The profound irony of the failure of language to convey the nature of things sonic.

Mark Newstetter
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read
Hermann von Helmholtz, physician and author of “On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music” published in 1863.

Over a century and a half after the biological nature of sound and music was studied and described by professor Helmholtz, our language still lacks adequate words for describing the idea of sound without using metaphors usually pertaining to sight.

How do you describe the thought of sound (musical or otherwise) on its own terms?

There is no word which is the equivalent of “imagine” for sound.

“Imagine” is rooted in the word “image” — a visual term.

There is no word which is the equivalent of “visualize” for sound.

We are primarily visual animals. Our idea of sound is somehow muddled by the fact that it is invisible.

The classic problem; “If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” assumes that there is a tree in the first place because we assume that if something ‘can’ be seen then it must exist, whereas it calls into question the reality of sound by suggesting that sound is a mental experience as opposed to concrete reality.

Indeed, on a purely physical level, there is no fundamental difference between the visual and auditory. They both involve our sensory mechanisms interpreting energy of one form or another into forms which make sense to us. On the most primal level our survival depends on our ability to perceive light energy and sonic energy synchronously.

So, if sound is a neurological construct, then so is sight. No more, no less.

Why do we not have words for the imagined sound?

If a word is spoken and there is no one to hear it, is it a tree?

Written by

Musician —Artist — Educator

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