Learning to love sound.
Musicians are true listeners. Not only that, but they are multitaskers, too. They have a more developed corpus callosum, the bit of the brain that joins the two hemispheres together. They simultaneously decode the dots on a sheet of paper, perform perfectly timed complex physical movements with extreme accuracy, all whilst listening to the rest of the orchestra or band.
These skills are not just good for playing music. Research shows this helps them solve problems faster. Their reasoning is faster, they’re more agile, and there are all sorts of other benefits. It’s never too late to take up an instrument or participate in any musical activity.
But it’s not just musicians who can be good listeners. We can all learn to listen, understand and use sound to improve our own lives and the lives of others.
Listening is an important thing to learn how to do. Children learn how to read and write, but we do not teach them how to speak or listen. Yet, we learn by listening. This is a huge imbalance.
It’s only been in the most recent part of human development where reading has been democratized. More recently still, we’ve started making a lot of noise; first industrial noise and more recently sound from sound systems. There’s a lot more to listen to, but it’s important to learn the importance of listening, especially against the imbalance of reading, and even more so with the prevalence of email and instant messaging. Sound has much more power—you wouldn’t tell someone you love them for the first time in a message, it has a far greater meaning when it is said and heard.
And it’s not just individuals—companies don’t listen either. Four to five times as much effort goes into outward communication as inward. A piece of research conducted by Jim Macnamara (University of Technology Sydney) called the Organizational Listening Project found that organizations from large to small are generally very poor at listening. However, organizations that ranked as the better listeners had longer staff retention, better customer retention, and happier customers and staff—all sorts of good profitable markers. The ones ranked as the least good listeners had more crises and more conflict.
Sound can be very valuable to companies, but most ignore it completely. They don’t think about it. But think of the value of the Intel sound – their sonic logo, most people can sing it, but they couldn’t draw their graphical logo. This is where sound can have enormous financial value.
There is an overall trend towards being heard, as opposed to listening. But conscious listening always improves understanding.
There’s a lot of evidence to prove that sound affects buying behaviour. There’s plenty of research about how music affects people – quality, volume and tempo. There’s less research about the undesirable sounds that also impact people – air-conditioning, machinery and other ambient noise, that can often have a negative effect on us. Research even shows people bought different things when playing different music – a more expensive bottle of wine when classical music was playing. All of this is happening at a subconscious level.
A rounded approach to sound considering acoustics, noise control, sound system and audio content is needed.
You can’t have good sound in a noisy space, so before you consider a sound system, it’s important to look at the acoustics of the space, and try to remove or reduce unwanted sounds such as building systems, vending machines and the like. Then you can not only design the audio system for the areas it needs to cover, but also consider what will be played from it.
For improving acoustics, a good process to follow is ABC – absorb, block, cover. Generally, you’ll want to reduce the reverberation time of the room by adding some absorbent surfaces. For good speech intelligibility, ideally, you’ll want a reverberation time of half a second and well under a second, but many rooms don’t achieve this. What’s more, if a room is noisier with more reverberation, then people will speak more loudly and the overall noise will escalate – it can become a vicious circle.
Blocking sound is important for privacy and to stop people in adjacent spaces from being disturbed.
Covering sound is another technique that can be deployed. Sound masking is where an overall sound is played in a space – it can be steady state noise but is generally better if a biophilic soundscape is used. Sound masking improves confidentiality without needing to block sounds with doors or partitions and can also improve general well-being.
The challenge here is to help architects and interior designers think with their ears and not just their eyes. However, it is very difficult to demonstrate what a space will sound like before it is built, filled with furniture and occupied by people. However, technology exists that enables us to map out spaces and then create a real model of the acoustic environment. This lets architects listen’ to buildings before they build them, so you can learn how to improve the sound from the outset instead of taking remedial action afterwards. This technology was previously available only at a premium price, but there are now lower-cost tools that can at least help with that.
Background music is used in countless commercial spaces, but insufficient thought goes into this. It’s normally a binary condition – to have music or not. Once you have considered the acoustics and other sounds in the space itself, more thought needs to be put into the impact of sound on the people in that space. What is going to make them happy? Make them stay longer? How do you avoid listener fatigue?
Music needs to be appropriate to the audience. It needs to be played out of the appropriate sound system, not necessarily just using the one you have because it is there. In terms of commercial spaces, the type of music played is a means to make your space inclusive to the type of customer you are trying to attract. This is part of giving your brand an aural signature. Not just playing the same music as the shop next door or whatever the staff want to play. It may not even be music, it might be sounds from nature or other soundscapes.
To make this difference, it’s important to invest in decent audio equipment. Poor sound will cheapen the image of your brand. When you spend so much on other parts of the business, from décor to staff training, why would you buy the cheapest possible loudspeakers, which will give undesirable results – distorted, tinny, unintelligible sound? A proper retail media strategy is needed.
There is just so much music available now. These days, more music is released in a day than was released in a year decades ago. Whilst the production of music has been democratized, the quality is often poor. A huge amount of music is created by individuals and listened to by individuals – on headphones.
Generally, the only shared music experience is a live music performance. However, the resurgence of vinyl means more people are developing a deeper relationship with their music. Using vinyl, people will listen to the whole piece rather than individual songs, and they have to make an effort – looking after the disc and having to get up halfway through to turn it over. This is more active participation and with a physical product.
Despite our love of sound, we must never forget silence. A salesman will listen, then make his pitch. A better salesman will allow a perhaps awkward silence to follow, but this approach is more likely to end in a sale. We’ve got too used to noise, but silence is a sound in itself – it’s the baseline that we should all retreat to at least once a day.
Sound is not just a background feature—it’s a powerful, emotional, and often untapped asset. Whether it’s the intentional design of a soundscape in a commercial space or the simple act of truly listening, sound shapes our experiences and influences our behaviour. In a world filled with noise, those who learn to listen—individuals and organizations alike—stand to gain the most. When we start treating sound with the same care and strategic thinking as visual design or branding, we unlock deeper connections, richer experiences, and lasting impact.
If you want to learn more about listening and how it can shape your life, your wellbeing and your planet, then we recommend Sound Affects by Julian Treasure.
