Why Old Churches Have Amazing Acoustics (& New Ones Don't)

Описание: Donal McKernan: Hi folks! I wanted to just show you a little picture that I found on the back of a magazine, and this is by the photographer Adrian Borda, and you might not be able to tell but that picture is actually the inside of a cello. And you can see the light, kind of streaming in, and the cracks, the wood, the glue joints, and the blemishes, and everything. And it kind of makes the inside of that instrument look like a room. And it got me thinking; what if you just enlarge that thing and use the same materials, the same shape, and everything, and made this big room, that you could stand in with a choir (for example) and sing inside this gigantic cello? Wouldn't the acoustics be amazing? And then I thought about it some more and I realized that if you've ever been in an old church (and by old I mean older than electric amplification) what you'll notice is that the room actually is an instrument. It's shaped and designed so that it has insane acoustics often. So that you can be talking as loud as I'm talking to you right now, and your voice can just fill a whole cathedral. You can be standing in the choir loft and sing a solo, and your voice just sounds like a choir of angels singing. How is that possible? Well, it's possible because for centuries people were figuring out what shape, what materials and everything to make a church be a place where sound would be amplified, and amplified in a really beautiful way. Because, of course, they didn't have microphones and loudspeakers, and so they just honed this art of acoustic design. And then, of course, as soon as microphones came along, that was less important, and so if you go into a contemporary church, it's less inspiring both visually and acoustically. Sure, there is some acoustic design; it's important where you place the speakers, and absorption and everything else, but it doesn't hold a candle to the acoustic design prior to electrical amplification. So, on the one hand, you could see that as a little bit sad, but on the other hand we do have the technology now to acoustically model buildings before they're even built, and so there's no reason why we couldn't even today build amazing spaces for singing, whether it's a church, a community hall, a theater, we could be building places that have breathtaking acoustics, and that don't depend at all on speakers and microphones. Why aren't we doing it? If we would build rooms designed for group singing, the world would be a better place! So, my little parting thought for you this evening (especially if you're into architecture at all) is: let's make rooms that are musical instruments again! Thank you. See you next time!

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