私たち日本人の伝統的な住環境を見てみますと、藺草(いぐさ)で編んだ畳をはじめ、紙の障子や布の襖(ふすま)といった、いわば吸音材に囲まれているような空間です。それは、外の自然環境をそのまま家の中にしつらえたようなものです。こうして日本人は、高い音や細かな倍音に一層敏感になったのだと思われます。
一方、西洋の場合、住居はおもに堅い石や煉瓦でできており、道も石畳で造られていました。石に覆われていると、音が響きやすくなります。音が響きやすい空間では、音は常に反射していて、反射すればするほど、高い音の倍音は吸収され、低い音の倍音は並行面(平行した壁面間で繰り返される反響)によって定常波(standing wave)となり、増幅されます。これは、西洋で基音を主体とした音楽が発展することとも関係しています。
〈参考文献〉
The Japanese Living Environment and Overtone
Japan's natural environment contains a lot of moisture. Soft, moist plants and trees, and soil covered with fallen leaves and other substances make it difficult for sound to echo throughout the environment. In a space where sound is less likely to echo, high pitched sounds and fine overtones can be heard better. This suggests that we Japanese have lived in spaces where a wide variety of overtones exist.
Looking
at Japanese people's traditional living environment, we are surrounded by
sound-absorbing materials such as rush-woven tatami mats, paper shoji screens,
and cloth fusuma sliding doors. It
is as if the natural environment outside has been placed directly inside the
house. It
is thought that this is how the Japanese became more sensitive to high-pitched
sounds and subtle overtones.
In
the Western world, on the other hand, houses were mainly made of hard stone or
brick, and streets were built with stones. When
covered with stone, sound is more likely to echo. In
a space where sound echoes easily, sound is constantly reflected, and as it
reflects, the higher harmonics are absorbed, while the lower harmonics are
amplified by parallel surfaces (echoes repeated between parallel walls) that
form standing waves. This
is also related to the development of base tone-based music in the West.
[References]
Akikazu
Nakamura, Overtones:Sound・Language・Note of Bodily Culture, Shunjusha, November 1, 2010,
NLP共同創始者ジョン・グリンダー博士認定校
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記事更新日:2023/09/07