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On The Road with Mike Rugnetta

It’s a Thanksgiving travelogue with Mike Rugnetta, who, like a bazillion other people, is on the road for the holiday.  Mike is interested in the in-transit audio we experience in our travels.  He provides a stream-of-consciousness monologue from the car, the airport, the jet, and the hotel room, along with the incidental noises that accompany them.

Show Notes!

Music: “Travelstar” by Adderall Canyonly

Link: The Vlogbrothers’ Thoughts from Places

Episode Image from my IG: https://www.instagram.com/p/6FqNQOv4vp/?taken-by=mikerugnetta

A440

(Label not included with oboe purchase)

A440 is not a steak sauce, nor is it a tax form.  Rather, A440 hz is the standard tuning for musical pitch.  Why is that?  The reasons include, but are not limited to: The oboe, church versus secular music, and the difficulty of France.  Mike Rugnetta explains.

Special Thanks to Nicole He and Proprietous for their help with oboe details.

The music used in this episode of Reasonably Sound is (in order of appearance):

– Walking (In Tune), Rene Hell

– Swan Lake, Swan Theme, Tchaikovsky

– Polovtsian Dances, Borodin

– Piano Sonata 15, Beethoven (Digression Music)

– Peer Gynt: Morning Mood, Grieg

– Die liederliche Gesellschaft von allerley Humor: Allegro – Battalia a 10, Biber

Sources:

– History of Performing Pitch: The Story of “A” by Bruce Haynes

– A=432hz: On the Proper Concert Pitch and a New Standardization of Tempo by Brendan Bombaci

– Why does the orchestra always tune to the oboe?

– ISO 16:1975

– Why is A4 the standard pitch reference for tuning?

– Why are orchestras tuned differently?

 

CC-BY-SA Episode Image Source: Oboe from Wiki Commons: http://bit.ly/2EaJZzG

CC-BY-SA licensed Episode image available here.

Taylor Swift’s White Noise

Taylor Swift accidentally released 8 seconds of white noise to iTunes, and it went to No. 1 in Canada.  Mike Rugnetta offers his take on this, as well as a helpful explanation of what white noise actually is.  Baseball and cooking metaphors are used.

Sound as a Weapon

Mike Rugnetta and Atlas Obscura‘s Dylan Thuras have a fascinating discussion on the use of sound in war and at what point sound becomes a weapon.  Among the topics covered:

  • World War I “sound mirrors” (giant concrete parabolas that ineffectively tracked incoming planes)
  • Project Disperse
  • The Mosquito
  • “Tunnel chicken”
  • LRAD
  • So-called “less than lethal” technology
  • Humankind’s unintentional sound war on the animal population

PD Episode Image via defense.gov: http://bit.ly/2EadRME

Whisper Quiet

Do you have a favorite sound?  Mike Rugnetta has a few:

  • A Snapple bottle opening
  • An orchestra tuning, with a couple instruments clearly off-key
  • A breaking incandescent light bulb

In this episode, Mike explores the phenomenon of ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.  Or, as some call it, a “head orgasm,” brought on by certain sounds, like whispering.  There are even YouTube channels dedicated to triggering these responses.  How does this all circle back to American telephone advertising from the 1970s and U.S. telecom infrastructure?  Mike explains.

PLAY ALONG AT HOME: What’s your favorite sound?  Record it, hashtag it #favoritesnd, and post it on Instagram.

Snikt!

Mike would like to talk with you about snikt.  And sploorp.  And butcher some French while he’s at it.  Today’s subject is onomatopoeia and the visual representation of sound, particularly in comics.

AMONG, BUT NOT ALL, THE THINGS MENTIONED:

  • Proust
  • Magritte
  • Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics
  • Roy Crane
  • The fadeout on the coda of Queen’s immortal “Fat Bottomed Girls” on the band’s greatest hits collection, which Mike is correctly peeved about and I’ll just add that it is a goddamn travesty THAT SOMEONE NEEDS TO ANSWER FOR
  • Time is a flat circle/The Handsome Family
  • Deadpool, elephant tusks, and Zombie Teddy Roosevelt

Go to the Reasonably Sound Instagram for more on this episode and to take part in Mike’s #mysnikt project.  You’ll be glad you did.

–Stu

The Cadillacs of Quiet

The stock photo place said these were shooting headphones. Let's hope they're right!

On this episode of Reasonably Sound, Mike Rugnetta considers noise-canceling headphones, whether you use them for cross-country flights or to mute your Simply Red-listening neighbor.  He tells you how they work (and don’t work), why the notion of neutral technology is a bunch of hooey (sorry, Chomsky), and that silence is a lie.

ALSO MENTIONED:

  • Weird warbles
  • Rare factions
  • Oculus Rift
  • Weirdly racist film stock
  • Harvard’s anechoic chamber
  • John Cage’s 4’33”
  • Wearing noise-canceling headphones while listening to John Cage’s 4’33”

—Stu

The Voice

Why does your voice sound like your voice?  Per Mike, there are myriad reasons.  Myriad!  Things like your larynx, the size of your noggin, and … dispersive mediums?  Before you go running to Wikipedia, just know that sucking on a helium balloon or talking underwater are examples of the dispersive medium through which your voice is heard.  This also leads to the first Reasonably Sound special guest, as musician Jason Oberholtzer is Mike’s willing pawn in an experiment to make Jason’s actual voice sound like what it sounds like in Jason’s head.  This, in turn, leads to the first Reasonably Sound Contest, which you can read about at Reasonably Sound’s Instagram.

ALSO MENTIONED: I never knew about sulfur hexafluoride until I listened to this, and now I desperately want to buy a tank to carry around with me.  Does it come in tanks?  I guess what I’m asking is will anyone who is reading this give me some sulfur hexafluoride so I can sound like Prince at the beginning of the album version of “1999” that I can’t link to because Prince hates YouTube?  Thank you.

—Stu

 

PD Episode Image: “Image from page 58 of “A manual of diseases of the nose and throat” (1908)” – http://bit.ly/2Ed8vjB

The Ear

Mike Rugnetta opens the inaugural Reasonably Sound podcast with an appreciation of the pinna, which, as you know if you’re an otolaryngologist, is the visible part of the ear.  You know, the floppy, weird-looking thing on the side of your head.  Turns out it has a purpose besides stabbing holes in it or providing a gross, epochal scene in Reservoir Dogs.  Mike details that purpose, and journeys past the middle ear to the crazy-ass labyrinths that make up your inner ear, ending up at the unfairness of the “If a tree falls in a forest” question.

ALSO MENTIONED:

—Stu

 

PD Episode Image: “Image from page 248 of “Diseases of the ear : a text-book for practitioners and students of medicine” (1900)” – http://bit.ly/2EapFOV