What the Ear Hears (and Doesn't): Inside the Extraordinary Everyday World of Frequency

by Richard Mainwaring

For readers of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill O'Neill, What the Ear Hears (and Doesn't) is a fascinating science book for adults that explores the physics principle of frequency and the (sometimes weird) role it plays in our everyday lives.

What do the world's loneliest whale, a black hole, and twenty-three people doing Tae Bo all have in common?

In 2011, a skyscraper in South Korea began to shake uncontrollably without warning and was immediately evacuated. Was it an earthquake? An attack? No one seemed quite sure. The actual cause emerged later and is utterly fascinating: Twenty-three middle-aged folks were having a Tae Bo fitness class in the office gym on the twelfth floor. Their beats had inadvertently matched the building's natural frequency, and this coincidence―harnessing a basic principle of physics―caused the building to shake at an alarming rate for ten minutes. Frequency is all around us, but little understood.

Musician, composer, TV presenter, and educator Richard Mainwaring uses the concept of the Infinite Piano to reveal the extraordinary world of frequency in a multitude of arenas―from medicine to religion to the environment to the paranormal―through the universality of music and a range of memorable human (and animal) stories laced with dry humor. Whether you're science curious, musically inclined, or just want to know what a Szechuan pepper has to do with physics, What the Ear Hears (and Doesn't) is an immensely enjoyable read filled with did you know? trivia you'll love to share with friends.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Music, Audiobook, Physics, Medicine, Health

320 pages, Paperback

Published December 27, 2022

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is listed as Science. It caught my eye on the library shelf. While it proposes to give an enjoyable journey into frequency using trivia to share with friends; instead presents a lot of history, mundane examples, facts and trivia. Not an easy read. Doesn't flow. Short on science. I'm bumping it up a notch for the effort made regarding pitch. As an amateur musician that was the most interesting.

[Steve]

The idea was to look at frequency as a way of perceiving the world. The author is a musician and music teacher, I guess. He is not a scientist or a professional science writer. I found the writing not horrible but not great either, a lot of jokiness that went flat and not smoothly organized.

Still, there certainly were some interesting facts and viewpoints presented, but the flaws made me not want to continue past the first couple chapters (76 pages).

[Philip · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel bad about giving "What the Ear Hears (and Doesn't)" a 1-star rating. The writing isn't terrible, the subject is - or should be - interesting, and Mainwaring is writing about his passions (even if he did make the mistake of trying to join them). What's worse, I can really see how this would be a 5-star read for the right person.

But that's also the reason I give this book only one star. Unless you are on the same frequency (*guffaw*) as the author, and I most definitely was not, you'll be hard pressed to finish this one - I did not, I gave up about 70-ish percent of the way in. All experiences are subjective, of course, but some are more so than others. This one more so than most.

The author attempts to explain the scientific world with the aid of music. The problem is, I need the science to understand his musical references. The result is a pop-science book that was less accessible to me than a scientific journal (albeit that I enjoy reading those). Sure, the nifty little stories woven into the text make it more readable. But ultimately, when the entire central tenet of the book and its concept misses the mark the way this one did for me, it's just not an enjoyable read.

Again though, I can see how someone who jelled perfectly with the concept would consider this a masterpiece of sorts. At that point, I imagine that the other shortcomings of the book (the writing is a bit all over the place and the author is pretty far away from his wheelhouse) are compensated by the unique perspective and approach the author offers up here.

But for me it was a dud.

[Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on the world of science and fields that can be studied with science by using the subject of frequency as a starting point. This could be structural engineering, strength of materials, music, and the universe itself. It gets a bit slow in the middle as the novelty wears off, but it gets going again and finishes strong. I enjoyed it and learned a few things along the way.

[CatReader · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating, albeit all-over-the place, read. Mainwaring broadly discusses concepts related to the concept of frequency, never spending so long on an example to bore the reader, but perhaps jumping around chasing tangents so often to make the reader's head spin (for Jungians among us, this book is extraverted intuition in the wild). As a non-musician (and apparently also a music listener with a limited knowledge of Mainwaring's musical reference library), I struggled to understand the frequency references Mainwaring often made to various songs. I also struggled with the organization of the book into chapters titled "A Flat", "A", "B Flat" and so on -- since the chapter titles seemed to bear little connection (at least to me) with all the concepts therein discussed. So for organization and approach, I'd give two stars, but I'm giving an extra star because of how fascinating a lot of the examples were (resonant and dissonant frequencies causing building evacuations, the frequency and vibrations of household objects we never think about, etc.).

