• acoustic treatment for great rooms
• Brian Swimme
• David Suzuki
• John Ötvös
• Joseph Campbell
• reverberant great rooms
• sculpture
• Tommy Douglas

my evolved understanding of reverberation & reflection in sound reproduction

This image montage is from September of 2004. All but 1, have never been presented online. I created this acoustic panel structure for the explicit purpose of reducing the reverberant nature of the great room in the family home in Brighton, ON that I built [see building archives]. As my understanding of small room sound reproduction evolved, I began to see, that while I dearly loved the great symphonies, concertos, organ works and choral collaborations, I also knew that I wanted to hear more of what was on the recording and less of the reverberant & reflective nature of the room signature. What we hear, is a complex amalgam of recording/speaker/room in addition to our ear/brain connection. When all are in concert, the sum total is “suspended disbelief”.

Great rooms are wonderful for entertaining, as are open concept combined kitchen, eating and family rooms.  Both do, however, create less than the optimum environment for high fidelity sound reproduction from a very good hifi system. I’m an audiophile.  This means that I take very seriously the sound quality I am presented with, if I am in an environment where I might prioritize how my ear/brain combo functions.  I do this often when available, as I seek out midhall seating for movie theaters and music hall venues. A good movie hall uses the latest DD or Dolby Digital format for sound reproduction.  You have noticed the sidehall speakers up high, I trust. Those who do not understand this may refer to this as OCD. Maybe, but perhaps they haven’t read the data either.  I love how the Sufis state this: To know life one must experience it.  To experience life one must taste it. Our lives can be all about great experiences. There can be choices.  Use ‘em.

The other environmental issue for great rooms is that with the elevated ceilings, the cost to heat and cool the lower human level of occupation, is dramatically increased as are the initial construction costs.  At the time in the mid-1980’s, I was in my earning heyday as a cabinetmaker and woodworker.  I was less concerned with ecological issues than I and others are today.  This commentary is a reflection on our collective human evolution of conscious awareness.

While the construction of these 10 panels, as exemplified by this panoply of images had been started in mid 2002, it took over 2 years to complete, without any other projects on the floor in the shop/studio. I use shop/studio since both art and craft are involved in making. Art & craft constantly crossover and overlap. To discriminate the differentiation between and betwixt is an exercise in pedantic semantics after all. Craft is supposedly functional, while art hangs or sits; art essentially is soul food for the heart/mind collaboration entanglement. In my career as a woodworker, I do not multitask by taking on various commissions or contracts, as my former MO [modus operandi] was to focus on one project alone.  Today, that still rings true.

The wood is white ash and mostly painstakingly hand carved.  All fitments were custom made using flat aluminum and stainless steel, which of course I polished to as high a lustre as was available to me with the equipment at my disposal. The panels were 6” thick.  They were artfully airbrushed under my direction by a local Trenton, ON graphic artist whose main occupation was to spray paint vans and cars, as that was what was in vogue at the time. His talent was incredible. 16 years on, the lad’s name eludes me as does a Google search. Oh well.

The images are of musical instruments such as the hand shaped Kleuker organ at Notre Dame des Nieges, L’Alpe d’Huez, France constructed in 1978. This is complemented by a Steinway grand piano, violin, cello and flute.  There are additional images of the Milky Way, Pinwheel and Whirlpool Galaxy.  Keep scrolling. 🙂

There are also my 4 wisemen.  Two American, two Canadian. One from each Nation diseased, one each alive.  I had my favourite classical composers from many eras, including the contemporary era, such as Alan Hovhaness portrayed. In 2003, I was nowhere near as evolved in my personal mindfulness, as I feel today, especially when it comes to issues of paternity in our human culture. I now see that by unconsciously excluding women, every bit as deserving of my personal recognition, that this was an awkward admittance that jayöh had some learning to undergo, a personal evolution of his own.  We know all too well the cliché: “Hindsight is 20/20.”

The following short explanation is why I chose these particular 4 men for this presentation. In very general terms, this was my individual acknowledgment, my great respect for the life’s work of each of these and how they had influenced my own waking state.

