In David Byrne’s “Playing the Building”, the sound produced is very specific to that individual building. If he set up the same strings and techniques in another building, due to difference in architecture, the same sounds could not be reproduced. This idea of sound being specific to certain spaces is similar to Rath’s idea about sound in churches. However, Rath differs a little bit from Byrne as he goes on to make the claim that depending on the culture/religion, certain soundscapes can be made. He writes about how in the European church, the medieval chancel is constructed so the priest was “facing away from the congregation, [his] voice never carried directly to the listeners in the nave. It began its trip toward them as an echo, reflected several more times before reaching any ears” (131). Different from the European church, for the Chesapeake Anglicans, in their Jamestown Chapel, “sounds were projected along the length rather than the breadth of the chapel. Where one was seated was an indicator of social standing. Those in the front heard more of the direct signal. Those in the back heard less of it, and thus more reverberation” (135). For each of these different peoples, their religious structures were built differently according to their separate cultures, religions, and religious beliefs. This idea of sounds being unique to spaces and being deliberately made for the separate religious buildings can connect to Blesser and Salter’s idea of earcons in “Ancient Acoustic Spaces”. An earcon is defined as “a sonic event that contains special symbolic meaning not present in the sound wave” (187). Looking at the deliberate creation of spaces for sounds can show us greater meaning of the sound itself. Blesser and Salter wrote that “the Mayans has a heightened auditory spatial awareness”. This was evident to many people at a Mayan ruin, including a visitor who observed “distinct howls and whistles from stone structures when wind arrived from a particular direction, as if it were giving early warning of imminent storms and hurricanes” (189). This shows that there are deliberate actions of building certain spaces to make meaningful sounds. The idea of sound being unique to spaces created by Byrne and enforced by Rath and Blesser and Salter also leads me to continue to explore the question of if a soundscape is a place you go versus a thing you make.