Here are some supplemental reads that might help flesh out some of the concepts briefly discussed in this book:

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong -- basically a textbook into animal senses, which Mainwaring discusses tangentially

This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas -- kind of what I expected this book to be -- identifying patterns and qualities in music that resonate (pun semi-intended) with different listerners

This is the Voice by John Colapinto - a deep-dive into the human voice

[Caleb Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I wish I read in high school as I was studying music heavily and trying to link this knowledge and ground it in the universe. We are all vibration! You matter. Good vibes only :)

Highly recommend this read!

[Adam Reeves · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of this book is an interesting idea. The reality is that it largely felt like an assortment of sound related facts (some quite interesting to be fair) with no real direction. The ‘infinite piano’ was also starting to get very long in the tooth by the end.

[grace saint · Rating 4 out of 5]

V good. Recommend to anyone who wants nerdy info that can be stretched into conceptual sound art bits

[John B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars rounded up.

One strength this author has is the ability to distill the essence of scientific papers and present the details in an accessible manner for the lay reader. There are a lot of details in this book that I find fascinating. I am finding the sources section in the back of the book to be a wealth of additional information that has enriched my reading experience. I have reread several sections of this book with youtube as my companion, using it to bring up specific artists and music that is called out in the book. Thank you Mr. Mainwaring for calling out all the music references and leaving bread crumbs for the interested reader to dig deeper.

One small issue I have with the writing is the made up, never directly specified, but frequently invoked unit of length per octave for the infinite keyboard. Example "Add another eleven octaves (we are now around 6.7 meters to the right of middle C), and we encounter the single octave of frequencies that are visible to us, light." (p. 248) Apart from this quirky recurring technical detail I found the reading enjoyable.

[Barbara Geffen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book surpassed my understanding of both physics and music, but I loved it anyway. Mainwaring is an incredibly gifted author. His research takes him all over the globe, and he takes the reader with him, breaking barriers of our limited knowledge about each subject to show us what we can learn on his infinite piano. Frequencies are everywhere, in the air and even in our own bodies, not just in the music we make. Now I listen and hear how composers create sounds that influence our moods, in movies and classical compositions, too. Mainwaring introduces us to scientists (including my daughter-in-law, a neuroscientist who studies how the brain translates sound entering the ear into hearing), engineers, musicians, and magicians who use frequencies to solve mysteries. Through comedic renderings, the author writes a captivating tale of true occurrences that explain everything from the treatment of erectile dysfunction to ghostly apparitions and interrupted bird migrations. What a fun read!

[Olivia Gaston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely one of my new favorite books. Acoustical physics has always been one of my favorite topics, and this book covers frequency in such an interesting way. The infinite piano is a concept that Mainwaring introduces in the beginning and references throughout, and provides a good way to contextualize and link together the various concepts that are presented throughout the book. This book covers frequency in contexts outside of just music, but at the end of the day a wave is a wave. It's full of different ways to conceptualize frequency and its attributes and I just found it endlessly fascinating.

[John Langley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting romp through the science of vibration and frequency. Lots of fascinating stories and examples. I found myself a bit doubtful about the underlying metaphor that’s employed: that of the ‘Infinite Piano’. This is employed to avoid the ‘coldness’ of very large or very small numbers - the author can talk about a very high frequency as being many, many octaves above Middle C. This is fine, but it starts to feel a little odd when for example he describes the vibration of colours in the visible spectrum as if they were musical notes.

It’s fun though, and Richard Mainwaring is a good explainer with lots of material to draw on.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a ton of information about sound, but who knew but the author? Actually, the information is not secret, just not well-known. Take the exercise class whose vibrations shook a whole building! Building bridges had to consider dangers from vibrations, too. I wish the audiobook could have included many of the sounds described. Also, I really wish that the author, Richard Mainwaring, would address the puzzling, painful, debilitating effects relating to those suffering from the Havanah Syndrome! I truly would love to hear what he says because he could possibly provide much insight.

[Andrea Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am totally tone-deaf, and I have trouble imagining a piece of music unless I'm very, very familiar with it, so I missed lots of the author's analogies, but I still learned a lot. Mainwaring made a lot of the science very accessible to me, and the book is chock-full of interesting trivia. It's about not only the range of frequency that we hear, but phenomena on both sides of the range outside our hearing.

