CONCEPTS OF MUSIC WEEK 3

As I sit here blogging away (oh, what a revolting concept), I am conscious of the fact that I didn’t wear my ear plugs at band practice last night and my ears are ringing merrily away – shades of Quasimodo… “the bells, the bells!”. I now have transient-tinnitus phobia and will never so much as set foot outside of an anechoic chamber again without being equipped with industrial-strength hearing protection. On the subject of which (great segue, me), wasn’t last week’s field trip cool? What a wonderful experience! My only regret was not being able to hear my heart beat in the anechoic chamber from which I conclude either; that I am the walking dead or I was surrounded by giggling sound engineering students. Alright, I giggled too. Next the tremulous thrill of the lethally revolving reflector in the echoic chamber, so reminiscent of some James Bond slow-death scenario presided over by a cackling madman (who somehow doesn’t have time to hanG around and make sure JB actually dies). The study of sound as an abstract is becoming increasingly enjoyable to me, balanced as it is in this course by the study of audio in very physical detail. In closing, I mentioned to (visiting from interstate) Dad that I’d had an anechoic experience which launched him into reminiscences of his time at Bavarian Radio immediately post WWII. He recalled that not only did they have an anechoic chamber, they apparently had a “concrete room in the cellar with a giant steel plate”… this week’s quiz is: What was the room used for?