The sound of magic

Most of us appreciate and marvel at the power of music - its ability to transcend words, culture and time. I too love music deeply. But what truly amazes me is sound itself.

I know I am speaking to science afficiondos here, so I will just touch on the main points. All sound, and I do want to emphasize ALL sound, can be reduced to simple sine waves. And, there are only about 20,000 of them that we can hear. The lowest frequency is about 20 Hz and the highest about 20 kHz - 20/20 just as in perfect eyesight (cool, huh?).

A Sine Wave

These 20 thousand sine waves combine in various ways to give us all, I repeat, ALL the sounds we hear. It doesn't matter what we use to make these sounds - as long as it can be made to vibrate the air accurately. One of the best materials for this is. . .paper! In fact, nearly all the loudspeakers in the world are made from this material.

A Complex Sound Wave

Just think, all the sounds, noise or music, that we love or hate, that irritate us or inspire us, that drive us to tears or to war, every tick, crick, crackle, whoosh and whisper are made from these 20 thousand sine waves. We can tell from the sound of it if the speaker is man or woman, angry or sad, young or old. We can differentiate between individuals, even when they speak together. We can tell the difference between several people saying the same thing and one person speaking loudly. Even with instruments, we can tell the difference between a group of violins and a single violin amplified. Some can tell the difference between a Steinway and a Yamaha grand piano (I can't). And yet, every Steinway, no, every piano sounds different.

The Sound Waves of Different Instruments

The quality of each sound depends on the material. For example, wood instruments sound different from the brasses because of the material from which they are made. The shape and size of the instrument also make a difference. No one instrument can faithfully reproduce the sound of another. Animals can't talk like us and yet we can tell if it's a cat or a bird, if it's angry or sad, and for some, what kind of cat or bird. And yet, as I said earlier, you can capture all these sounds and reproduce them with a piece of paper.

Now, how can you say there is no God?