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Your tumble dryer is a waltz
The exercise is called savoring, and it is about enjoying mundane sounds. A tumble dryer turning over has a steady three-beat rhythm, and heard that way it is something to love.
A coffee grinder rewards the same attention. Everyday machines are interesting to hear if attention goes to them.
Together these sounds make up what could be called the hidden choir, which is around people all the time.
Why do steady machines seem to have rhythm?
In 1894, Thaddeus Bolton played evenly spaced, identical clicks to listeners. They reported hearing the clicks grouped into twos, threes, or fours, with accents that were not in the recording. The effect is called subjective rhythmization. It is the same reason many people hear tick-tock in the identical ticks of a clock.
How did composers turn everyday noise into music?
In 1913, the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo published a manifesto called The Art of Noises and went on to build noise-making instruments he called intonarumori. In 1948, Pierre Schaeffer in Paris assembled Etude aux chemins de fer from recordings of steam locomotives. That piece launched musique concrete, a form of composition built from recorded real-world sounds.
Where does the idea of savoring come from?
Psychologists Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff gave savoring a formal definition in research on positive experience. They describe it as attending to, appreciating, and enhancing a pleasant experience. Their book Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience appeared in 2007. Bryant had introduced a Savoring Beliefs Inventory for measuring it in 2003.
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