Jodi Krangle

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Jodi@VoiceoversAndVocals.com

soundscapes

Sounds of the Times

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Imagine you’re a child and you’re riding in the back seat of a car at night. You watch the trees passing by you through the window, and then you close your eyes so you can feel the vibrations through the seat. All the while the engine softly rumbles all around you, surrounding you like a blanket. Over half of parents surveyed said they’ve used “dream drives,” taking their children on a drive at night just to help them fall asleep. But what if you’re driving an electric vehicle? Would it still have that soothing rumble?

Last year Nissan partnered with Tom Middleton to find a way to preserve this timeless experience in the Nissan LEAF, an electric car that would normally be completely silent. To help the LEAF sound and feel more like an old-fashioned car, Middleton created an ambient album of combustion engine sounds called the “Nissan Leaf Dream Drive” that’s available on Spotify, Google Play and other platforms.

To learn more about it, just click the link below:
https://www.edelman.com/work/nissan-dream-drive

This isn’t the first time sounds have been added to electric vehicles to make them seem more familiar, and it won’t be the last. A new EU law mandates that by this July all hybrid and electric vehicles will need an “acoustic vehicle alert system” to make sure pedestrians can hear approaching vehicles. Those sounds are required to resemble a gasoline engine, and to scale up and down with the vehicle’s speed. A similar “quiet car” law will take effect in the United States this March, after a six-month extension.

Electric cars are just one example of how new technology is changing many of the sounds we take for granted, and how we’re working to bring those sounds back in new ways. You may have heard of the “coconut effect,” especially if you’re a fan of old westerns or a certain Monty Python movie. Whether it’s coconut shells clapping to imitate galloping horses, or the squealing tires during every car chase, or whirring, beeping computers, there are sounds in movies that we just expect to be there. It turns out that many of the sounds we take for granted in our lives work much the same way.
If you’ve ever had a cell phone call drop – and who hasn’t? – you could probably tell after just a second that the line’s dead. But how did you know? Though we don’t usually notice it, there’s a slight background hum added to digital telephones called a “comfort noise.” It’s only there when the line’s open, and when that hum stops we know that the call’s ended without even really thinking about it.

That hum was just a side effect for landline phones, but we’ve become so used to it that, even though modern phones don’t really need it, we’ve added it back in. Smartphones also do this with buttons that click when you press them, even though you’re just tapping a screen, while haptic feedback gives your hand a slight jolt with each click. It doesn’t need to do that, but it wouldn’t feel right for us if it didn’t. From rumbling vacuum cleaners and clicking car locks, from satellite radios with fake static to potato chips meant to crunch with each bite, a surprising number of sounds around us are intentionally designed to enhance our lives. For a closer look at some of them, check out this video:

As digital technology expands and replaces older, mechanical sounds with silence, it turns out that at least some of those background noises, whether it’s the rumble of a car engine or the hiss of a phone line, are still pretty useful. Sound remains an important part of our lives, and in many ways the audio industry is now working to replace and improve upon those missing sounds.

Most of us aren’t that comfortable with things being too quiet. Having those little clicks and hums all around us helps give the world context, and reassures us that everything’s still working even when nothing seems to be happening. Ambient soundtracks and background noise generators are becoming more popular these days; the link below discusses the difference between distracting noise and relaxing background sounds, and illustrates that subtle difference with a coffee shop ambience:

https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/cafeRestaurantNoiseGenerator.php

While it often feels like we’re simply reacting to the sounds all around us, those sounds, more than ever before, are being molded to fit our needs and meet our expectations. As technology works to make our devices, our cars and even our homes quieter, we’re finding more freedom to fill them with the melody of our own lives.

Would you consider giving this podcast an honest review? You can do that here: https://lovethepodcast.com/audiobranding.  And if you like what you hear (and read!) – please do share it with anyone you think might be interested. Thanks so much!

And if you’re interested in crafting an audio brand for your business, why not check out my FREE download – 5 Tips For Implementing An Intentional Audio Strategy at https://voiceoversandvocals.com/audio-branding-strategy/

Healing Harmonies

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When you close your eyes and think about being in a hospital, what do you imagine hearing? Are the sounds soothing, or do they make you tense up with even more anxiety? Hospitals aren’t usually relaxing places, and they don’t always sound very relaxing either. Heart monitors beep, respirators pump, and voices murmur in the background or occasionally ring out over the intercom.

They can be surprisingly loud too. The nighttime background noise at a hospital can sometimes reach over a hundred decibels, louder than a chainsaw. A National Institute of Health study in 2009 recognized noise as a hazard to patients; sleep deprivation weakens the immune system, which has a direct effect on mortality rates. Hospital noise isn’t just annoying, it can be dangerous.

Some hospitals are working to change that. Apart from lowering the noise, they’re also focused on weaving it into a healing soundscape that harnesses the link between music and the human body. You can check out my blog for a short but insightful video by electronic musician Yoko Sen about how her experience as a patient inspired her to help create a more melodic ambiance:

Last year Aalto University won the International Sound Award for Soundscapes and Ambient Sound for its own work in creating an innovative series of ambient soundscapes for New Children’s Hospital in Helsinki. Each floor has a unique and constantly changing theme, from the ocean on the first floor all the way up to space and the stars at the top, and is designed to help put children at ease, taking their thoughts away from the hospital and into an imaginative journey filled with natural sounds and delicate instruments.

