Good Vibrations

I have heard and read much over the years regarding the question "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, will it make a sound?"  The answer is no.  There really is no question about that or any argument.

Nothing creates "sounds". Things create vibrations.  When the tree falls in the forest, no matter how many people are animals are in the vicinity, all the tree creates are vibrations otherwise known as sound waves.

If you are totally deaf standing near the tree when it falls,  the tree will generate billions of sound waves but you won't hear a thing. You're completely deaf.  Depending on the size of the tree and the ferocity of the crash you might actually feel the vibrations, but you won't hear them.  If you have hearing and are standing there, you still won't hear any sounds.  The vibrations will reach your outer ear, then vibrate the ear drum and be transferred to your inner ear.  From the miracle of the mechanisms inside your ear, the vibrations will travel to your brain, the cerebrum to be exact.  There the brain unscrambles these vibrations and hearing is born.  The tree didn't make this sound; your brain did.

So the next time you are at the symphony listening to Beethoven's Fifth, none of the instruments are creating sound.  All of the instruments are generating vibrations at various frequencies.  The percussion instruments create their particular vibrations as do the brass, strings and woodwinds. There now there is a symphony of vibrations going past your body and your head.  Again if you are totally deaf and are sensitive enough to it, you may be able to feel these vibrations especially of the percussion.  "Percussion" is exactly what the instruments create. But technically all of the instruments are percussion instruments. Some are more percussive than others.

If you have the ability to hear then as all of those various simultaneous vibrations flow past your head, your ears pick them up and your brain unscrambles them.  The symphony of sound is not in the hall, it's in your head.

I often take my Bose earbuds along with me in self-defense. It's not that I want to hear my playlist that badly, I just don't like listening to the vibrations that are offered by various waiting rooms and Waffle Houses.  Waiting rooms offer horrible TV and Waffle Houses offer horrible music.  So I take my own good vibrations with me. Although my earbuds are not noise-cancelling, they accomplish that all the same.  Since the vibrations in my ears are  much closer to me than the vibrations in the room, within a few minutes the vibrations that I choose are the only ones I hear.  Another thing about this is that because of my tinnitus, I can't listen to the earbuds all that loudly.  I'm not trying to drown out the other music, I just replace the vibrations in the room with the vibrations from my cell phone. These vibrations become "noise-cancelling" without the technology.

My Bose headphones I use at home are in fact "noise-cancelling".  The battery powered phones not only transfer vibrations from the music medium, but they listen to the vibrations in the room.  The headphones create a frequency, a vibration, opposite of what they hear in the room thus cancelling those frequencies.  It would be really nice to have these in the waiting room or the Waffle House, but that would look pretty silly. My ear buds work very well.

So if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around, will it make a sound?  No.  But if a tree falls in the forest and you have your back turned.  Well, that's another matter.