Whattaya say?

How does one hear music? What is psychoacoustics? In the world of music these questions can be easily answered by a simple explanation (duh... your ears); however, like with anything, you can dive deeper into the explanation to help you fully understand the concept more.

So, how does one hear music? Simple, your ear picks up sound waves, which leads to the eardrum and the eardrum vibrates due to the incoming sound waves and it disperses it further internally to the three inner ear bones (also known as ossicles): malleus, incus and stapes. Once the vibration hits the ossicles, tiny hairs sense the vibration in the cochlea and transform them into electrical signals. From there the auditory nerve carries the electrical signals to the brain, and voila. Your brain understands the electrical signals as sound. (Ta-da and a little razzle dazzle jazz hands.)

The way we can distinguish the loudness of a certain sound comes from the different vibration frequency it gives off and at which speed the vibration is. The loudness or intensity of a certain wave length is measured in decibels (dB). A sound as low as a whisper comes in at around 30 dB in the world of measurements. Lawn mower at 90 dB. A normal level of conversation knocks in a 40 dB as opposed to a concert ranging around 130 dBs. It’s good to have a fundamental understanding of sound and decibel levels because at about 100 dB hearing damage is instant or even having a prolonged exposure to dBs at 8085 can cause hearing loss as well.

Each sound is a type of electromagnetic radiation that presents itself as frequency, or ptich. Those frequencies are measured by hertz (Hz), one complete wave cycle per second. Humans can hear the frequencies between 20-20,000 Hz. To give you a comparison, cats can hear frequencies up to 64,000 Hz, hence the reason for all the ear twitches. Dogs hear frequencies between 40-45,000 Hz.

It doesn’t seem so simple but truly it is, at least to our natural way of living and human function. Those who are hard of hearing and/or deafness have impairments normally within the inner ear, nerve damage or even with the brain.

So, on to the next question I posed. What is psychoacoustics? Anyone want to take a guess before I go? I bet your answer was well thought out and probably was helped by the refresher ‘science splash’ (as I like to call it) I layed out beforehand in the prior paragraphs. Let’s see if you got it right.

Psychoacoustics is a branch of psychology that is concerned with how humans perceive and understand sound. It’s the scientific study of the mechanisms in our bodies that interpret sound waves as well as the processes that occur in our brains when we listen.

So, take what you learned from above and then meld it together with psychological and sociological concepts. It can be a very fun and intellectual path to follow. Melding something that our body does without a second thought, just as we see, breathe unconsciously, we hear unconsciously as well.

Unfortunately, I have to say ‘to be continued’ as I am running out of room. The world of hearing is so vast and I just knicked the tip of the iceberg. I hope you found this just as entertaining as I did writing it and that you look forward to next week’s column. Who knows, you might just hear about it. ª

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