MUSIC students are mystified, they say, by resonances recorded in Salisbury Cathedral and described by one of them as “a weird pinging”.

“We’ve been trying to hit it again, but we weren’t able to find it,” said Logan Smith, who is studying music performance and production at Wiltshire College and University Centre (WCUC). The students made more than 40 recordings in the cathedral at different times of day and night, to explore how sound moves in different spaces. Deploying a conical speaker to emit sound into the depths of the building at a range of frequencies, they then used Impulse Response Utility software to capture the response through microphones.

‘A Ping of Beauty is a Joy Forever’

This approach enabled them to studio-record any instrument or voice and make it sound exactly as though it were being performed in the cathedral, their lecturer, Simon Birch, said. “The Chapter House, where the Magna Carta is kept, was really interesting because it’s octagonal. We had the initial sound bouncing around, followed by the long reverb of the cathedral,” he said. “The reverbs we’re creating will enable them to process their own sounds in all sorts of interesting and crazy ways.”

The “pinging” heard at the end of the resonance could have come from metal bars in a window, he suggested. “But it’s quite hard to pinpoint, because the sound bounces around so much.”

The students made 15 visits to the cathedral, which, Mr Smith said, were inspiring. “It’s been amazing and really atmospheric,” he said. “We did some recording at night as well, and it just showed another side of the beauty of this place. We discovered how the weather conditions affect the resonances inside the building, which was an amazing find.”

The cathedral will benefit from the recordings for its archives and further use, in addition to their being available for WCUC’s students of film and TV production.