Infrasound shown to give people the willies:
- British scientists have shown in a controlled experiment that the extreme bass sound known as infrasound produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills -- supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations.
....Lord and his colleagues, who produced infrasound with a seven meter (yard) pipe and tested its impact on 750 people at a concert, said infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena.
"Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost -- our findings support these ideas," said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in southern England.
In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music.
....Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear. [Reuters]
- Infrasound is also produced by storms, seasonal winds and weather patterns and some types of earthquakes. Animals such as elephants also use infrasound to communicate over long distances or as weapons to repel foes.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - andy
That's mega cool. I want to use those sounds on an album. That'd be awesome.
2 - Phillip Winn
Since I suspect that these sounds involve frequencies outside the range of which a CD is capable, I wonder what sort of equipment (besides, apparently, a large pipe) is needed to produce infrasound?
'Cause this year's halloween is going to be something else if I can find out!
3 - Eric Olsen
P, all you need is a "storm, seasonal wind, weather pattern or some types of earthquakes." Or an elephant. Don't you have any of those items down in Texas?
4 - andy
man, there's GOTTA be a way to get the frequencies! That would be the ultimate mood maker hehe.
5 - Al Barger
There was a series of detective novels for boys, Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators. The first novel in the series, I think, Secret of Terror Castle turned on exactly this "brown note" idea, offering a physiological explanation for unusual emotional reactions.
6 - andy
Phil, at the concert, do you think the scientists somehow amplified the brown note? If they did, I would think there's a way for it to be recorded.
7 - andy
and from reading the article, the scientists somehow laced recorded music with it. hmmm
8 - Eric Olsen
And everyone pooped.
9 - Al Barger
No one has addressed the terrorist danger of the brown note. Consider South Park 317-The Brown Note. An international live broadcast student recorder concert [organized by Yoko Ono and conducted by Kenny G-truly a hellish combo] takes a bad turn when the boys replace the sheet music to include the famous brown note that causes uncontrollable bowel release.
A terrifying thought, certainly. Just think of the the reverberating international political repercussions [to say nothing of the dry cleaning bills] if Bin Laden were to sabotage, say, a Garth Brooks performance during a Super Bowl halftime show with an inclusion of The Brown Note in everyone's sheet music. It's really too horrifying to contemplate.
10 - Eric Olsen
Water pressure shot to hell due to the simultaneous flushing - grim indeed.
11 - Al Barger
Yes, it would be an attack on the infrastructure of water supply, for starters, what with the flushing and the washers and showers.
12 - Jim Carruthers
There was an interview about this on As It Happens (check cbc.ca) last night with the researchers on this.
What they used is PVC sewer pipe. You use harmonic frequency calculations (diameter x length, factoring in air pressure to figure out how many times per second a piston has to move in the tube to produce a specific frequency)
What I find interesting is the overall sound environment. With the blackout a couple of weeks ago, one of the main things I noticed was how quiet it was, one of the best sleeps I've had in a while.
Plus, one thing to consider, the Earth actually has a frequency, the entire planet vibrates at a really low note.
13 - Eric Olsen
The whole topic resonates, so to speak, and I love the accents on "As It Happens" (we get an abbreviated version down here), where they sound like a bunch of fucking Canadians.
14 - Jim Carruthers
hint: don't go to Newfoundland.
Q: What's black and blue and floats in the bay?
A: a mainlander telling a newfie joke.
You can actually get most of CBC radio programming via the web, bigger, longer and uncut.
You should check out the Saturday show "Groove Shinney", recently, they've been running a "Name that Cowbell" contest.
Cowbells, in pop songs. They give you an excerpt, you have to name the song.
15 - Joe
Indeed, more cowbell!!!
16 - Eric Olsen
GOTTA have more cowbell
17 - Al Barger
Could a cowbell be engineered to produce The Brown Note?
18 - Jim Carruthers
It would have to be like the Goose at Wawa, or the Big Nickel in Sudbury, really big.
Could a cowbell be engineered to produce The Brown Note?
My math skills are poor, but, you would have to have a structure, which when struck would produce a sub 20 hz note. Probably brass couldn't do it. And I doubt a cowbell shape enlarged could have the correct harmonic shape.
I know, let's call Frank Gherey!
19 - Jim Carruthers
Actually, this is going in the wrong direction. What research is there into notes and frequencies which produce happiness and joy (I suspect they are all contained in "Louie Louie" or "Cretin Hop".
20 - Joe
...but...but... cowbell makes me happy.