Echo road sign at Chinon

How can a Sound Tourist resist a road sign pointing towards an echo? Despite having no decent sound recording equipment, no aptitude at speaking French and ignoring the fact I was wearing a cycle jersey of dubious taste, I attempted to capture the event on my mobile. You might need to turn up the volume to hear the echo.

A description of the echo appears in the Rough Guide to the Loire which describes a traditional local rhyme which exploits the timing of the echo:

Me: Les femmes de Chinon sont-elles fidѐles

Echo: Elles?

Me: Oui, Les femmes de Chinon

Echo: Non!

Which translates into English as:

Me: Are the women of Chinon faithful?

Echo: Them?

Me: Yes, the women of Chinon

Echo: No!

And I can confirm the description is correct -  by that I mean the echo rhyme really works, I know nothing about the faithfulness of Chinon women! The echo is a reflection from the side of the chateaux and is beautifully clear (if a little quiet for recording on a mobile).

Location and logistics

If you exit the Château visitors’ centre northwards away from the town (it seems like the back entrance) you’ll pass L’Echo de Rabelais. Across the road you’ll see a big sign to the echo vineyard close to the smaller sign for the echo. Follow the small Rue de l’Echo for 200m and you’ll find a small raised vantage point. Map.

Maryhill Stonehenge, photo by Gregg Erickson

What was the acoustic like within Stonehenge thousands of years ago? It is difficult to get an impression at the real Stonehenge because too many stones are missing or have been moved. However, a trip to this complete replica in the USA gives a reasonable impression of the old site. The replica was built as a monument to those who died in World War 1. Although made from concrete rather than stone, the acoustic within the cirlce is probably a reasonable rendition of the original.

The effect of the stones can be heard by comparing these two recordings. The first is a recording of clapping away from the standing stones out in the open:

And the second a recording of clapping within the stone circle.

The sound can be heard to ring and reverberate within the stone circle – it is surprising how long each clap rings for, considering there is no ceiling on the stone circle to stop the sound disappearing into the sky.

Location and logistics

The Maryhill Stonehenge is part of the Maryhill Museum of Art three miles east of the museum just off Highway 14. Map.

Links

1. More videos from Maryhill
2. More details of acoustic measurements at Stonehenge

Credits and sources

Photo, references and sound credits

Coloured Canyon, photo by Steve & Jemma

We’re not used to hearing complete silence. Normally there’s sound around us: the distant drone of traffic noise, leaves rustling in the wind, the hum of insects, etc. To find complete silence in nature, you need to travel to places which have little vegetation (so there are no other animals about) and you need to find a spot which is sheltered from the wind, or travel on a windless day. A good spot to hear absolutely nothing is the depths of the Coloured Canyon in Sinai. And according to Adam Lawrence who suggested this place “Oh, it looks pretty good too.”

location and logistics

Tours are available from hotels on the nearby red sea coast (Gulf of Aqaba side of Sinai). map. Getting there involves a long jeep ride and a hike. Leave early in the morning to avoid the heat and to get there before too many people ruin the quiet.

Credits and sources

Photo, references and sound credits

La Gomera, Canary Islands, photo by Vilb

How do you communicate over large distances on a mountainous island full of deep ravines? On La Gomera in the Canaries, inhabitants developed a whistling language to save themselves long and arduous treks. Maybe we should all use it rather than reaching for our mobiles – especially as mountainous areas often have poor network coverage!

The whistling mimics the sounds of the local language, using variations in the notes to represent words. Indeed, brain scans show that listeners are exploiting the same parts of the brain used in normal language processing when interpretting the whistling.

Although other places in the world have whistling languages, this one is unusual because it is so sophisticated and practised by thousands of inhabitants. Indeed, the island habitants learn the language at school. It’s importance has been recognized by Unesco.

location

map

Credits and sources

Photo, references and sound credits
Suggested by Bernard Berry

Way of silence, photo by oliver hiltbrunner

“‘If you can be yourself, you are everything,’ says one sign. ‘Listen to the water, the wind, your steps,’ urges another.” [1]

On the small Isola San Giulio (St Julius’s island) in Italy, there is a Sound Walk. The ‘Way of Silence’ is a flagged alleyway that goes around the island, with plaques that instruct you to listen out for particular sounds. Such a process of walking and structured listening was pioneered by acoustic ecologists as a way of better understanding soundscapes.

When you tire of the sound walk, turn around and follow the back of the plaques which have different messages, forming the ‘Way of Meditation’.

Location and logistics

Website for tourist office (alternative). Map.

Credits and sources

Suggested by Gianluca Memoli
Photo, references and sound credits

Picture of organ, photo by KristopherM

This is a bizarre musical instrument. It was dreamt up and painstakingly constructed by Leland Sprinkle, a mathematician and electronic engineer in the 1950s. Rocks that ring have been used as musical instruments for thousands of years. But this is the only lithophone I know of based on stalactites.

