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A Sound Environment

Subject Area

This activity is designed to avoid traditional curriculum distinctions. Accordingly it is suggested that this part of the outline be taken as a suggestion only. Since sound is one of our most important senses, it should be considered every time any of the other senses are addressed. This activity can be applied in any context where an understanding of sound is important. As a result, it could be part of the SEN3G Optional Unit on Noise Pollution, SEN4A Optional Unit on Environmental Health Hazards, SPH4A and SPA4G. It is equally important that this activity be considered across the curriculum. For example, it is suitable in any level of English at which poetry is to be studied, the drama or theater arts curricula, physical and health education, or visual arts.

Learning Outcomes

Teaching, learning and evaluation will focus on the student's ability to:

  • Research and assess the type of sound in the school and local environments;
  • Articulate an understanding of the impact of sound on him/herself;
  • Analyze his/her own sound environment and speculate on the impact of sound on his/her life.

Classroom Development

This activity is based mainly on a series of student work sheets with which students will be directed to encounter the sounds that form the background hum of their lives.

Acoustic Environment

If a loud sound is made at a time it is not expected, it will nicely introduce the class to the impact of sound and its function. Make a loud noise which will not have been anticipated by your class. Once the exclamations of shock die down, ask them to suppose the value of an apprehension of sound to our species. What is the function of sound in human existence? Why do you think that humans developed hearing? It allows an individual to become aware of things which are not in his or her field of sight.

Ask students what they would do when they hear a car engine (very close), a train horn, a telephone ring, a door bell. You know what to do. Previous experience has you better trained than you may think. What is the value of this training?

  1. The first step of this activity is probably to draw upon the existing knowledge that the students have about sound. This knowledge is unpredictable and most always insightful. Have students, in groups of 3-5, define the following terms based on their existing knowledge, experience and imagination: sound, sound-scape, sound environment, ambient noise, background noise, sound absorption characteristics, human-made versus natural sound, and sound awareness. Make sure that the responses are written, rather than merely discussed orally.
  2. If adequate answers are given, students can move onto the next step of the activity, otherwise, have students use the library's resources to define these terms. Physics or music teachers can be called upon at this point to explain these terms if team teaching is popular in your school.
  3. Remind students that the awareness of sound should not be confined to the music classroom. Sound exists everywhere. The application of hearing and the integration of sound in our environment is basic to our common existence. Sound transcends age, race, culture, and religion, though its interpretation varies. The sense of hearing is usually overlooked by sight and the other senses. The media of mass communication mostly provide visual experiences, but without the soundtrack they become mere shadows of the whole picture. The more the senses are tuned, the better an overview and an understanding of our lives.
  4. Within this age of political correctness and issues of gender equality we question how words are used. What about words like "overlooked" and "overview." Can these words not constitute sense discrimination? Our world needs to be heard, touched, tasted, and smelled as well as seen. As we live in a multicultural society, we should also live in a multi-sensual world.

Direct a discussion on the theme of sense discrimination, a situation in which one sense dominates, occupying the majority of an individual's conscious sensory input. These questions are useful to ask both before and after the worksheets have been completed, so that students can gauge what they have experienced in the activity. Remind students to remember what they say this time through, because you'll ask them the same questions later.

Why do we accept this situation?

  • In what contexts would other senses dominate?
  • Might different living situations (urban, suburban, rural, rustic) require a different balance of the senses?
  • What balance of senses is necessary for your life? Why?

Options

Have visually disabled people come into class and talk about the way that they rely on sound and their hearing mechanism to navigate in a sighted world. There are differences in how sound is perceived between people who have had a visual impairment from birth and who lost sight later in life.

Response/Discussion

In whatever class journals are kept, direct students to write on the following topics:

  • Discuss "awareness of sound in the environment." What does this phrase mean to you, and what value might it have in society?
  • Discuss the harmful effects of sound.
  • How can the concepts of sound, music, and physics be connected?
  • How might the concepts of sound and knowledge be connected?

Timing

Most work should be done out of class time.

  • One period of 50-80 min is required for steps one and two.

Cross-disciplinary Links

This activity is best linked between the courses outlined in Subject Area above. Any curriculum in which sound, the senses, or aural pollution are studied could be linked through this activity. A great deal of mileage can be made by linking a unit on sound in a Physics class with a poetry unit in an English class.

Resources

Schafer, R. Murray. A Sound Education: 100 exercises in listening and sound-making. Indian River, Ontario: Arcana Editions, 1992.

Schafer, R. Murray. The Tuning of the World. Toronto: McClel- land and Stewart, 1977. R. Murray Schafer is one of Canada's most prominent composers.

Student Activities

A Sound Environment

When a walking path becomes familiar, some features start to be taken for granted. Walking along a different route provides not only something different to look at, but something different to listen to. It represents a change in acoustic environment. If you change the path along which your life travels, socially, economically, geographically, or intellectually, how will your acoustic environment change?

Analyzing Your Sound Environment

If you are walking in a hallway and clap your hands, the sound you hear is shaped by the sound absorption characteristics of the constructions. The length of time it takes for you to hear the reflection is dependent on the length of the hall. This exercise of equating distance to sound reflection is best done outside where one can make a sound and count how long it takes for the reflection to return. Since sound travels at approximately 344 m/s, a reflection returning in one second gives an approximate distance of 172 m (344/2).

  1. Walk around your school and local environment and find ten different sound environments in each. List them:
  2. Listen to the sounds on the walk home from school.
  3. What are making the sounds?
  4. Are the sounds pleasant? Explain why you think that the sound is pleasant or unpleasant.
  5. Can you hear a sound being made in one place and hear a reflection in another? That is, do you hear sounds bouncing off buildings or echoes of sounds coming from directions where you are not expecting to hear sounds?
  6. How does the ground that you are walking on change the way your shoes or boots sound?
  7. How many of these sounds that you hear make you aware of things in your neighbourhood that you did not know existed? (The large number of air conditioners, dogs, cats, birds, lights, transformers on poles, traffic lights changing colour, water flowing in the sewers).
  8. Bring your response sheet back to class for discussion.
An easy way to hear the effect of your surroundings on the way sound sounds (the characteristics) is to go into the bathroom and talk or make any sound. Then remove the towels that are hanging up and open the shower curtains. Now make the same sounds and describe the difference in the space below.

Sound(s) made:

Describe the difference(s) between the sounds made with the towels and curtains, and without.

Mall Listening

  1. Go to a mall or restaurant and listen to the sounds. Try to ignore the sound in the foreground and focus on the ones in the background. Write down the name of the mall you visited, and the date and the time of your visit.
  2. List the sounds that you hear, and put an asterisk next to the ones that you've never noticed before.
  3. What effect do these background sounds have on the other sounds that you hear?
  4. How would the place (mall or restaurant) without this sound(s)
  5. Explain why you think that background sounds help or hinder communication
  6. Do you think that background sounds increase or decrease privacy? Support your answer.
  7. What is the difference between eating a meal with a group of people with and without background music?
  8. Are you more conscious of the sounds that you make when you eat if there is background music? Why?
  9. What do you think are the reasons for piped music and waterfalls in restaurants and shopping areas?
  10. How do the types of eating utensils affect the background noise? (Take notice of whether you are eating on a styrofoam, cardboard, paper, ceramic, glass or plastic food containers and what you are using to eat the food: hands, fingers, chopsticks, plastics cutlery, metal cutlery, silver cutlery).