BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Radio & Music >

Acousmatic music

  
 
telyn
22:23 / 16.12.02
I'm at uni and having quite a struggle with acousmatic music. I have to write the damn stuff but I'm not quite sure how to approach it.

A brief explanation:

Acousmatic music is made from samples of traditionally non-musical things like saucepans, random noise, bicycle sounds, voices, natural sounds etc... anything you can record (though use of instrumental sound is rare). The desendant of 'music concrete', acousmatica is made on tape/computer and to be heard/diffused on speakers only. This genre is named acousmatic because the original sources of sound are hidden: physically (the original sound object is not present) and also aurally (source material disguised through processing).

Acousmatic music focuses far more on sound quality and texture than pitch or note pattern, and has much more in common with texturally based music like Godspeed or Mogwai than anything remotely classical.

Some acousmatic names: Parmegiani, Bayle, Dhomont, Harrison, Normandeau, and of course Stockhausen.

I played some acousmatic music to my housemates and they just laughed. To be fair, that particular track did sound nonsensicle, but I'm not sure of the criteria for 'coherency' or 'sense' or 'good' is with relation to acousmatic music. I was wondering whether the idea of 'sound compositions' made sense to anyone here.

Any ideas?
 
 
Matthew Fluxington
22:59 / 16.12.02
That's not really my tastes or interests, but you should include something about Bernhard Glückman and his "air mixes", whom the music scholar Charles R. Martin has written extensively about.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
00:23 / 17.12.02
Perhaps you need to focus a little on the fact that there's more going on intellectually with this kind of music - or rather, there's pretentions of intellectualism going on there. Take Dhomont's Frankenstein Symphony for example: there is a somewhat monster-movie feel to it, but it's also intellectualised: Dhomont is stitching together passages from already-existing pieces by other people, including his students, to create a Frankenstein's monster. It's simple tape editing processes, but there's more to it than that - there's usually more theory behind it. Stuff that comes out on Impreintes Digitales (I think their stuff's at this website) is very much like that, the tape-edit stuff particularly, though the idea pervades pretty much what's on their roster. (The Canot-Camping disc is pretty fab, incidentally.)

I don't know if it's just me, but these assemblage, crouching composer hidden soundsource things do tend to aim for the wank rather than the heart more often than not. It can seem... less honest? I would also hesitate to suggest that it's analogous or has much in common with GY!BE or Mogwai because they are, despite the length of tracks, more rooted to classical composition bases (ie: start here: go here: do this: XYLOPHONES!: ROCK!) than acousmatics. Maybe acousmatics are more like literature than music? Or painting? In the same way the Nude Descending A Staircase painting was once described as "an explosion in a shingle factory", you can still see what's meant to be described, visually, through absence, or through juxtaposition. The same applies in the acousmatic stuff I've heard.

Fuck, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Are you going to include Varese? That's probably where I'd stem from. Perhaps you can make something out of the insular and somewhat tribal nature of those practising the style - it's very much a beardstroky land.
 
 
telyn
11:15 / 17.12.02
Luckily I don't have to write an essay, but I do have to compose a 3-7 min piece in collaboration with a dancer. The course I'm doing is called Sound and Movement and was created to explore links between dance and music, the choreography and the music being created in parallel.

these assemblage, crouching composer hidden soundsource things do tend to aim for the wank rather than the heart

That is definitely one of my experiences, of acousmatic and New classical music as well. New music in particular can often very intellectualised. Acousmatica that I heard and enjoyed tends to be very textural, and while often emotionally dry it is more accessible. Hence the reference to GY!BE et al - even though the mediums are different the creators can be aiming for the same effects: a sense of organic growth, very detailed active textures, an almost dramatic sense of timing.

Comparing acousmatica to literture or art - not sure about literature, but you certainly could describe it as 'sonic sculpture'. That would capture the importance of texture and shape, and the way in which sound in manipulated (like something plastic to be reformed and altered, and also the use of juxtaposition to highlight similar or differing qualities). Also, the end product is fixed and doesn't change with time. That is something very important indeed - no need for interpretative performance.

