Potential of Sound

While reading a recent column adressing the possibility of death caused by high amplitude sound waves, it reminded me of an interview with the great Frank Zappa, who had given the topic some thought, and had some more realistic ideas about it, when compared to Cecil’s “acoustic bullets” and other ridiculous notions. Here is an excerpt from that interview:
Interviewer: The text of the booklet in UNCLE MEAT, back in '69, was about taking Ruben and the Jets and the “vocal drone mechanism”, and using sounds that made vegetables grow better, and animals. Were you getting metaphorically at what you were just talking about - your vision of seeing that we could be optimistic because someday they’re going to make people better, maybe with sound?

Frank Zappa: Why not with sound? Because the largest organ in the human body, correct me if I’m wrong, is your skin, and your eardrum is only part of your skin, folks. So, that may be the most sensitive part of the skin. But I believe the whole skin responds to sound, and different parts of the skin over different parts of the body have different resonant frequencies. In other words, frequencies that strike them better. Because of the size of the eardrum, it has a centre frequency susceptibility at around 2K. That’s why telephones sound like telephones. Your ear is most sensitive around 2 kilohertz. It can hear other things, but that’s the real sensitive range. So, maybe other larger patches of skin resonate with other different frequencies. There’s been research done that showed that certain frequencies of certain amplitudes produce physical effects. Ten cycles of a certain amplitude stops your heart. You can die from sound. You wouldn’t even “hear” the ten cycles, in the traditional sense of the word, because your ear doesn’t go down that low, but a couple of good boops and you’re dead. And there are frequencies that will make you piss, and frequencies that will make you shit, and frequencies that will make you do all kinds of things. I don’t think they’ve discerned the entire range of them, but there is a connection between human organism and the way moving air molecules affect that organism. So, we shouldn’t be so short-sighted as to rule out the possibility that therapies for different kinds of conditions, as well as the ability to kill people, could all be induced by sound. And the clue to that might be the soothing effect that certain types of music have on certain individuals. And the trick is, what passes for nice music in one culture, is radically different than nice music in another culture. I doubt seriously that most Americans would find it soothing to listen to
six hours of Chinese music, but I don’t think that the Chinese would find it too soothing to listen to six hours of Barry Manilow, either. So, each culture has a different ideal of what constitutes good music. But the thing that is existing in music, that transcends the style, the estration, or the timbre of the music, is the pitches of the notes. So that may be the determining factor.

Interviewer: When I said rhythm before I would include all those factors, but did you say earlier that pitch may be the key for making people intelligent through sound?

Frank Zappa: No, I’m not saying “making people intelligent”. I’m saying if we allow ourselves to consider the possibility of audio being used as a tool for therapy, really what you are doing is using certain frequencies aimed at certain parts of the body in order to set up a resonance. In other words, you can knock down a bridge with the right resonance because you’ll find a resonant frequency of the concrete that’s holding it up, and it’s going to crack. And the same thing could be true of a crystalline situation in the human body. If you want to crack it, you’ve got to find the resonant frequency of that crystal, and then it’s gone. Like the right note could be a cure for gout where you have uric acid crystals located in the joint someplace. How are you going to get in there? The guy can’t move his joint anymore because the crystals have kept his joint from moving. So, you find the right frequency, aim it at it, turn up the volume, and they’re gone.

Bob Marshall: I’m sure some people have explored this. Do you know, Carolyn?

Carolyn Dean: Yeah, that’s Radionics.

Frank Zappa: Yeah?

Carolyn Dean: Yeah, there are different things. Medically, there are gallstone-shattering devices with ultrasound.

Frank Zappa: Oh yeah.

Carolyn Dean: But there are Radionics machines that measure the frequencies of all the organs. If the frequency is not normal, you can plug in the normal frequency and “kick” it. So that’s being done.

Frank Zappa: Well, see?

The entire interview, which is very much worth reading, can be found here:
http://www.science.uva.nl/~robbert/zappa/interviews/Bob_Marshall/index.html

The interesting thing about this to me is that these uses of sound waves are not at all limitied to military use, as radio waves or sound waves are easy enough to produce that anyone with the desire to research different methods can build a transmitter with enough amplification that they can blast some damaging sub-audible frequencies. Even if they weren’t aiming to damage one’s heart specificly, with enough amplitude you could most definately cause some internal bleeding quite easily. Feel free to reply, through the board or my email addy.

  • Wes H.

Welcome to the SDMB, and thank you for posting your comment.

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Cecil’s column can be found on-line at this link:
Can a noise be loud enough to kill you? (06-Apr-2001)


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