Effects of Music Sound on Buildings and Humans

I also wanted to add...

Does anyone know of any research into the effects of these vibrations on the human body....?

I know that many of the brain frequencies governing sleep and other attributes are around these frequencies i.e. Alpha and Delta waves... at about 10 to 15 Hz.

Would these vibrations cause any long term effects not only on the organs within the body but also any physiological effects from exposure???

John.

Yes there is a research lab down in Orlando Florida, just south of the major down town center on an out of the way deep lake / sink hole. The Navy has been performing deep sonar and fribration testing for more then 50 years at this lab.

As far as your question about resonation of music amplifications, yes. These ultra-low resonating sound waves do a conciderable amount of damage to everything around and with in the frequency ranges. Take a small Japanees auto mobile with a 1500 watt amplification. The low resonating frequencies actually and literally break welds apart on these small automobiles. It only would take a matter of hours of continued bombardment before the damage is on its' way to shaking these small cars apart. It is the same with most any auto, only the worst could be expexted on earlier built autos, due to a change in matterials. This day and age of technology, the compounds and alloys used in the auto industry are of a more durability, but of a less factor when it comes to impact resistance. Todays autos are thinner in their sub-structures, compared to those made 20 years ago, and on out to 50 years ago. Thus being more susceptable to these low frequency resonations that are being applied to the welds.

It is the same principle as in the use of a sonic washer for your greasy parts. Sound and air shock waves are used at verious frequencies to blast grim build up of equipment parts. This same principle is being magnified by these high output sterio system on mostly subcompact autos. Figure, if an auto is bombarded with heavy low frequencies for a continuous period of time, the welds will crack and the car would be as if it had been pushed to its limits as a fighter jet is during heavy aerial combat.

Only the automobils' structural integrity is not designed for heavy "G" amplifications.

Hmm. Coincidently, I was sitting in a queue of traffic the other day and noticed a Vauxhall Nova (small, cheap car readily purchased by young drivers in the UK) just in front with the rear panel visibly moving with the vibrations of the driver's bass tube. I wondered how long before the spot welds gave up the ghost, never having been designed to withstand that sort of punishment. Maybe any answer could include this area?

Much of the reseach was done on alpha beta gamma waves in early 70s. Yes they do influence human mind to great extent and intruments were designed to supplement the music with added vibration of selected waves to observe the effect.

They can induce sleep

They can agitate your mind

They can calm your mind

They can make you all alert to grasp ideas fast

They can drive you mad to go on war or commit suicide

They can also blow your head into powder if tuned with skull frequency and made to high intensity like bridge breaking

For example 7Hz can break young chicken heads and this noise alone can destry your entire poultry.

Music if played in right tone gently then it is soul evoking and way to meditation

Criky! Got the answer before I posted! CR4 - the Lama's elbows!

Hmmmmm well shaking apart an automobile makes sense with the volume you hear from cars driving past! and I would think there are far more structures to resonate with the sound in a car with all those metal panels flexing....

So if the sounds could break apart weld seams, as I would imagine they could, why hasn't it been brought to the public's notice that installing a high power sound system could cause premautre failure of a car's roadworthyness?

Shyam, Over the years I've noticed these effects when enduring this type of 'music'. I've had feelings of alarm and panic, through no good reason except that the sound could be causing the response...

I would say that's a worrying side of this sub-audio sound, is it a cummulative effect though?

It might explain some of the youngsters attitudes I seem to meet everyday these days!

John.

Dear John

Do you not remember the war cry and drum beats in the war zone. Do you think they were going for some dance after that. Thise drum beats make men to kill each other and those are highly researched frequencies that were ever used.

Birds and animals are often seen to call their mate by sounds. Chrocodile is known to make a water dance. Go back to some Native American Indian and he will evoke the spirit just by sound.

Vibrations make water to form figures of crystal and same things happens all ove the body. It tries to transform into different shapes and higher forms of energies that are highly stimulating to the brain.

