Julian Treasure

“If we're not listened to, then that doesn't create a desire inside us to listen to others. Societally, we don't value it.”

“People find birdsong relaxing and reassuring because over thousands of years, they have learnt when the birds sing, they are safe; it's when birds stop singing that people need to worry.”

“Most of us walk around with our ears switched off because so much noise is unpleasant.”

“It's a common mistake to speak the same to everybody. We all have different filters.”

“The desire to be right can be very destructive in relationships.”

“All of our physical rhythms are being affected by sound outside us all the time.”

“I often go into shops and ask them to turn the music down.”

“Music is designed to be listened to, so it's calling for attention all the time, syphoning off our very limited auditory bandwidth and elbowing aside our ability to listen to the voice in our head we need when we're doing mental work.”

“Intention is very important in sound, in listening. When I married my wife, I promised her I would listen to her every day as if for the first time. Now that's something I fall short of on a daily basis.”

“We move through soundscapes all the time, and most of them are accidental - a by-product. Most retail soundscapes are accidental, incongruent with the brands, and mostly hostile.”

“This devaluing of listening is handed down from generation to generation. There are many children who don't have the experience of being listened to by their parents.”

“My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative, and it's hard to listen. I remember one day, I said to her, 'It's October 1 today,' and she said, 'I know, isn't it dreadful?' It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.”

“Sadly, piped music in so many public spaces is often just more noise. Rarely is it carefully designed to enhance our experience; much more likely it is there because retailers have subscribed to an incorrect view that music makes people spend more.”

“Noise is the number one problem in modern offices. A big part of addressing this issue is making sure unwanted sound from adjacent spaces doesn't intrude or interfere.”

“It's an interesting door opening, this use of sonic signalling - using sound to alert us in a more subtle way than a beep.”

“While interrupting is not always wrong, it should never become a habit.”

“The Hindus say, 'Nada brahma,' one translation of which is, 'The world is sound.' And in a way, that's true, because everything is vibrating.”

“I would suggest that our listening is the main way that we experience the flow of time from past to future.”

“Retailers don't think about why they have music. There are a number of issues. It can be very powerful in the right place, where it is played appropriately.”

“Music is the most powerful sound there is, often inappropriately deployed. It's powerful for two reasons: you recognize it fast, and you associate it very powerfully.”