a bit, which gives you the dip in frequency and the chirping sound [SFX: Chichén Itzá chirping clap sound continued]. But what other secrets might it unlock?
Trevor: The interesting thing about Mayan pyramids is, does it give us an insight into what our ancestors were thinking?
Trevor: Did our ancestors know about that sound? Was it done in any way deliberately? Or even if it wasn't deliberate, did they find out after they built the pyramids, "Oh, it makes this interesting sound. Let's use that in our ceremonies."
Chichén Itzá isn’t the only place in the world that makes this sound.
Trevor: You can experience this effect you get at this pyramid just by finding a staircase which is away from other buildings, which is quite rare, but you can find them, you can find them in soccer stadiums, for example.
But some acousticians believe the pyramid’s chirp is a deliberate part of its design. They say the clue lies in the sounds of the local birds.
Trevor: So, the suggestion with the chirping Mayan pyramids is that it imitates the sounds of the Quetzal bird, which is a very important ceremonial birds to Mayans.
Quetzal birds are found in the very same area of Mexico. They were celebrated by the Mayans and you can hear they do sound similar.
[SFX: Quetzal bird]
[SFX: Chichén Itzá clapping]
[music in]
So as sound explorers we can not only travel the world, but also travel back in time to hear these sounds as they would’ve been heard many, many years ago.
But our journey isn’t over. We’ll venture through dark caves, the Arctic Ocean, and mysterious towers. That’s all coming up after this.
[music out]
[MID ROLL]
[music in]
So far on our travels we’ve slid down sand dunes, explored whispering domes in abandoned spy towers, and visited the Mayan Pyramids of Mexico.
Now, we’re going underground to hear how some of the world’s most beautiful sounds come from stone.
[music out]
Luray Caverns in Virginia was discovered in 1878. [SFX: cave ambience, water dripping]
Trevor: It's the most amazing place full of most amazing cave formations.
Luray Caverns is a big space and it’s full of stalactites and stalagmites. Walking [SFX] all the way through takes about an hour, and it’s at the end of the tour when things get even cooler.
[SFX: The Great Stalacpipe Organ]
Trevor: For the acoustician, you want to get to the end of the tour where you're walking into this chamber, and there will be what looks like a church organ in the corner.
This organ is called the Great Stalacpipe Organ and it’s made by tapping the cave formations. It’s actually what we’re hearing right now.
[SFX: The Great Stalacpipe Organ continued]
Trevor: If you get the right cave formation, when you hit it with a hammer, it will make a nice sorta ‘ding’, kinda sound.
And so in the 1950’s one dedicated engineer set to work turning Luray Caverns into the world’s largest natural instrument. Now, there is a keyboard connected to 37 naturally tuned formations in the cave. And it can be played like a real traditional organ.
Trevor: He actually spent many years going around tapping the cave formations to find ones that are roughly in tune and ring nicely.
Trevor: And of course being in a cave, it's got that reverberant ethereal sort of ringing of the sound, so it is quite a wonderful kind of experience to listen to it.
No list of special sounds would be complete without at least one from the animal kingdom. There are way too many of these to choose from, so here’s a strange sound that you probably haven’t heard before.
Wrap up warm because we’re heading for the Arctic Ocean, [SFX: Wind, footsteps on snow and ice] somewhere between Norway and the North Pole. And the sounds we’re listening for won’t be heard on land.
Trevor: Some animals make the most peculiar sounds and I think of some of the most odd ones come underwater actually.
So, we’re diving in with an underwater microphone called a hydrophone. [SFX] The animal we’re listening out for is the bearded seal. They are enormous beasts with, as their name suggests, thick bristles on their faces. Here they come now.
[SFX: Bearded seal]
Yep, these weird, alien-like noises, are Bearded Seals.
Trevor: You get this most incredible sound where they sing these glissandos, a bit like I'm playing a trombone and gradually lengthen the trombone to give you a lower and lower note.
Trevor: These glissandos go on and on and on and actually they can last half a minute.
