This week it’s Donna’s turn to provide the challenge, and it’s a good one, for sure. She writes, “We find sound in the natural world, from manmade items, and through actions. For this week, I have chosen some images that resonate sound to me, and I look forward to seeing where creativity steers you.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

When I first considered how I might respond to this challenge, I considered how hard it would be to think about sound in a 2-dimensional visual format. Sure, there’s a video with an attached soundtrack, but that’s not the challenge. No, it’s not. We have to pick images that evoke the sounds people might know from their real-life experiences. I thought about sounds loud and soft, natural and manmade. I decided to focus on loud sounds that could be heard even when this old man wasn’t wearing my hearing aids. Ironically, the title of my opening image is, “Niagara Falls is Wet”, something I discovered on our Maid of the Mist boat ride to the base of the falls. The falls at Niagara are loud as well, so loud that conversation is all but impossible.

Sports and athletic events are distinctive with manmade noises. Probably nothing is more noisy than the sound of high-performance dragsters attempting to best each other in a quarter-mile from zero to whatever.

Another manmade sound that is high on the decibel scale is the roar of the afterburners on a jet engine in a high-performance climb. Engines that satisfy man’s “need for speed” are by nature noisy, unless they are in space where there is no air to carry sound to people’s ears.

Today’s emergency vehicles depend upon high-decibel sirens to break through the air-conditioned vehicles that people drive, most of the time with their windows up, radio blasting. In the 19th century, the bell on this horse-drawn fire wagon was all the warning needed that an emergency vehicle was approaching.

The online Encyclopedia Britannica describes the ancient instrument featuring bells as a “carillon, musical instrument consisting of at least 23 cast bronze bells in fixed suspension, tuned in chromatic order (i.e., in half steps) and capable of concordant harmony when sounded together.” Before someone had the idea to put tuned bells together, in the 14th century, clocks chimed the hour with mechanical hammers striking a tuned bell. You can read more about this interesting (and loud) instrument here.

Striking metal with a hammer to create a sound is nothing new. The earliest historical reference to the gong is from Eastern Asia in the third century B.C. Wikipedia can tell you more than you probably want to know about the history and types of gongs in use over the centuries here.

People have been making music from the earliest known histories, however, the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the golden age of self-playing instruments. The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona features one of the largest such instruments in their Mechanical Music Gallery. Originally the Apollonia was only on display. When they started having problems with it breaking down, experts recommended that they play the instrument regularly. Visitors to the museum can hear this instrument playing daily at noon and 3 PM. It’s well worth the visit, but I couldn’t resist including a link to a video here where you can see and hear it in action.

Thanks, Donna, for a truly unique challenge. Last week, Anne challenged us with the topic of weather, and there were so many beautiful images of Mother Nature at her best and worst. Next week the team is looking forward to Ritva’s first challenge as a regular contributor. I know we will enjoy her take on challenges to come. If you’d like to respond to the challenges each week but aren’t sure how to get started, check here. Finally, for a closer look at my images in HD, you can view the entire gallery on my Flickr site here.

John Steiner