July 2014

Everything is a drum: frozen lake edition.

So apparently a woman slipped on the ice and it made a cool sound, which gave her percussionist husband the idea to write and perform a piece for this frozen lake in Siberia. The ensemble is Ethnobeat. The lake is Lake Baikal, which at one mile deep and 25 million years of age is the oldest and deepest freshwater lake in the world, and also the largest by volume. (Another interesting tidbit: there’s an annual marathon held entirely on the frozen lake.)

I noticed some comments on the video about how it sounds fake. Giving it a really close listen, in my opinion it’s the real deal, although they do seem to have “cheated” by layering on overdubs. In other words, it’s not all performed at once, live, on camera. But it does appear to be real, and that’s pretty awesome. You can read more about the group and their experience on the lake in the Siberian Times.

  • July 30, 2014

Vsauce asks: What is the loudest possible sound?

Although this is a “Best Of All Time” spinoff-version from the original V-Sauce, it’s the same host and the same basic format: Host asks question, host answers question with science, host goes off on tangents and more extreme questions. Fun and interesting little adventure into sound, sound pressure levels, and shockwaves.

  • July 23, 2014

Sound effects for silent cars.

Okay, well, electric vehicles aren’t silent. But having nearly gotten run over by them as they back out of driveways and parking spaces, I think it’s fair to say they’re a little too quiet for safety. Something that weighs over a thousand pounds shouldn’t be able to roll into you without some warning. So there is research and legislation in progress in various places to require that sound effects be used to warn pedestrians at low driving speeds.

Ignore the horrible grammar and writing and you can learn a few of the policy wonky elements on Bloomberg.

Or see the version on Wikipedia.

But the closest we get to hearing about the sound design itself is on Popular Science.

  • July 16, 2014