ARCHIVE: The Crazy World of Sound

GROUP SESSIONS

I LOVE THIS EPISODE. It's really strange to hear myself like this. This was one of the first every episodes of English with Dane and you can definitely tell. I was listening to old episodes, to see if I noticed much of a difference, and wow. It feels like a totally different person. This episode talks about stuff that we don't really consider in our day-to-day but that I find fascinating. I hope you enjoy it, and if you haven't heard early episodes of the podcast I recommend that you do. It had a different vibe. Not better or worse, just different. Let me know what you think.

Transcript

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Before we start, if you are interested in classes with me, I'm opening a few group sessions. These will be weekly sessions, 55 minutes each, three people max, and we'll be working on fluency, agility, and really just making you feel comfortable and quick with the language. The goal is to make English a reflex for you and not something you have to overthink. If you're interested or just want more information, click on the link in the episode description. And if you want to reach out to me directly, you can email me at englishwithdane at gmail.com or write to me on Instagram or TikTok if you prefer. I'm putting it out here on the podcast first, so podcast listeners have a first crack at getting into these sessions, and I will be communicating it on social media later in the week. Alright, today's episode is actually an archive episode. I've never done this before, but I was listening back to early episodes of English with Dane, and I came across this one, which was one of the first I ever put out, and I thought I'd bring it back for those of you who haven't heard it. It's about the world of sound. I realized that that might sound a bit strange, but I honestly think it's fascinating. So today's episode is a bit of a throwback. A throwback is just something from the past that you're bringing to the present. So this is a throwback to one of my favorite episodes of all time of English with Dane. The funny thing is that I didn't feel too proud of it when I made it, but now I totally do. It's funny how that works. So I hope you enjoy it. Here it is. Hey, what's up? Welcome back to English with Dane, a podcast designed for you to practice your English. As always, I'm your host, Dane, and you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Englishwith Dane. On today's show, I'm going to talk about sounds or sound in general. And the reason I wanted to talk about sound is because I think it's a fascinating topic. And it's also something that we are extremely used to, however, it's not something that we pay very much attention to, right? It's not something that we normally think about or consider. So let's start the show. You are listening to the sixth episode of English with Dane. Hit it. After studying philology at university, I decided to study sound engineering and production. And the reason I did this is because I've always been interested in music. I remember music being a part of my life from a very young age. My parents sang to me as a child. My mom was always involved in choirs wherever we lived, she also plays the guitar, and then as my brother and I got a bit older, we started learning different instruments, playing in bands with our friends, etc. I remember buying my first CDs and listening to them in my room over and over again unayotraves. But this is something that most of us are familiar with, right? Music. But that's not exactly what I wanted to talk about on today's episode. Sound is bigger than just music. Music is made using sounds, that's true, but there are many other interesting aspects that the world of sound has to offer. For example, we have all had the experience of hearing music coming from a car before even seeing the car or trying to sleep and hearing that thump coming from somewhere, but not knowing where. We have all had the experience of hearing our voice reflected, echoing back in empty auditoriums or gyms. And when we go to the mountains, we shout things, right? Gritamos cosas to hear our voice travel back as if the mountains were talking to us.

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Hello, hello.

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So I think about these things a lot. And after studying sound engineering and some of the physics behind these phenomena, it all started making sense. And I began to listen, to pay closer attention to everyday sounds. So our ears are incredible, if you think about it. They allow us to hear sounds and instinctively know where they are coming from, how far they are, que tan lejos están. We don't have to think about it. When we hear a car screech, el chirrido de un coche, we know if it's close, if it's far, if it's on your left, if it's on your right, behind you, etc. And not just you, everyone knows. You can see everyone's head turn at the same time. You can also tell if you are in a big or small room, depending on how your voice sounds. And this is something that we don't talk about that much. And it's the first example that I wanted to talk a little bit more about. So when we speak, we hear our voice in two different ways de dos maneras distintas. The first way has to do with the vibrations in our skull, right? And that's probably why you hate how your voice sounds. Before I mentioned that you can tell what kind of environment you're in just from the sound. Reflections are your voice hitting or impacting against surfaces, superficies like walls, floors, windows, etc., and reflecting back your way, right in your direction. So depending on where you are, what materials are around you, if there are walls made of glass, wood, or tile, which is azulejos o baldosas, there will be a different level of reflection and absorption. So different places will sound differently. And this accumulation of reflections is what we call reverb, right from reverberations. And in music production and sound engineering, we use it to recreate para recrear different environments, different types of rooms, and even specific rooms. Let me give you an example.

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Hello! Hello, hello.

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If you walk into a bathroom and start singing, it will maybe sound like this.

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La la la la.

