How to describe sound

I like to think of sound as a column that is moving and traveling through space (not unlike the movement of No-Face or Koanashi from the film "Spirited Away" by Miyazaki, although not uniformly so sinister).  It can be opaque or translucent, any variety of colors, or changing color.  It moves and spins, faster and slower, wider and narrower, and can be sharp at the edges or fuzzy.  This is mostly just how I imagine what one is doing with the bow and vibrato to change the sound, but this image makes it feel so magical.  To me, this is much more useful than thinking simply of dynamics;  degrees of louder and softer simply don't describe the full wonder of what one can create with a string instrument. 

It is often difficult to find the appropriate words to describe what you hear, especially when listening to sound and comparing instruments.

Yesterday, when trying out violins with my thoughtful 13 year old student again (same one who labeled a previous violin as sounding like Shakira), he asked for a piece of paper to draw what he was hearing from two violins, because words were failing him.

He drew two houses and two columns.

Violin A had a small house with small windows.  All four sides had lines that described the sound going into the house, except for a few tiny windows on one corner on the back of the house which he said had sound traveling out of the house.  The column was to describe the sound of Violin A.  It was solid and completely filled in.  He said that there was only a bit of movement at the very end, for which he drew a few zig-zagged lines near the end of the column.

Violin B had a much larger house with picture windows on all four sides.  He drew lines going out the windows to represent the sound flowing outward.  Then he drew a bunch of tiny circular windows that he said had sound traveling into the house.  The column for Violin B was wider and somewhat translucent (difficult to draw with a pencil), and he drew sweeping lines back and forth around the column, followed by tighter smaller lines, and then more sweeping lines.  This was to represent the more ringing and open sound, and the more variety of sounds, and way that you could change sounds quickly with that violin.


Had I ever shared my imagery to describe sound with this student?  I don't remember doing so, although it's quite possible I did at some point.  It certainly wasn't recently, and he said he didn't remember the Miyazaki reference.  But he nodded vigorously as I described what I imagine sound to be like.   It was exciting to see him thinking and creating and expressing what he heard in his own way.