Material moves with vibrations and wherever it is not designed for tested for conditions, it may have weak point. Kidney stone is blasted in few seconds using ultrasonic. Implosion blast in water using ultrasonic can generate as much energy that of a sun. It becomes so bright if you focus the ultrasound in water with small air bubble. The bubble will start glowing like sun.

More on Sonoluminescence

http://www.techmind.org/sl/

Finally, I think I've found the answer!

Okay, here is what I know and have seen. A friend of mine used sound waves in college to break glass. We have all heard of that, but he did it at 50+ feet using 50 watts, a signal generator, a high frequency tweeter that had a frequency response up to 50 KHz, and a parabolic dish.

On the low end of the acoustic frequency scale he actually cracked the whole wing of his school building. The wing was made from reinforced concrete and at least two stories tall. Using lab equipment, an efficient woofer he was able to crack the first floor's floor and the cracks ran upward on both sides of the wall through the second story. The cracks widened as they went up.

This guy also built a corner horn with two 15" speakers that cracked the corner of his stone and mortar home where the cabinet was pointed. You could see daylight through the building. All of this was done at relatively low volumes using under 150 watts.

As for the body, the biggest problem is hearing. It doesn't take much to permanently damage the auditory system in the middle and inner ear. Organ damage is possible, but you need a lot of energy to do that.

As far as I know alpha and beta waves in the brain are electro-chemical in nature and not acoustic-mechanical. I am sure that the wrong music played at any volume could change the thought processes. I have had this effect many times, mostly in supermarkets or shopping malls.

As a last note, the US military has been experimenting with sound as a means to suppress the enemy and crowd control. In some instances it is used as part of interrogation practices. I think a lot of the interrogation experimentation takes place in supermarkets and shopping malls.

Hi

No you are mistaken with low frequency hearing. It is not the ear that hears, but your body hears. Even dumb fellow can hear that equally. Low frequency sound and high frequency sounds and beats generating these sounds from other frequencies have same effect like snake hearing from skin your movement in the zone. Many animals hear from body and we also do so. You only do it unconsciously so never come to know. You are used to point your brain to ears.

You feel it like you sense breeze.

If you remember a case where a man used ultrasound in binoculors to focus beam in horse race in ears of a hose to generate sound beats that can be heard by the horse. He was caught and was sent to jail as his acts caused accident on the race track.

I am sure I remember some research being done on the resonance of certain organs within the human body, it might have been to do with the use of sonics for crowd control?

But it was to do with limiting the damage to internal organs by the use of the 'acoustic crowd disperser'... Some decades ago now, I think.

I also think quite a lot of research was done into why some animals could predict earthquakes hours before the first tremor was felt... The conclusions drawn pointed to the low sub-audio noise occuring hours before an earthquake being sensed by some animals and causing them to panic and flee...

I wonder if similar effects could be created artificially and accidentaly by this form of distorted 'music'??

It never ceases to amaze me, the Voyager spacecraft can get a signal across 15,000,000,000Km with a 4 Watt transmitter but a modern band needs 10,000 Watts to get their message 15 meters.

hehehehehehehehe very good masu!!!

And its so true!!

I have found through extensive research,"When the music is very loud I find it almost impossible to sleep."

On the contrary, when brain learns about it, which we think is noise and start realizing and surving on it, then it can not sleep without it. I lived near on south Indian Temple near Mahabalipuram TN, where they play loud Nadeswaram band from 4 AM onwards. It was hell for me initially for several months. Then I started realizing the music within and could get very good sleep. After that I used to go to hear this and by hearing this I understand that there is some marriage in the Temple or God prayer in on.

Noise in Boing planes I discussed with one girl who was working with Boing. I asked her, why they don't stop the noise within the aeroplane when they can easily do so electronically. She said that Boing has done research and found that people do not feel good or enjoy journey with zero noise. They feel cheated as if they were sitting in noiseless travel. So they deleberately keep some noise or inject noise.