That might sound boring, but picture an opera singer hitting a note that breaks a glass and you may realize it can be more interesting than you think.

[Marilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book. Apparently, it's not science-y enough for the scientists, but I'm not a scientist, so it was plenty of science for me. In fact, sometimes too much. I've never taken a physics class, so some of that was lost on me. And I'm also not enough of a music person to immediately catch the specific references to specific works by specific performers -- either popular or classical. A soundtrack would have been very helpful. That aside, many of the topics and examples were really interesting. I marked several stories and studies so that I could go back to them.

[Michaela · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was definitely written by a man. The author is incredibly present throughout the entire book, and though his facts are interesting and well described I couldn't get past how confident he was of his importance and ingenuity in the introduction. Perhaps some of his ego is justified, but I need to hear credentials before you start telling me that you're hot shit.
I liked that the chapters were named after the scale. And I liked that so many good stories were woven into the science.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the book! It was well written and organized. It was full of fun facts and trivia, arranged on an imaginary infinite keyboard. But I understood it!! I knew that some things are below human hearing and some things are above human hearing. I don’t understand all that was presented, but I learned enough that I would be comfortable hunting for a more specific book about Hz or sonar or musical history; maybe even something about rats.

[Matthew Wake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much a book that will appeal to readers with a love of music; the science aspects are limited at best.
The anecdotes become rather tiresome and the constant reminder of songs that have notes at the set frequency become far too long.
The chapters feel random and haphazard.

Plenty of useful information and very accessible to a wide audience, Everybody Hertz is a different take on an interesting topic; but it may not appeal to those who wanted a more science focus.

[Andrea Wenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book focuses on frequency—its effects on human hearing, as well as a variety of unexpected phenomena. I wasn't sure what to expect from a book on such a specific subject. It turned out to be fascinating and highly entertaining. It's informative and easy for laypeople to understand.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Rayfes Mondal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the science part of this book but I have a better understanding of sound in terms of actual frequency in Hertz vs notes and octaves. I also didn't know most of the songs referenced so I couldn't make the connection between the song and the topic being discussed. As a non-musician I'm probably the wrong audience.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bunch of the book was lost on me (the overly technical parts, I don't read music which would have been helpful) but I really enjoyed what I could follow, especially the side stories and examples. For instance, I had no idea students at a local college to me invented a fire extinguisher that only uses sound waves. Very cool.

[Cook Memorial Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 2023 Staff Nonfiction Favorite Pick by Natalie! For readers of Where We Meet the World by
Ashley Ward and The Consciousness Instinct by Michael S. Gazzaniga.

Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...

[Tomas Isaak · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun look at some weird quirks of frequency. But it fails to go beyond that, giving only surface level information before moving on, making it feel more like a book of random facts than an actual exploration into frequency. Maybe frequency is too broad and ubiquitous a topic to condense into one book.

[JustEvan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book for the nerdiest among us. Especially music nerds. (Not music nerds that can recite every lead in quote from every individual New Order single vinyl or can tell you where Bob Dylan played on July 13th, 1972.)

[Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has some vaguely interesting stuff, but there wasn't enough detail. It was pitched at too broad of an audience and chose to sacrifice depth for approachability. There were very few topics with which I was not already familiar in as much or more depth than this book treats them.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book but I found myself getting annoyed by the whole infinite piano thing (this frequency would be slightly lower than a C# 57 octaves above ...). I finally resorted to skipping those paragraphs and really enjoyed it after than.

[Joyce DeVore · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read, just needs a reader that can relate better than me. I discovered my interest in sciences is more closely in tune with fields like biology, astronomy and geology. I do have a friend who I believe will appreciate this volume, so I will be passing this on to him.

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 rounded up- really enjoyed the science of sound and how it led to useful inventions and music, was sad that it didn’t lean towards miscommunication between people (there was a small amount discussing tonal languages) or how hearing changes as we age.

[Randi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eventually I'll get it through my head that when it comes to science books, even pop science, the audiobook format is hard for me to follow and loses my interest quickly. On the other hand, this book had enough good storytelling and fun facts to make it worthwhile.

[Ravi Warrier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure if I wasn't musically illustrate or understood acoustic engineering a little more, I would have enjoyed the book much more.

Nevertheless, it was a good book - entertaining and with enlightening bits.