Listening: an awakening journey through the aural world

Course focus and approach:  

“Sounds carry intelligence. If you are too narrow in your awareness of sounds, you are likely to be disconnected from your environment. Ears do not listen to sounds; the brain does. Listening is a lifetime practice that depends on accumulated experiences with sound; it can be focused to detail or open to the entire field of sound.” These words by the composer and deep listening educator Pauline Oliveros set the perspective, motivation and goals of this course.  The course proposes a journey across science, technology, art, and humanities, in order to develop a unified way of dealing with the world of sound… because the world is sound. Different views, techniques and disciplines related to listening to it will be presented, discussed, and practiced.

Course description:  

In a world in which, judging by the number of headphones carried by passers-by, it seems natural to disconnect from the sound environment to be assaulted by louder-than-reality and potentially harming sonic alternatives; in a world in which the word "listen" is misused to refer to the act of "hearing", it is necessary to recover the power of listening as a tool for a deep understanding of reality. In this course we will work on concepts and skills related to our aural environment, and we will learn to describing, better experiencing and taking advantage of our sonic surroundings (i.e., our own sounds, those of our artefacts and creations, the sounds of natural processes and animals, music…). We will learn to sharpen our sense of hearing, to listen to with greater attention and depth, and to be aware of how sounds affect our life.  

Learning objectives:  

1. Develop sensitivity, vocabulary and criteria to maximize understanding and enjoyment of the sound information that surrounds us

2. Critically and emotionally introduce students to different manifestations of sound in our environment

3. Develop practical skills to record, manipulate, visualize, listen and interpret sound in a personal and collective experiential context

4. Encourage creativity related to the sonic dimension of reality 

Weekly schedule:

Week. Topics

1. Course presentation: goals, syllabus, tasks, requirements, assessment. Do you hear or listen? Do you perceive or do you understand? Ways of listening and ways of thinking. Listening to the natural world. Making “field recordings”. Freesound. Sound niches. Dawn choruses. Do animals communicate anything?

2. The physiological bases of sound experiences. The ear. Transduction. Masking. Basic sensations: loudness, pitch, timbre, localization.

3. À la recherche du silence perdu. Is there a true silence? Why do we need silence? Why do we seem to avoid silence? The colours of silence. Visualizing sounds: short term spectra, sonograms, acoustic features. Sonic Visualizer and other tools.

4. Listening to how humans speak. Communication beyond words. Sound, music and persuasion. Sound in media.

5. Educating our listening: vocabulary for sound properties and qualities. Sound solfege. Sound engineers’ vocabularies. Our body and our mind when listening. Healthy hearing and healthy listening. Technologies and devices for aural education. Auditory skills training tools. 

6. Invited sessions: What and how bio-acousticians and sound engineers do their listening?

7. The physiological bases of musical experiences. Music and neuroscience.

8. Culture and biology in music. Are there music universals? Benefits of music. Musical cultures of the world. Invited session:  What and how ethnomusicologists do their listening?

9. Listening to what humans do. The Soundscape: Is our world "tuned"? Our sonic heritage and its preservation. Auralisation of the inaudible realm.

10. Listening to spaces. Acoustic architecture.  

11. The power of sound and the sound of power. The dark sides of sound. Using sound to control, terrify or damage human beings. Is there any healing sound? Final exam.