Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Sound for healing, sound for harm

I was reading an article for class the other day and there was a portion that discussed "Joshua's Trumpet", a 75 foot long trumpet being created to sound at 4 Hz. The sound is powerful enough to destroy the entire city of Chicago. This information got me thinking about the power of sound. Whe already know that pieces of music can manipulate someone's mood or inhibit a feeling; what if we expand upon that? The Ancient Greeks believed that certain types of people's needed to listen to certain types of music such as soldiers only listening to war music. I believe they were along the right track. We use certain types of music in today's society to sooth people in various environments such as on the elevator, in the work place, as music therapy. What if we expanded this to school lunchrooms, classrooms, various jobs... There is scientific evidence of music increasing the amount of brain we use as well as making children smarter or even developing a fetus differently. If we as musicians and physic of sound really put our minds to it, not only could we increase the ways music can benefit us, we can also perfect sound as a weapon. Imagine soldiers beig able to go into a war zone and completely disable the enemy by a sound pulse rather then by bullets or bombs. Sound can Ben be used for torture. But though all of this, sound and music can be harnessed to help shape the people and their lives.

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