Nice to hear you

Sound is capable of producing powerful reactions in the listener – whether it’s happiness, sadness, fear or nostalgia. Music that gets you out of bed with its beat, or the uncontrollable laughter of children as they play that brings a smile to your face. History is filled with tribal traditions of drums uniting tribes during ceremonies; my own family from Multan has always played dholak at every event, creating rhythms that give you an adrenal rush.

Sound is a series of vibrations that travel into the ear and get converted into electrical signals that are sent to the brain via the vestibulocochlear nerve. Your brain then tells you that you are hearing a sound and what that sound is.

When used in the right way sound has the ability to shift our perception of the world and ourselves. Music is the best form of informal education; it teaches you so much, only if you listen closely!

A very cool song with cooler lyrics talking about education.

How can we use music and it’s effects for our own benefit?

The sound of rolling ocean waves or the low rumble of a distant thunderstorm is known to put a person to sleep. Why? Science didn’t really understand this until recently. Researchers at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) found that playing ‘natural sounds’ affected the bodily systems that control autonomic nervous systems, associated with the resting activity of the brain.

This is because as one of the basic laws of physics states that everything in life is a vibration. Nature has its own vibrations and when we attune ourselves with those vibrations whether spending time in nature or listening to the sounds of it, our vibrations align with that of nature.

The search results when you type “relaxing nature sound” on youtube

My sound piece

I have always found the sounds around us very fascinating, the tune of phanka, the tick tick of the car indicator, the rhythm of water droplets from the tap, the crunch crunch of chips ka wrapper, the sound of my keyboard right now as i type, the crisp sound when you step on dried leaves, the scary sounds the windows make during a thunderstorm, and so on.

So for the sound assignment, I decided to put together the sounds i hear around me on a daily basis and make a sound piece out of it. It was extremely therapeutic, and I realized how much beautiful sound we have around us, and it’s in our hands if we want to perceive it as music or not.