There’s a link on my blog to a presentation video by the project’s director, composer and lecturer Antti Ikonen, as well as a link to an interactive demo of each of the nine soundscapes so you can hear them for yourself:

https://international-sound-awards.com/media/ISA2019/2019-1037_New_Childrens_Hospital_Soundscape_KB.mp4
https://newchildrenshospital.aalto.fi/

The idea that sound can play such an important role in healing has been around for quite a while now. Music therapy as we know it today got its start soon after World War II, when musicians visited hospitals to play for veterans. Doctors and nurses started to notice that these visits made a very real difference in their recoveries. They began to incorporate music into the idea of creating a “healing environment” where each aspect of the hospital setting, both visual and audio, plays its own part in helping the patients.

Florence Nightingale wrote in 1859 that carefully controlling the lights, colors and sound in a patient’s room could help them recover more quickly, and in 2013 Brian Eno credited her for inspiring his own “Quiet Room for Montefiore”, an immersive audio project at Montefiore Hospital in Essex. A few years later the “Healing Soundscapes” research project at Hamburg University began, uniting music therapists and composers to find new ways of improving the well-being of hospital patients.

There’s no doubt that sound can have a very real effect when it comes to health care. One study in 2016 showed that listening to just fifteen minutes of music before surgery reduces a patient’s anxiety, while another study found that creating an immersive natural soundscape is more relaxing and effective than simply masking the background noise. These nature sounds significantly reduce your cardiac stress markers and cortisol levels, and, for some patients, lower stress can make a literally life-or-death difference.

Most of us probably aren’t ever going to find ourselves looking forward to a trip to the hospital. But for the children at New Children’s Hospital, as well as a growing number of hospitals all around the world, soundscape and audio design are helping transform that clamoring background noise into a soothing melody.

Would you consider reviewing the Audio Branding Podcast? If so, here’s the Apple Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/audio-branding/id1489042453 And if you like what you hear (and read!) – please do share it with anyone you think might be interested. Thanks so much!

And if you’re interested in crafting an audio brand for your business, why not check out my FREE download – 5 Tips For Implementing An Intentional Audio Strategy at https://voiceoversandvocals.com/audio-branding-strategy/

18 Minutes to Harness the Power of Sound

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Did you know that human behavior can actually be modified with the use of sound?  It works very effectively.  Take the “piano stairs” experiment, for instance.  The first time I see this mentioned is in 2009 – but there have since been similar installations in China and India and a whole host of other places.  The experiment though – and its results – are  powerful.  Have a look at this video for an idea of how this works:

The sounds make taking the stairs more rewarding for people.  That means a lot more people take the stairs and maybe those stairs are doing their part in helping people to get that little extra bit of exercise into their day.  But if you boil it down to its essence, this kind of technology – and harnessing sound to do it – changes human behavior.

Now obviously, this kind of sound manipulation – placing it in settings where it might influence people to do one task over another – can be used quite well in advertising and marketing.  And it HAS.

In an article from 2015 within the APS (The Association for Psychological Science) called Background Music Influences Buying Behavior – https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/background-music-influences-buyer-behavior.html – mention was made specifically of studies involving background music while people were purchasing items in a store or entrees in a restaurant.  This kind of sound stimulation seems to more readily call to mind our associations to products, with certain types of music.  And when we more easily recall the things associated with that music, recognition helps influence what we buy.

Apparently, this also happens with the type of music listened to.  While Classical music is associated with “more expensive” and “more luxurious” social identity items like perfume and jewelry, Country music seems to influence people buying every-day items like toothbrushes and disposable pens to spend more on those items.  Here’s a quote that sums up the point of the article:

“While background music may not convince buyers to abandon their typical preferences, this study suggests that a little attention to detail when selecting music could help retailers make a few more sales.”

It’s amazing how our brains work, isn’t it?

Background music and soundscapes can also be used to great effect in the healthcare industry.  Hospitals, for instance, are typically loud.  Lots of beeping, alarms, noisy machinery and conversations happen in that environment every day – and those stuck inside it – both patients and health care professionals – suffer the consequences.

It’s stressful.  But research is being done into how sound could lessen that stress.  It’s also being proven that soothing sounds provide a quicker healing process.  There’s a great deal of research still to be done in this area, and I’ll probably talk more about it in a future blog (episode), but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Sound is truly the quickest way to our brains. And someone who knows a lot about this, is Steve Keller.  He’s one of the world’s leading experts in the field of audio branding.  And his TEDx talk in Nashville a few years back, is brilliant stuff.  In fact, he was just hired by Pandora US to be their Sonic Strategy Director.  That certainly sounds cutting edge to me!  Way to go, Pandora!

Clearly, audio branding is powerful – and Mr. Keller has an inside track.  Here’s the video of his talk – and I think after watching it, you’ll agree.  Watch this space (and subscribe to the podcast!) because you’ll be hearing more from Mr. Keller in future blogs and podcast episodes!  He has a LOT to say about this stuff – and it’s information we all need to understand better!

Pay attention!  Because there’s no mistaking it.  Harnessing the power of sound, is the wave of the future.

Would you consider reviewing the Audio Branding Podcast?  If so, here’s the Apple Podcast link: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/audio-branding/id1489042453  And if you like what you hear (and read!) – please do share it with anyone you think might be interested. Thanks so much!