David Suzuki

Now 81, this man is a Canadian icon.  He has maintained one of the longest running TV series, i.e., The Nature of Things since 1979. I read his first autobiography: Metamorphosis, when it was published in 1987. David has been a powerhouse through his unswerving crusade to reunite humans with our natural world, from which we have become separated by living in cities, with the spotlight on materialism.  Fully 54% of the world’s present population of 7.4 billion, is urban. Since 2004, my will allocates 10% of assets to the David Suzuki  Foundation for Climate Change.  If it is no longer in existence at the time of my demise, my will instructs the executor to find a similar CDN NGO. [1936— ]

Brian Swimme

I was introduced to Brian in 1999, through a Sunday night series of talks of his 12 part Canticle to the Cosmos series on VHS.  This was at the Port Hope, ON home of Pat & Tom Lawson.  The Lawsons were old politicos, wonder fuelled people, always trying to pull you into their puddles! 🙂 With Father Thomas Berry, Brian traced the history of our Universe, through its 13.8 billion year story.  I became completely fascinated by the role of the human in this Oneness. [1950— ] Brian Swimme was the man I drove to Hendersonville, NC in May of 2003 to listen to. It was on the way that my Veedub was driver door t-boned at an intersection; at the conference called: A Journey Into Wholeness. There, after returning from the hospital emergency department, I met Dr. Joel C. Mason, an Episcopalian priest, from Chappaqua, NY who introduced me to the love poetry of Rumi and t’other Sufi poets. I’ve never been the same since. 😉

I was extracted by the jaws of life, unconscious.  The Golf was totalled.

I had a concussion and severe groin injury. The 4 airbags and extra metal from this German car saved my body. My mind has always been a write-off. 🙄

Joseph Campbell

In 1988, Bill Moyers interviewed Joe for what was to become the most popular TV series in PBS’ history.  I became absolutely enthralled, since my university study was originally dedicated to comparative religion and philosophy. The Power of Myth has been the central idea of how I see the human endeavour in our evolutionary thinking. [1904—1987]

Tommy [T.C.] Douglas

Thomas Clement [Tommy] is well known as the father of CDN Medicare, establishing Saskatchewan as Canada’s first province to enshrine Medicare in law in 1962.  A CDN national plan, became a condition of minority government support to Pearson in 1966. In several polls to determine the greatest Canadian, Tommy always comes out as #1. Check out Tommy’s famous story of Mouseland in his own voice. [1904—1986]

I aspired to demonstrate in a multimedia material manner, that the Oneness of creation is all ‘round us, both within & without.  This unity of existence manifests by differentiating forms, including by inference: Spirit/Gaia/The Universe/Krishna/Buddha/The Friend/God + All That There IS . . . is!

I used a very heavy ON manufactured basalt industrial insulation between the painted grey grille cloth, of which I had a huge leftover roll from my loudspeaker manufacturing. The basalt rock, which abounds here on the Fundy Shore and North Mtn where I now live, is first heated until it liquefies, into a heavy toffee consistency. It is then spun similarly to cotton candy.  Basalt makes a phenomenal acoustic product, that greatly reduces sound wave intensity, by reducing the velocity of the sound waves, so that when they do return out of phase with the main incoming wave, there is far less destructive interference.  Remember Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto before the multi-million dollar retrofit? Concrete instead of wood. Far less absorption.

When the divorce settlement came through, I chose to move to BC. All of this ‘baggage’ was put in storage for 1-1/2 years.  In 2006, I purchased a new townhouse on Mansfield Dr. across from the airpark in Courtenay, on Vancouver Is.  I installed all of it in the LR there. In 2007, I sold the accommodations and planned a move across country once again here, to NS.  BC is affectionately known as “bring cash”. It was far too expensive for me to build a homestead, anywhere in BC. I’m a rural fellow by nature, reveling my solitude in the forest. Apologies to Kevin. 🙂 Behind that twnhse, was Cliffe Ave., the main Ctny drag. Racers and sirens were a nightly phenom, as were Sunday AM Cessna takeoffs for pleasure at the airpark. Boxed in, I was.

In 2008, before leaving BC, I gave away these 10 panels that I had spent more than $11,500 for airbrushing and materials acquisition, to a local Courtenay high school. The school sent a truck rental with a few strapping lads for the hoist . . . no not heist. hahaha I never heard back from the music department at the school. It’s now been a full decade. Such is life.  We are taught to let go and let God.  I did and I continue to do so, as there’s really no other way, unless one enjoys being trapped inside some psychological trauma of our own making.

andsoitgoes . . .

I AM John Gabriel Ötvös, aka jayöh.

One response to “the Great Acoustic Wall”

1. talktowolf says:

   27 January 2018 at 11:00 pm

   John I am really enjoying reading these. I did not know you played the cello.😉 Please keep sending.  Wolf

   Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

   Reply