The World Through Our Ears

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 177, 29 July 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

The World Through Our Ears

WHAT the opera was to last century, radio and cinema are to this—with this important difference: opera was the privilege of only the moneyed few, whereas radio and cinema, through their cheapness, are easily accessible to all. How soon we accept this modern _: i_ \T/_ * - i V. «— I

miracle. We turn a knob and a [ tremendous sound world is at our E disposal. With what an "inevit- ' ability of gradualness" science is ' breaking down all barriers, time , and space included, and where i space is assaulted time will be a assaulted as well. \ The r-eal beginning of the break in r space-continuum was the first wheel, F then the vehicle, the boat, the car, the * leroplane; also the letter, telegram, telephone, and finally cinema and radio, which brings the world so quickly to our »yes and ears. Cinema re-serves what a las already been picturised; but radio is t sound caught at the moment of its v happening —the cake, as it were, in the act of coming hot from the oven—ex- x •ept in the case of the broadcasting of < gramophone records. ' Perhaps the radio set is too mobile; by a mere switching of the knob we . may listen-in to any country we choose. The choice is so various that some of the all-wave sl&tions are on top of one another, so that when Ave are listeningin to one we can occasionally hear the vague underground rumblings of another 6tation. This very accessibility can be a peril in the wrong hands —there are so many —and it is inevitable that the ear, in order to protect itself, must become blunted and, in some cases, non-func-tioning. The modern axiom seems to be: "Let there be noise!" • Just as our eyes refuse to record the billion extraneous details of sight, so do our ears aet in the same protective way. Camera Eye makes way for Radio Ear. Radio is in our hands to be either a great educator or a soporofic in which the passive mind (in the majority of cases) completely surrenders all sense of responsibility. Sight More Vivid The sense of sight, being older, is more vivid than the sense of hearing (for instance, see how we forget names but remember faces), and so far only two arts have renounced tlje eye entirely—music, and in our century, broadcasting. Now I dip freely into Rudolf Arnheim to help me along. "Aural art, like sound perception in general, is possible only in time, and there cafl be successive as well as parallel representations, as the ear is capable of taking in simultaneous sounds. By the sound vibrations we can ' determine pitch which possesses an extremely wide frequency range of from 1 15 to 40,000 vibrations'a second." The ' modern moving coil loud-speaker re- ' sponds to a much wider band of sound- [ frequency than the earlier horn loud--1 speaker "(from 15 to 20,000 cycles) re--1 suiting in high fidelity reproduction. 1 Also, an expert can assess the size and ; form of the space as well as the nature of the confining walls by the kind of ! resonance. 5 With its great power of conveying ! meaning, human speech opens up a new 1 world in aural art. We should never forget that the mere sound of the word, t being more elemental, has an effect as » direct and powerful as the word itself. I After all, it is the expressive power in - the voice of the speaker rather than r the content of his speech that affects t simple people. This is not to suggest that in radio- - drama subject matter is of no consequence; but as the sound of words is ! so important, all radio art t-hould make

this fact a starting point. How often one hears people say: "I didn't bother to listen-in to B—l don't care for his voice." A good microphone voice is half the battle. As Arnheim says, speech should sing, but most languages have faded, and with them the feeling for sound-tone. The effects or pure sound can be exploited much more exactly than can ever

be possible in visual art. After all, we are only in our infancy in the proper use of the microphone; sound can be as mathematical'a study as the divisions of tone in painting, and being physically defined by the rate of vibration, it is actually more exact. To be sure speech, as apart from music, is less chemically pure, so that it is all the more necessary to follow music's lead and develop a rhythm and feeling for vocal line and phrase into our radio speech. The "Gallon-Jug" Voice Although the speaker is addressing thousands, there is no reason why he should not talk as quietly and naturally as in his own home. The same applies to singers. The big "gallon-jug" concert voice that is accustomed to filling the vast spaces of concert halls is out of place at the microphone. Eventually we hope the singer and speaker will develop a microphone voice, and the radio expert should be given scope to experiment with the infinite possibilities of this device through which the sound proceeds.

By---Jess Duff

Whatever naay be said in favour of the loud, melodramatic address, wireless is more suited to the quieter tones. The microphone is still at that crude, earlier stage of early film histrionics, its development being extraordinarily similar. Surely most of us remember the jerky motion, the extravagant rolling of -the eyes and clutching of the breast that characterised pioneer film history. To quote Arnheim again: "The film demands the visual artist who has also a feeling for words; on the other hand, the wireless needs a master of words who has also a feeling for modes of expression appropriate to an audible world." In our conqijest of wireless, with its intricate study of physics and acoustics, we are forging ahead by leaps and bounds. As with any new discovery, its growth and progress is so rapid that the ' radio set of two or three years ago is • now out of date. But we are by no ; means at the end of our conquest of the air, of space or of time. And in this conquest many are involved; first, and most important, the man connected with • the aesthetic and creative side of radio 1 production; radio technician, announcer, 3 lecturer, singer and orchestral per--2 former; and. finally, the listener himself, who must listen, not passively, but 3 alertly, with the constructive power to • select and criticise. i