Sonic Art

An Introduction to Electroacoustic Music Composition

Adrian Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317407928
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

Written by an active composer, performer and educator, Sonic Art: An Introduction to Electroacoustic Music Composition provides a clear and informative introduction to the compositional techniques behind electroacoustic music. It brings together theory, aesthetics, context and practical applications to allow students to start thinking about sound creatively, and gives them the tools to compose meaningful sonic art works.

In addition to explaining the techniques and philosophies of sonic art, the book examines over forty composers and their works, introducing the history and context of notable pieces, and includes chapters on how to present compositions professionally, in performance and online. The book is supported by an online software toolkit which enables readers to start creating their own compositions. Encouraging a 'hands on' approach to working with sound, Sonic Art is the perfect introduction for anyone interested in electroacoustic music and crafting art from sounds.

Chapter 1 What is Sound?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315684024-1

Student: What sounds can I use in my composition?

Teacher: All sounds are available to you.

Student: Okay, so where do I start?

Teacher: Start with a sound that interests you.

1.1 Introduction

1.1.1 Jumping in at the deep end

This book is about composing with sounds. Composition can, but does not have to, start with sound; sound is all around us, and quite often we may wish to have more control over it than it has over us. The prevalence of recording technology means that we can capture sound quite easily and store it on the computer. But what do we do with it then? Trevor Wishart opens his book Audible Design (Wishart, 1994) by making three assumptions:

1. Any sound whatsoever may be the starting material for a musical composition.
2. The ways in which this sound may be transformed are limited only by the imagination of the composer.
3. Musical structure depends on establishing audible relationships amongst sound materials.

Each assumption opens up a wealth of opportunities. This book hopes to tie down some of the possibilities, block off some of the dead ends of sound manipulation and suggest a number of meaningful methodologies for selecting, developing and mixing sound so that, as a composer, you can make something musical. Wishart mentions musical composition, but for many the experience of shaping sounds will have little to do with the pitches and rhythms of Western classical or popular music. That is not to say that the music we all listen to will not have an effect upon us and will not influence how we work with sound in the raw; it is just that if we try to make a ‘musical composition’ of pitches and rhythms with raw recorded sounds, the chances are it will sound terrible.

So let us throw ‘music’ out of the window but bear in mind ‘musical’; something with phrases, starts, ends, middles, highs, lows, louds, softs, breaths, pace, shape, form, emotion and energy. Think about working with sound like a potter works with clay. Take a sound and mould it to the shape you want. On some occasions that may be a fixed shape; at other times, we may end up with something completely random and fluid. What is it then? Clay, yes, but how do we describe the shape? As soon as we start describing things in terms of abstract details (thin, curved, round) and making references to other objects and emotions that have personal relationships with us (lively, frightening) the sooner we get a grip on how we can develop a structure.

As this book progresses we will look at how we might define a sound. It is unfortunate that in a book we have to define sounds with words, but the flip side here is that the process is quite liberating as it forces analysis.¹ We will listen to sounds and consider developing them over time. Time plays a huge role in the structure of any piece of sonic art. When we come to mixing sounds (one after the other, one on top of the other) we are shaping sound in time: sound is not just heard as A to B, but felt over a duration.

Having thought about describing sound, we will look at techniques to develop sound, techniques that work well with the salient properties that are contained within our sounds. We will look at a number of different software packages and concrete, usable examples will be given. All the software used will be open source and therefore free to install and run on almost any computer.

Finally, we will think about how we might tie sounds and techniques together and how we can build up a fluid set of skills that enable us to quickly hear the acousmatic-potential of a sound and develop it into something new. We suggest that it might be possible to work ‘against’ the sound, reacting for the most part in a negative fashion, always being resistive to what a sound wants to do. For example, if a sound is noisy, the chances are that over time it might want to become less noisy. (It is certainly easier for it to become less noisy than more noisy, though there are no hard and fast rules here). So we will outline a principle of defining sounds across poles (light/dark, soft/hard, high/low, fast/slow) and suggest, for example, that if a sound is slow, you may want to consider techniques that speed it up.

