musical roads

A ”’Musical road”’ is a road or part of a road which when driven over causes a tactile oscillation|vibration and audible rumbling transmitted through the wheels into the car body in the form of a musical tune
Four countries in the world have musical roads; Denmark South Korea the US and Japan.

Aspaltophone

The first known musical road the Aspaltophone was created in October 1995 in Gylling Østjylland Denmark by Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus two Danish artists The Aspaltophone is made from a series of raised pavement markers similar to Botts’ dots spaced out at intermittent intervals so that as a vehicle drives over the markers the vibrations caused by the wheels can be heard inside the car

In Japan the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute designed the Melody Road after Shizuo Shinoda accidentally scraped some markings into a road with a bulldozer and drove over them and realised that it was possible to create tunes depending on the depth and spacing of the grooves

So why aren’t there more of these?
We thinks this is an excellent idea, specially when driving long distance at 3am and you really wanna be tucked down in a bed instead of having another hour or three before your next stop. Maybe it shuts up screaming kids for a while too, who knows?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFlkWV45oYE&feature=related]

here’s a link diggin’ further into the subject:
http://crab.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/musical-roads-of-the-world/

We also want to recommend this website who wants to identify places with unique sound characters and encourage people to become sonic tourists.
This is a guide book to our Sound World.
Check it out, maybe you live next door to a really cool sound experience !
Sonic Wonders is Authored by Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford.
http://www.sonicwonders.org/?p=1165