Between silence and pain: loudness and the affective encounter

Abstract

As an axiomatic condition of sound, loudness is implicated at all levels of aural perception. Ever in contest, loudness asserts its importance in noise ordinances and stage whispers, on the battlefield and by the infant’s bedside. Yet despite its pervasiveness, loudness remains among the least-analyzed components of the sonic encounter. Focusing on musical applications and listener accounts, this article considers the role of loudness as a generator of sonic affect, situating it within a matrix of psychoacoustic and phenomenological processes. The essay distills three (non-exhaustive) types of commonly reported loudness-effects, which are dubbed ‘listener collapse’, ‘imagined loudness’, and ‘noise occupation’. A final section applies these effects to two recent theories of musical aesthetics: Michel Poizat’s operatic ‘cry’ and Fred Moten’s discussion of ‘Aunt Hester’s scream’. Though multiple levels of loudness experience are considered, the analysis pays particular attention to the force of high-intensity sound, which foregrounds the physical – and sometimes painful – aspects of sonic experience.

Keywords::

• Loudness
• volume
• noise
• affect
• listening

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for invaluable feedback at various stages of this article’s development: Jason Stanyek, Peter McMurray, Emily Richmond Pollack, Ben Tausig, Alexander Rehding, Olivia Lucas, Daryush Mehta, Jim Sykes, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of this journal.

Notes

1. Griffiths, “George William Clarkson Kaye,” 889.

2. Lloyd, “What Are Phons?”

3. For several examples, see Brown et al., City Noise.

4. Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity, 115–68; Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound, 104–10.

5. Wegel, “The Physical Examination of Hearing and Binaural Aids,” 156 (emphasis mine).

6. Wegel, “The Physical Characteristics of Audition” 58; “The Audiometer,” 5–6; Riesz, “The Relationship Between Loudness,” 212–13; Fletcher and Munson, “Loudness,” 91.

7. Smeds and Leijon, “Loudness and Hearing Loss,” 236.

8. Wegel, “The Physical Examination of Hearing and Binaural Aids,” 157.

9. Among acousticians and psychologists, the term ‘loudness’ is strictly differentiated from ‘volume’, with the latter referring to ‘the subjective size of a sound, not its perceptual strength’ (Florentine, “Loudness,” 6). To these researchers, the vernacular tendency to conflate the two concepts presents an understandably frustrating source of confusion, since they require very different approaches to measurement and experimental design. While I am sympathetic to this concern, I have found some terminological slippage to be unavoidable in the present piece for two reasons. First, much of the discussion considers reports of loudness experience offered by everyday listeners, outside of the laboratory setting. I have found it necessary to account for the scientific imprecision of these largely non-scientific writings, which tend to treat the two terms as synonymous. Second, many forms of sonic deployment involve efforts to make sound permeate space and penetrate/resonate within bodies. These characteristics, which are often closely linked, seem to fall somewhere between the clinician’s differentiation between perceptions of space (volume) and those of strength (loudness). Their close imbrication acts as a key component of loudness’s politico-aesthetic power, making it difficult to neatly disentangle them. While such a project would make a fascinating topic for further study, it will only be obliquely referenced here.

10. Gregg and Seigworth, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” 1.

11. Ibid., 2.

12. Roads, Microsound, 7–8.

13. Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, 7–25.

14. Florentine, “Loudness,” 4.

15. Marks and Florentine, “Measurement of Loudness,” 21.

16. Nancy, Listening, 14.

17. Novak, Japanoise, 46.

18. See also Walser, Running with the Devil, 45; Hegarty, Noise/Music, 145; Wallach, Berger and Greene, “Affective Overdrive,” 12; Lucas, “Maximum Volume.”

19. Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise, 106.

20. Port, “My Bloody Valentine.”

21. Lucas, “Maximum Volume.”

22. Ibid.

23. Scarry, The Body in Pain, 33.

24. Ibid., 165.

25. Cusick, “You Are in a Place”; Daughtry, “Thanatosonics.”

26. Goodman, Sonic Warfare.

27. Novak, Japanoise, 47.

28. Lucas, “Maximum Volume.”

29. Novak, Japanoise, 47.

30. Walser, Running with the Devil, 44–45.

31. Ibid.

32. Psychophysicists have observed similar associations between loudness and other stimuli in laboratory settings. In one recent study, recordings of automotive sounds played alongside photographs of red sports cars were judged by participants as being louder than those played with cars of other colors, even when played back at the same level (Menzel et al., “Influence of Vehicle Color”).

33. Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise, 100.

34. Szwed, So What, 186.

35. Karpf, The Human Voice, 41.

36. A third definition, sometimes used in musical acoustics, refers to noise as ‘irregular vibrations in contrast to the periodic sound waves of musical tones’ (Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound, 104). This usage will have less bearing on the discussion here.

37. Hegarty, Noise/Music, ix.

38. Ibid.; Novak, Japanoise.

39. A more detailed survey of recent literature on noise in sound studies and related fields can be found in Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound, 31–41. See also Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity; Sterne, MP3; Novak, Japanoise.

40. Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound, 40.

41. Attali, Noise, 6.

42. Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise, 106.

43. Echard, Neil Young, 87.

44. Poizat, The Angel’s Cry, 40–48.

45. Ibid., 76 (emphasis in original).

46. Ibid., 77.

47. See also Dolar, A Voice and Nothing More, 26–42.

48. Poizat, The Angel’s Cry, 87.

49. Ibid., 89.

50. Moten, In the Break, 6.

51. Ibid.

52. Douglass, Narrative of the Life, 259.

53. Ibid.

54. Moten, In the Break, 22.

55. Ibid., 233–54.