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If you are in a closet in an armario, it will probably sound like this, like what you're hearing right now. Like I mentioned before, we can even recreate specific rooms that really exist that are famous for how nice the reflections sound, like Abbey Road Studios, for example, where the Beatles famously recorded most of their albums. But it's close. I think this is really interesting because it means that you can be super creative when making music, and you can transport the listener to different environments, some real, some imaginary, whatever you want. Quick music break, and I'll be back with more stuff about sound. Another interesting aspect of the world of sound is frequency. Okay, everyone has heard the word frequency before, as in how often you do something, like I go to the gym three times a week, frequency. No. In this case, the word frequency refers to the rate per second of a vibration. So how fast a vibration is. If you didn't understand that, don't worry, because it's example time. So let me show you what I'm talking about. But first I want to tell you that although our ears are amazing, they have their limitations. So frequency is measured, semida in hertz or eresios, or ercios for my Spanish listeners. And we can hear from 20 Hertz all the way up to 20,000 Hertz, okay? Those are our limits. But it's really difficult to hear 20 Hertz because it's really low, muy grave, and it's also really difficult to hear 20,000 Hertz because it's really high, okay, muy agudo. So if you have incredible hearing, and I'm talking about really, really incredible hearing, you'll be able to hear those ends of the spectrum. But the vast majority of us, la gran mayoría de nosotros, can't. So let me give you the example. The way I'm going to do this is by using a tone generator, okay, un generador de tono, to play a sound at a specific frequency. It's important to note, it's important to destake that the sounds that I'm going to play for you do not occur in nature, no occurren in la naturaleza. I know this is a weird thing to say, a strange thing to say, I know, but it's true. If you think about it, every sound that we hear, like a car engine, a bird calling, a wave crashing, are all complex sounds, which means that they are made of a lot of different sounds, okay, different frequencies altogether. A wave crashing sounds like this, but a wave crashing without the higher frequencies sounds like this. And that same wave crashing without the lower frequencies sounds like this. So the following sounds do not occur in nature, they must be artificially generated. So here we go. This is what one hundred hertz sounds like. This is what three hundred hertz sounds like. Here's four hundred forty hertz. Here's one thousand. Here's five thousand. Some of you are not enjoying that sound, and I'll stop there. It's interesting to keep going though, to see how far up the spectrum you can still hear, but I don't want to damage anybody's ears today. So some frequencies are more difficult to hear than others, because our ears are more or less sensitive to them, the frequencies that we are really sensitive to are those that are the most prominent in the human voice. And it makes sense, right? Your phone doesn't care about 18,000 Hertz, and it doesn't care about 40 Hertz. It only cares about the frequencies that will make you understand someone when they are speaking to you. That's why when you hear people through your telephone at sound like this. So let me show you what twenty hertz sounds like, okay? Let me play twenty hertz for a second. But first let me say something else. If you are listening to this episode on a telephone or a laptop without headphones, you're never going to hear 20 hertz. If you're listening with earbuds or in-ear headphones, maybe, but probably not either. Those of you who are listening with those big headphones that go over your head, well, if they're good or maybe have a bass boost, un aumento de bajos, you can probably hear it. What I'll do is I'll play twenty hertz and then thirty and then forty and fifty so you can understand what I mean. So here's twenty hertz. Here's thirty hertz. Here's forty. So when you go to a concert or a club, una discoteca, and you feel that boom, boom, boom in your chest, these are those frequencies. Those are the frequencies that you feel. So some frequencies you can hear and some you only feel. And this makes sense. If you remember earlier in the episode, I said that sound hits our ears or reaches our ears, yera a nuestros oídos, but it also hits your body because sound is waves coming at you and interacting with physical objects. Another interesting thing about frequency is this, and it's something that we can apply to our daily lives. So frequencies are waves, right? Sounds are waves on those, and different frequencies have different wavelengths. High frequencies are very short and fast, cortas y rapidas, while low frequencies are long and slow, largas y lentas. Waves that are short and fast are very directional. That is, is decir, that they have to be pointing at You appuntando for you to hear them well. And low frequencies, well, they don't have to be pointing at you. You can always hear them. So what does this mean for our lives? Well, has this ever happened to you? You're in your house, in your room, and you start to hear this boom, boom, boom, and you think, oh my God, turn down that music that's too loud, demasiado forte. It's so annoying. I hate my neighbors. Well, when this happens, do you hear the whole song? Can you hear the voice, the piano, the guitars, etc? Or can you only hear the boom boom boom of the bass? It's probably the latter, right? The thump, the boom boom. That's because of what I just said. The different lengths of frequencies. Those low frequencies need several meters, necessitan varios metros to reach their full power as a maxima potencia. So maybe someone two floors above you or below you is listening to music, but the person who is hearing all of the bass, lose of the song, is you. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for the next episode of English with Dane, episode seven, which will come out on Friday, so in two days. In the meantime, don't forget to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, iVox, or wherever you listen to the show. Remember, the best way to support the show is to give it a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or iTunes and leaving a review.