In fact all USA universities were doing experiments on their students by injecting the alpha beta and gamma waves. I even have seen some PCB that were made for computers to generate these waves for mixing with sound waves. Some people were caught mixing special wave signal along with music which make many people to commit suicide. This was few years ago in USA. On snke byte, people are subjected to bad music such that they do not sleep to death.

If you want to feel meditation then hear OEM sound and these you can get from Indian music stores. This sound is highly spritual vibration and curative of illness. It is made from O-E-M three sounds and created by self very slowly by releasing or exhaling the air. You don't have to be Hindu for it as it is Physics of the body.

Hi Masu,

They use sooooooooooo huge antenna for those remote sensing that beats siganls from stars. Their disks are planted in several km area and in array of hundreds directly looking at remote point. These are very large lens for EM waves. They don't receive on cell phones for sure.

Many of the posters have written about ultrasonic energy, ultra-high frequency, however the original question was about sub-sonic energy, ultra-low frequency.

Yes, these very low frequencies can cause vibration to damage buildings and equipment inside. Unlikely that it would cause anything but temporary sensations in humans. Others correctly stated that ultrasonics, i.e. ultra-high frequency, can cause hearing loss and physical damage to the human body as well as rigid structures like concrete, brick, and stone. Sub-sonic energy can also cause structural damage, but the decibel level must be extremely high.

One main cause of damage from ultra-low frequency to structures and equipment has already been identified which would be cracking in ceramics and metal fatigue from the frequent bending back and forth which would be especially hard on thin metal that is welded together. What was not mentioned was the damage to other structures held together with screws or nuts and bolts.

Anyone who has spent any time around machinery knows what vibration can do to these fasteners over time. The screw thread is really a simple machine, an inclined plane fashioned into a spiral form. This allows work to be done even against a force opposing it, such as tightening a bolt or screw to hold things together when the compressive force exerted is resisted by an equal force. Once tightened, the screw and the material it was screwed into, or the nut and bolt, are held together by static friction, just as a block sitting on an inclined plane may sit without sliding down. But hit that block or the inclined plane with a hammer and the vibration makes them lose contact momentarily, and you no longer have static friction. When the block lands again it is moving and so dynamic or sliding friction are in effect and the block continues to slide down the inclined plane. It might take several hammer blows but eventually the block will slide all the way down.

In much the same way, threaded fasteners will tend to unscrew themselves under vibration. There are some means to reduce or eliminate this effect, such as lock nuts or lock washers, and thread-locking adhesives, but those may or may not have been used in the original assembly.

Some years ago (1975), the major motion picture EARTHQUAKE was released in film theaters. Many theaters had a special effects system installed just for this release (and sometimes used later for other SFX films) which was called "Sensurround", since you would actually feel the very low frequency vibrations (60 Hz from 10 giant sub-woofers @ 120 dB sound level). This film and others had a separate soundtrack exclusively for the "Sensurround" vibrations meant to simulate earthquakes. It was also used for battle scenes in the film MIDWAY, presumably to simulate ground-shaking bomb blasts. I remember at the time reports of theater seats coming loose in those theaters, presumably from the effects of the vibrations on the fasteners which held them together. There were even reports of people with cracked ribs, although, if true and not just a lawsuit scam, might have been from secondary injury due to a fall after being knocked off-balance by the vibration. Wikipedia also has this in its article on Sensurround:

"The excessively loud Sensurround also caused additional disruptions for theatres playing Earthquake, including structural damage in some cinemas. The most famous example is that of Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where theatre management strung a safety net over the seating to catch errant pieces of plaster after a test screening revealed Sensurround had actually cracked the ceiling."

Low frequency damage is serious only at resonant frequencies. Yes, you do need enough intensity. Look at earth quack damage. It is not so for high frequencies.