These calls are all part of an elaborate mating ritual. I mean, who wouldn’t be charmed by these sounds.
Trevor: Of course what they're trying to do is signal to a female, because he's a male calls to a female that, "Come over here, I'm the right person to, kind of, mate with." And if the females latching onto some vocal trick they've got, that vocal trick will get more and more exaggerated to be more and more appealing to the female.
The lady seals apparently couldn’t get enough of these eerie sounds, which is why they evolved into such long elaborate displays. And to add to the display, they’re also swimming round in circles and blowing bubbles.
[SFX: Bearded seal and bubbles panning left / right in circles around us]
Trevor: The glissandos presumably over evolutionary time, have become longer and longer to make them more and more impressive or that progresses singing and it's one of those signatures that they have put across to the females to get their mate.
We’ll finish our journey in Trevor’s hometown of Manchester, England, to prove that sonic wonders can be found right on your front doorstep.
[SFX: Beetham Tower]
A few miles from Trevor’s home is a skyscraper called Beetham Tower. The architects wanted it to be the tallest residential building in Europe, so to make the building a little bit taller, they included an extra decorative structure on top.
Trevor: When they first built it, they suddenly realized when the winds got really high, that it made this amazing humming sound [SFX: Tower humming] you could hear about five, six miles away. It was pretty loud.
Trevor: There's a structure on the top that the wind whistles through, and it's a bit like blowing over the top of the beer bottle.
They’d accidentally created a giant flute. Not many people enjoyed the sound, least of all the architect.
Trevor: I suppose there's a bit of schadenfreude because actually the architect owns the top flat and so it must really annoy him when it goes off as well.
The set of a UK soap opera called Coronation Street was also situated close by. Coronation Street also happens to be the world’s longest running TV soap opera. When the tower was first built the whistling frequently stopped their filming.
Eventually, this magnificent sound was considered too unruly and the building was treated to stop it being so loud. But when the winds really pick up, you can still hear Beetham Tower’s whistle. As always, Trevor goes to great lengths in his pursuit of sound. He’s gone out to record the tower on nights when the winds are particularly strong.
[SFX: Beetham Tower during a storm, thunder]
Trevor: It was storming one evening and really early hours. I got up and just about to go to bed. I thought, "No, I'm going to go make the recording." So, that was my recording trip to the Beetham Tower.
Trevor: I remember driving around in my old car, which had a sunroof, with a microphone stuck out on the top catching this sound.
[music in]
Trevor’s book has inspired a small army of sound recordists who share their unlikely finds with him all the time.
Trevor: A week doesn't go past where someone doesn't email me with another delight. This week, what was it? Someone had some recordings of piledriving of wind farms out in the North Sea, and was pointing out they were chirping.
It’s probably fair to say that for every one sound recording made in the world, there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of photographs taken.
When it comes to finding amazing sounds, we’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s a huge, unexplored universe, many times right on our front doorsteps. So as a newly recruited sound explorer, your mission is to tune in, appreciate, and preserve the sounds around you.
Trevor: It could be the most rarest, the biggest, the loudest and all those kinds of things that appeal to us. Or it could just be something which is plainly very beautiful.
Sonic wonders are all around us, just waiting to be appreciated. There are all sorts of curious and poignant sounds that might simply pass us by, never to be heard again. And all we have to do to find them, is to simply open our ears and listen.
[music fades out to nature SFX montage]
[music in]
Twenty-Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film, and games sound incredible. Find out more at defactosound.com
This episode was written and produced by Fran Board, and me, Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and mixed by Soren Begin...and Nick Spradlin.
Thanks to Trevor Cox of Salford University. Be sure to buy his book, Sonic Wonderland. I have it sitting right here on my desk and it’s awesome.
If you have an episode idea, I would love to hear about it. You can tell us on Facebook, Twitter, or by writing hi at twenty kay dot org. And, by the way, if you haven’t checked out our website, be sure to do that. There you can find art, and transcripts, and all sorts of additional information. Again, that’s twenty kay dot org.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
