Soundscape Composition as Global Music: Electroacoustic music as soundscape

Abstract

The author covers the background of soundscape composition, as initiated by the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University, and soundscape documentation as an activity that is being increasingly practised worldwide. Today there are two striking manifestations of this work: the increasing globalisation of the electroacoustic community, and the increasing sophistication of digital techniques applied to soundscape composition. In addition, the tradition of listening to environmental soundscapes as if they were music is inverted to suggest listening to electroacoustic music as if it were soundscape. What analytical tools and insights would result? The theoretical concepts introduced in soundscape studies and acoustic communication are summarised and applied first to media and digital gaming environments, noting the extensions of both their sound worlds and the related listening attitudes they provoke in terms of analytical and distracted listening. Traditional approaches to acousmatic and soundscape analysis are compared for their commonalities and differences, the latter being mainly their relative balance of attention towards inner and outer complexity. The types of electroacoustic music most amenable to a soundscape based analysis are suggested, along with brief examples of pieces to which such analysis might be directed.

Progress and outlook for soundscape ecology

“…、建筑设计 (Thompson, 2004)、音 乐作曲 (Truax, 2008)等领域均有应用。20世纪60年 代末, 加拿大作曲家Raymond Murray Schafer主持 实施了首个声景研究项目"The World Soundscape Project", 并创立了声学生态学(acoustic ecology), 呼吁人们关注环境中声音及其与人类活动的相互 作用关系 (Schafer, 1969, 1970)。 1987年, 美国音乐学 家和声景生态学家Bernie Krause (1987提出了"声 学栖息地理论" (acoustical-habitat theory), 认为每 个生态系统有其独特的、反映其内部特征的生物声 学谱(acoustic bio-spectrum)。2011年, 美国普渡大学 的Bryan Pijanowski和意大利乌尔比诺大学的Almo Farina将声学生态学与景观生态学的理论框架结合, 主 张 研 究 声 景 的 时 空 分 布 模 式 和 生 态 过 程 (Pijanowski et al, 2011b), 并在此研究框架和研究内 容的基础上提出了一个新的学科方向--声景生 态 学 (soundscape ecology), 也 有 学 者 称 其 为 "ecoacoustic" (Farina & Gage, 2017)。 Pijanowski等(2011b)沿用从声音来源角度描述 声景构成的方法 (Krause, 1987), 将声景分为3个组 成 部 分 : 生 物 声 音 (biophony), 物 理 环 境 声 音 (geophony, 如风声、雨声、流水声), 以及人造声音 (anthrophony)。声景生态学研究声景在不同时空维 度上的分布和变化模式, 及其与生物和非生物环境 之间的关系, 以此揭示其所反映的人类活动与生态 过程 (Pijanowski et al, 2011b) (Sueur et al, 2008) 通过将音频切割为若干等时间间隔的声音片段, 计算每个时间片段内的振幅值A(t), 然后求振幅 值A(t)的Shannon均匀度(Shannon evenness):…”

Sound, Listening and Place: The aesthetic dilemma

“…I should point out in passing that in the traditional definition of 'soundscape' (dating from the 1978 edition) in the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology (Truax 1999), it is emphasised that the soundscape depends on listeners' understanding and interpretation of a sonic environment, and that it can refer to both acoustic soundscapes and electroacoustic compositions interpreted as such. Elsewhere, I have argued that the everyday soundscape is becoming increasingly electroacoustic in its constituents, and contemporary electroacoustic composition, particularly with the multi-channel format, is becoming more environmental (Truax 2008).…”

Sound in COLLADA

“…The image renderer used was Unity (http://unity3d.com/unity/) the sound renderer was Fmod (http://www.fmod.org/). Our implementation choices have been inspired by the analysis of soundscapes [12,13,14,15], and in particular the video game Prototype [3].…”