How about the molecular formation stage, when cell is organizing molecule to form protiens and have to manufacturer hundreds of meter long chromosome withing its cell division clock and then it faces this vibration. This is equivalent to machines working under lots of vibration and their positions are not perfact or spilled away and damage the process. same thing can happen in the body. However, some vibration frequencies help formation of crystal like structure in the water and associated floating matter that may help. One scientist, who was working with me has photographed this structure formation and it was amazing to look at. Have to heard of quasi crystals. These forms of crystals are seen only in unstable conditions like five corners and never formed in stable conditions. Crystal does not mean solid material but organized arrangement of molecules in liquid (blood) and cell fluid (protoplasm). Low frequency vibrations can easily do this.

Perhaps you can read some vibration coupled fluid motion research work to know more. This is most interesting area to see effect of vibrations on bio-molecules or colony of living system. We are not one but millions of living colony giving identity as one to move smoothly in the world like people and their government. You may have one President and one country but it actually is many men. So is our body. One as well as many living things as a system.

Thanks for that interesting answer STL and Shyam..... Indeed words to think about....

I think the main area I was concerned with was the distortion at the high volume settings creating intermodulation products which couldn't be heard as they were sub- sonic... The massive speakers did project them though to be felt as more of an earthquake type of feeling...

I just wondered whether with a couple of decades of this type of noise whether anyone had experienced damage caused by this unwanted vibration, whether physical, physiological or actual structural damage...

STL your comments about the sound system desinged for the film 'Earthquake' did make me remember that the sound was sub sonic and did create fear in the audience, there were reports of people leaving the cinema early feeling sick... So as Shyam has said maybe these low frequency sounds are like a hypnotic drum beat, or the sound used to drive soldiers on the war path etc... etc...

When you think about it, these sounds are almost everyday occurences, I wonder if the temporary behaviour of the listeners could explain an increase in violence?

Or worse...? When something as common as music could cause such effects on people then why hasn't the effect been thoroughly scrutinised by scientists / researchers??

John.

People not only become deaf by high sound exposure, they also run into lots of neurological disorder due to sound noise pollution. If you hear that high frequency transformer queecking sound regularly, which has lose core or saturated core then it will take little for you to end up in no sleep for many days. You will actually hear that sound even after sound is removed and for many days.

This is due to over stimulated thymus which results into schizophrenia disorder in the brain. What you think, you will also hear from no-where. Some people hear door knock while they are in sleep and some hear water running from tap only to realize that there is nothing like that in real. Funny thing is that these people hear so loud that they think it is very real and get up to open the door in mid night. Some people also hear such things even in broad day light. It almost makes them mad. I have seen three such people so that is a very good number. There are almost million such people on the earth. This disorder some time makes one to see what one hears. Music appears in your eyes as falling balls. Some see pictures or changing lights as loud sound, which is automatically generated by the brain from light signals.

Disturbed sleep and trigger flooded brain signals can choke the brains and it may also result into fits like disorder. We know that this happens more in those who had high fever when they were below 5 years (childhood).

I am sure this information isn't complete and there is much more to it. In the brain there is message traffic and then there is neuro inference path. This can choke in some people who have not many channels to work on like cell network chocking. It is really not a problem but can be experienced as problem and may make a person to feel bad about this experience.

Whenever our body fails in normal job, we all fear. If you can't lift your hand then you will fear very badly even though you never know how your hand get lifted by thinking. It is natural to accept that capability of yours. In fact if you look at your hand and think that it does not belong to you and make your brain to believe that then you can never lift your hand thereafter.

You love something and it helps your brain to calm down and its activities go at minimum load. You like or dislike music causes problem in similar way as you secrete saliva by thinking of good food. Our body, our health is our mind and our thinking. You can easily hurt your body by thoughts. You can scare a man to death. Perhaps if you find yourself next to the seat with OSAMA on the air then you will get hot for sure. Brain is more than something in the skull.