Foghorn inhabitants. They stand out; they leave room between themselves for auditory and intellectual processing. Thomas Hardy describes the archetypical rural sound- scape: The shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence to the shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town chimneys, without great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did the steep pastures encroach upon the burghers’ backyards. And at night it was possible to stand in the very midst of the town and hear from their native paddocks on the lower levels of greensward the mild lowing of the farmer's heifers, and the profound, warm blowings of breath in which these creatures indulge. Before the industrial era, sounds could more easily be used as forms of communication. For many years in Europe a keynote sound was the post horn, which announced the coming of the mail. It used a precise code of signals to indicate different types of mail — packages, letters, etc. In European towns of the preindustrial era, the church bell was the acoustic symbol of community. The powerful difference between pre-industrial/rural soundscapes and industrial/electronic soundscapes of today lies in the ability of an individual to make sense of the sounds. People working and playing together in the rural soundscape can literally and metaphorically rise above other sounds — a feat that can only be duplicated in modem urban soundscapes during amplified hard- rock concerts and heated athletic events. In mral and village areas, the human voice can, with simple musical instmments, in song and dance, rise above the background sounds and become one with the soundscape — a powerful experience in community unity. THE SOUNDSCAPE OF TOWNS In European towns of the preindustrial era the predominant symbol was the church, its steeple rising far above other buildings. The church created one of the keynote sounds that endured for centuries, the church bell. The bell was the acoustic symbol for community as described by Huizinga in his book, Waning of the Middle Ages: One sound rose ceaselessly above the noises of busy life and lifted all things unto a sphere of order and serenity: the sound of bells. The bells were in daily life like good spirits, which by theirfamiliar xwices, now called upon the citizens to mourn and now to rejoice, now warned them ofdanger, now exhorted them to piety. As the population grew and towns expanded in Europe, the soundscape changed. When at first the towns were surrounded by great forests a keynote sound emanated from wood, which was used as planking on streets and as a basic building material. But with the coming of the industrial era the forests were depleted as wood was used for the smelting and forging of metals. The sound of wood was replaced with the sound of stone and metal. By the 18th century the soundscape was a far cry from that in earlier towns and at least some people were aware of "noise pollution." The sound of brass-bound wheels on cobblestone and other sounds began to build up into a louder and more random symphony. Arthur Schopenhauer described the scene with some anger: The creaking of wheels is indescribable. It is like no sound ever heard in your life, and makes your blood run cold. To hear a thousand of these wheels all groaning and creaking at one time is a sound never to be forgotten — it is simply hellish. THE INDUSTRIAL SOUNDSCAPE We must have all seen it somewhere or another: Hollywood images of European and American towns clanking their way into the industrial revolution. Towns grew into dhes and the distinct sounds of the rural and small town environments were drowned out by the sounds of the industrial revolution. One noisy invention after another added layer upon layer to the soundscape: the sewing machine (1711), air cylinders (1761), steam engine (1781-1786), power loom (1785), threshing machine (1788). As they were adapted in farming and manufacturing, each new invention changed the soundscape and the social compacts between people in a community. In the preindustrial soundscape, sounds had distinct lives; they were not melded on to one another, but were meaningful sounds that could be "read" by listeners much like the plot of a community-conducted novel. The industrial revolution raised the level of background noise to the point where sounds were blurred, one into another, forcing people to develop means to ignore, filter out, and protect themselves from "noise." The soundscape of the industrial revolution and today's industrial and electronic soundscape is characterized by Schafer as "flatline." The noise of those new industrial inventions, unlike natural and small-town/rural sounds, tended to not have distinct births and deaths; if charted on a graph, the sound of industrial machinery is flat: The flatline in sound emerges as a result of an increased desire for speed. Rhythmic impulses plus speed equals pitch. Whenever
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