ALL ABOUT SOUND

1. Listen to the same musical motif - piano suite 'Pictures at an Exhibition' by Modest
Mussorgsky performed in three different spaces of the Philharmonic in Szczecin.
Match what you hear with the spaces below.
Modest Mussorgsky

a Russian composer, an
SYMPHONY HALL innovator of Russian music
in the romantic period, who
strove to achieve a
uniquely Russian musical
identity.

CHAMBER HALL

Rune Bergmann

a dynamic versatile
Norwegian conductor, the
Artistic Director of the
Philharmonic in Szczecin.
He is considered one of the
LOBBY best conductors of his
generation.

Tell your partner(s) which space and sound you like best and say why.

2. Listen to conductor Rune Bergmann talking about how he experiences sound in

philharmonic halls where he works with orchestras. Circle the things he mentions. reverb

a persistence of sound after the sound has been

acoustics distortion reverb clarity of sound produced. It is created when a sound or signal
is reflected causing a large number of reflections to
build up and then decay as the sound gets absorbed
lower registers colours of sounds
by the surfaces of objects in the space – which
could include furniture, people, and air.

3. Listen again and decided if the following statements are true or false.
Write T for true or F for false. Make a note of your reasons for a given choice.

a. Churches exhibit a lot of resonance and echo.

b. It’s hard for the conductors to determine the colour and reverb of a given concert hall. timpani
c. A lot of echo in a concert hall can make an orchestra sound confusing.
or kettledrums are a type of
d. Timpanis and double basses give high-pitched sounds. drum consisting of a skin
e. While playing the double bass, clarity of sound can be obtained by pulling the strings stretched over a large bowl
traditionally made of copper.
really hard.
They belong to the
f. Violins and violas play in the same registers. percussion family.

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ALL ABOUT SOUND
4. Work with your partner(s). Discuss the following questions.

a. How do you listen to music? What equipment do you use?

b. Do you ever use smartphone apps for listening to music? Which ones?

5. Read the text to see if any of the things you have discussed are mentioned.
If yes, which ones? Ignore the gaps.

SOUND NOW AND THEN

In the old days, people didn’t use to listen to music like we do now, in big concert halls
Dorota Serwa
1 ______ party venues. People used to be more versatile and open to music 2 ______
a Polish musicologist and
nowadays - says musicologist Dorota Serwa. From the perspective of a middle-class Managing Director of the
upbringing, it was well regarded for children to know how to play 3 ______ piano. Philharmonic in Szczecin.
She is also the author of
In the countryside, those who couldn’t play any musical instrument still had the chance to various publications on
musicology and national
experience music 4 ______ to travellers playing the lyre and singing stories they had heard heritage.
along their way. Later with the development of technology, gramophones using
phonograph records to play music appeared.

Nowadays we are listening to sounds with poorer and poorer quality, especially
the youth. The best sounds are those produced by an instrument and received by the
human ear by means 5 ______ air, without any middlemen. The recording of music in any
form forces a transformation of the acoustic wave into an electric signal.
The greater the compromise we have to reach, 6 ______ poorer the quality.
audio frequency
The introduction of compact discs made the situation even worse, not to mention mp3 files,
or audible frequency is characterized as a periodic
and not to mention youtube, where the audio is highly degraded with both high and low vibration whose frequency is audible to
the average human. Its SI unit is the hertz (Hz).
frequencies cut out. Despite these missing pieces not being audible 7 ______ the human It is the property of sound that most determines pitch.
ear, these sounds still reach us through our bodies. The full spectrum of such sounds can The generally accepted standard range of audible
frequencies is 20 to 20,000 Hz.
be heard in the philharmonic halls.

As 8 ______ as professional DJs are concerned, during their shows they tend to use vinyl
records, compact discs as well as electronic devices 9 ______ as laptops and controllers.
Both the former and latter are characterized with a high quality. Technically speaking, the
later the applied technology, the better the quality of sound is presented. It all depends on
the file quality, equipment, mixers and sound system. Yet all this can be futile if the size of sound system
the venue is 10 ______ small or if an acoustician is not employed to assess the hall and a set of speakers, but also a
group of DJs and audio
prepare the loudspeaker layout.
engineers playing and
producing music typically for
a dance event or party.
6. Fill in the gaps with the missing words. For each gap provide one word.

7. Discuss with your partner. Would you like to work with sound in the future? As who?

Image credits
Page 1: Bartosz Barczyk - spaces, Ilya_Repin - Mussorgski, Anna Niemiec - Rune Bergmann, vxla, flickr - timpani.
Page 2: Kamila Kozioł - Dorota Serwa, Ivan Dimitrow, flickr - sound system.

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