Sound Comes from Somewhere

Why did I get goosebumps all over my body when I listened to a Qin Opera piece at the entrance of the village when I was a child, but now I feel like I have a ball of cotton stuffed in my ears while watching the short video Divine Comedy for ten minutes? This book starts from opera and asks a question that has been ignored by everyone: where does the sound come from in the first place. The "exploding sound" of the painted face in Peking Opera is taken from the thunder, the "crying sound" of the bangzi comes from the cry of the peasant woman at the grave, and the sound of the shakuhachi simulates the roar of the crane and the wind. Timbre is never invented, but is "heard" from nature and life. However, today, under the layers of equal temperament, Auto-Tune, sampling loops, and algorithm recommendations, music has become a self-referential closed system. Creators no longer stand in the rain or go to the vegetable market to listen. Instead, they stare at the waveform and adjust parameters. Opera actors no longer derive a voice from the dialect or local dialect, but instead follow the recording of a famous artist to describe the red lines word for word. When the sound cuts off its umbilical cord with everything in the world, good-sounding becomes an empty word. This is not a nostalgic book, nor is it a book that advises you to listen to a play. What it wants to say is: No matter what you are doing is Qin opera or electronic music, the sound must come from a place before people can be moved.