Sound Blog

sky scraping · May 14, 2005 by Matt Gilbert

I was at a huge fireworks show in Charlotte the other day, and I got to hear the city in a pretty unique way. The explosions from the fireworks were ripped across the faces of several skyscrapers, each one reflecting it back with it’s distinct signature. There were 3 buildings in particular whose windows were arranged in smooth columns seperated by concrete. As the impact of the explosion reached each building, it was alternately bounced back and absorbed by the different surfaces, sending back a quick sequence of smaller explosions: effectively a square wave. The columns on each building had different widths, giving different pitches to their square wave reflections. From any particular location, these sounds reached you in a certain order (for me, a middle tone first, then a high one and a low one), and each explosion from the fireworks repeated this theme. Rarely do I get to ping a space so large.

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