Hammer Stalacpipe, photo by lossanjose

It’s claimed to be ‘the largest natural musical instrument in the world’, generating a beautiful, ghostly and disorientating sound. The cave acoustics make it difficult to locate where the sounds are
coming from. 37 stalactites produce the different notes of a musical scale. But the tuning isn’t entirely natural, as some sanding of the natural formations was needed to get the notes exactly in tune. Small rubber hammers strike the stalactites; these are electronically controlled by an organ keyboard.

Locations and logistics

Please don’t be tempted to tap cave formations to see if they ring – stalactites and other geological cave features take thousands of years to form.
Luray Cavern’s website with opening hours etc. Map.

Credits and sources

Photo, references and sound credits

Bell Caves Israel. Photo by stevenconger

The Bell Caves have a unique sound. Large cavenous spaces are often very reverberant and echoey, and sound rather like large churches. And indeed this is part of what is heard in these caves. But what makes the Bell Caves more unusual, and worth a visit by a Sound Tourist, is the acoustic effect made because there are many of these chambers connected together by passageways. As the sound moves between the large chambers along the passageways, a very distinctive reverberance is heard, as sound sloshes about from one chamber to another.

The caves were quarries which were excavated at different times in history, but it is claimed some date back to the 4th century B.C. The largest of the chambers are over 5 meters high. The walls are made of beige coloured limestone.

Location and logisitc

The Bell Caves are in the Beit Guvrin National Park which “is located off Rt. #35 across from Kibbutz Beit Guvrin, at the junction of roads that lead from the Judean foothills to Jerusalem and Hebron. Beit Guvrin is 35 miles south of Jerusalem, (56 kilometers)” map. Opening hours and over visitor information on this website. The park also contains a Roman amphitheatre.

Credits and sources

Suggested by Jonathan D. Sheaffer
Photo, references and sound credits

Melody road. Photo by shidax

Want to listen to a poor quality, out-of-tune rendition of a famous melody when driving your car? No need for an expensive car stereo, a singing road can do this using wheel vibrations!

If you drift off the side of a road and hit a rumble strip, you’ll get a distinctive sound intended to alert you and prevent an accident. The pitch of the sound you get depends on the spacing between the bumps or ridges. So if you make lots of ridges like a rumble strip and vary the spacing between the ridges correctly, then different musical notes can be made. Close together ridges (say 6mm apart) give high notes, and far apart ridges (say 12mm apart) give low notes. Make the right pattern of ridges then as a car drives over them, a tune is played. Mind you, in most cases the sound quality is pretty poor, and if the car is at the wrong speed it sounds even worse. Rather amusingly, when Honda tried to create such a road for an advert, they got the spacing wrong and so their version of the William Tell Over­ture was very out of tune(read this great account).

locations

Apparently they sound better with the windows closed.

The Japanese have the most melody roads: twelve listed here. Suggested optimum driving speed is 28mph (45km/h).

• Hokkaido map Drive West.
• Route 370, Wakayama prefecture, map, plays Miagetegoran Yorunohoshiwo
• Numata-shi, Gunma prefecture approximate location, plays “Natsuno Omoide (Summer Memories)”

In City of Lancaster, USA, the road is found along the westbound stretch of Avenue G between 30th and 40th Streets West (it was moved from its original site following concerns about noise disturbing nearby houses). map. Unfortunately, it’s rather out of tune!

The road in Anyang, Gyeonggi, South Korea is meant to play Mary Had a Little Lamb when driving at 100 Km/h and was designed to help motorists stay alert. However, the videos I have heard all sound pretty terrible and the tune is unrecognizable. Approximate location.

An early singing road was the Asphaltophone in Gylling, Denmark. I’m still trying to find out if it still exists. It used raised pavement markers and was constructed in 1995 by artists Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus. Approximate location. It has been suggested that both Dunlop and Disney played around with the idea of wheel vibration making sounds in the 1950s (more info).

Credits and sources

Photo, references and sound credits

Singing Ringing Tree, UK. Photo by Mr Kline

This piece of public art is high above Burnley on the Pennine moors. It uses the prevailing westerly winds to generate discordant and haunting sounds to accompany the view from Crown Point (map). It was designed by architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu in 2006 and won a Royal Institute of British Architects award. Not all the pipes create sound – some are just there to create the dramatic shape. The pipes that ‘sing’ create an unearthly choral sound, which is only audible at relatively close range on a windy day. Website.

Credits and sources

Site suggested by Rick Hughes
Photo, references and sound credits

Norias, Syria. Photo by Anduze traveller

The sounds these water wheels make aren’t very pleasant, but maybe sound tourists shouldn’t restrict themselves to pleasant listening experiences.

These gigantic ancient water wheels were used to raise water from the river and drop it into canals to irrigate fields. Although I’ve heard many water wheels, these ancient noria have a really unique and distinctive sound: creaking and splashing as the wood is distorted by the weight of the water and the endless rotation. Given that these are some of the oldest water wheels in the world, maybe they can be forgiven for their groaning and moaning.

Logistics and location

17 survive on the Orontes River in Syria map. website

Credits and sources

Site suggested by Ben Moore
Photo, references and sound credits