So if you want to get cracking and really jump in at the deep end, Chapter 2 might be a good place to start. If you want to see how techniques and sounds interact, Chapter 3 will help. This book is meant to be both a user guide and a textbook. What it is not is a piece of scholarly literature philosophising on the nature of sonic art. It is vital to note that if you do jump in at the deep end, the life preservers and water-wings are the texts and compositions of the past. Listening to music and reading supplementary literature will help make your journey as a composer faster, more exciting and infinitely more pleasurable.

1.1.2 Context of the book

Given the number of composers manipulating sound to all sorts of ends, and given the huge array of software tools on offer, it is hardly surprising that many have put some of their thoughts on paper. However, the vast majority of these publications are heavily academic. For readings concerning the relationship between theory and practice, John Young (Young, 2007) sums up very effectively the quite personal relationship a composer has with his/her sounds. And he mentions a small number of composers we consider to be highly influential in sonic art theory and practice, composers that have taken the time to write about what they do: Trevor Wishart (1986; 1994; 1996), Denis Smalley (1986; 1996; 1997; 2007), Simon Emmerson (1986; 2007), Jonty Harrison (1998; 1999) and Leigh Landy (1991; 1994; 2007; 2012). It may also be useful to reflect on recent publications that deal with sound design (Farnell, 2010). You may find quite a lot of terminology drawn from Denis Smalley’s academic writings (words such as gesture, texture, utterance, energy, motion, space, environment), not because this book needs to be bound in academic terminology but simply because they are the right words for the job at hand.

Additionally, we can see numerous books that deal directly (or in passing) with the techniques of sound manipulation, synthesis and sound design. Miller Puckette’s (2007) software Pure Data (Pd) is one of the key resources we have used to make toolkits for sound manipulation. A more focused introduction to this software can be found in Johannes Kriedler’s book on the same software (2009). Having access to a book is great: fortunately, both the above texts are available as free downloadable pdf documents. We have constructed a number of toolkits that you can use and develop. Our toolkits exist in Pure Data and Csound, using an excellent interface designed by Stephen Yi called Blue (Yi, 2008). Links for downloads of all software are available from the University of Sheffield Sound Studios web pages www.shef.ac.uk/usss. Intimate knowledge of software tools over the years allows you to be flexible when designing sound manipulations. However, this book only assumes a ‘working’ knowledge of the computer (how to get sound in and out, how to edit a stereo file, and perhaps how to mix two files together). The computer is your instrument and it is important to practise its scales and arpeggios in order to gain proficiency. A very recent primer in Pure Data comes in the form of Andy Farnell’s excellent book Designing Sound (Farnell, 2010), and his code examples are available from the MIT Press website. My book draws upon all the texts mentioned above but tries to keep technique and language grounded in practical ‘what does it sound like to you?’ terminology. Chapter 2 should enable you to investigate any recorded sound and try basic manipulations such as speed changes, filters and delays, thinking about the results in terms of ‘bigger, smaller, louder, softer’ and other polar opposites. Hopefully this book becomes something that you can dip into from time to time, as well as read wholesale should you so wish.

It is important to say a word about right and wrong in sonic art composition. Although the composer is in control, unless you want to play your music only to yourself, you should consider your audience. It is important to listen to your music as others might hear it otherwise you tend towards self-affirmation (you know what is about to happen so when it does, you are satisfied). Play your music to others during the course of your composition and be prepared for frank comments. Normally what feels right is right, but most importantly you need to know why it is right. It may well be easier to start off working out what is wrong with the music that you are listening to. (Medical discovery works in this way for the most part – reaction (to illness) rather than anticipation and precaution.) This book arises from countless handouts and wiki pages supporting courses in electroacoustic music composition at the University of Sheffield. Students start ‘messing around with sound’ in the first year with only their previous school studies to support them. Whether they can identify the right and wrong by the end of year three is irrelevant. Their final-year pieces are living proof that something has changed, decisions have been taken, understandings made. We hope to speed this process further still by suggesting some interesting ‘recipes’ for sound manipulation. To back up our suggestions we will provide a number of ‘reasonings’ based upon th...