I get the impression that the choice and use of sound objects is often instinctive, not intellectual. Other students + tutors have remarked that 'what you do by accident is often the best'. Obviously there is some element of planning, but working in such a trial and error way acousmatica can be seen as an attempt to move away from intellectualisation. One of the most influential and restrictive things about the medium of New music is the need for notation, and the fact that classical musical notation doesn't indicate sound quality, only pitch and rhythm. The need for notation forces some level of intellectualistation, if only to turn the sounds in your head into something musicians can read of a page. Acousmatic music is free of that, which is maybe its most important quality.
 
 
The Strobe
11:53 / 17.12.02
I don't know much about this kind of thing, but am curious and finding the discussion useful, so will add two p.

Is it still meant to be listened to interpretatively? You pointed out that the lack of notation and fixed performance interpretation (embodied by its existence solely on tape/recorded material) is one of its strengths. But if there's only one way to play it, does that mean there's only one way to listen to it? I'd probably guess not, because you can interpret most things in a variety of ways... but does the single, recorded version suggest a single meaning the composer intended? There's always unintentional meaning or significance that might be unconscious or might be accidental in art... but often a composer can believe a piece to have multiple interpretations, or just the one he started with; original intent.

The ability to perform a piece in different ways (interpretative performance) opens up new interpretations. Ones the composer might not have been aware of initially, but might still actually like. You can see this in drama most obviously, because it's the next most interpretative art form after music and dance I can think of; different directors take different tacks. This, in the playwright's eyes, is not necessarily a bad thing (and if it is, they specify so).

So what I'm trying to postulate, in a hideously roundabout way, is whether or not that fact it has fixed performance suggests there's a "right" and "wrong" answer to it, in the understanding. I don't know how important this is, but especially since you're composing it, it might be something to consider; is the interpretation you have, when you've written your piece, the only one it can take?

Other things... coherency. I'd say all music does have a form of coherency. But coherency takes on different forms, and from the sound of things, acousmatic music does not share the same kind of coherency as more classically structured stuff, as Rothkoid pointed out. I'd hope that it would have coherency, anyhow, becuase it describes itself as "music" and not "sound". Sound doesn't necessarily need coherency, but if you're scultping music out of it, then you're imposing a form of coherency (no matter how strange or processed) onto it. I can see why you're not sure what the criteria for "coherency/sense/good" are... and I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't the same for individual acousmatic pieces. So perhaps in composition, and from what acousmatic music you've listened to and enjoyed, you might try to decide what your criteria for those things are. If it's coherent to the composer, then there's some chance it'll be coherent (in a way, eventually) to the listeners. It sounds like a very personal project and style of music, and whilst there's obviously enough to listen to and be inspired by, I think at the same time you're looking for your own angle in on it, no matter how strange or initially un-related to acousmatic music it is.

I'm not sure the trial+error thing is that much of a move away from intellectualisation. It's obviously a form of music that relies on trial+error a lot in its creation, simply because, well, it does, doesn't it? It has to? But what you find through that trial and error might then be placed back into the intellectual framework. Meaning, intent, doesn't have to be there from the word go. You start off making things sound nice, or just playing with a single sound, and something emerges... and at some point it stops being experimentation and becomes a composition, with intent and direction, and then the academics can go off and analyse that. I don't know a lot about dance, but that might have a strong link to choreography - how does a choreography start? Here, they're not given music to dance to (from what you've described); they have as much a hand in the final piece of art (the dance AND music) as you do. But I'd possibly imagine that choreography has a similar start in trial and error, working out what looks good or has the right feelings attached, and then beginning to structure individual concepts into a more polished "work".

Finally, just an interesting quotation I read yesterday in an interview with Guy Sigsworth, about a "band" who you and other Barbetypes might be interested in (or even have heard of):

"I've really been inspired by this amazing avant-garde German band called Oval. I just fell in love with their music. My favourite tune by them is called 'Do While', from the album 94 Diskont — buy it, if you can find it! Anyway, the only musical instrument they use is the compact disc player. They put paint on the CDs, pull Stanley knives across them, and everything, and then they re-record the effects of these fractured CDs. It's surprisingly beautiful, and often reminds me of early Steve Reich."

I have a recent interview with Oval I might dig out. They're now doing installation stuff, with interactive CD roms, and entirely bizarre, artistic interfaces, where the viewer/listener fiddles and the music evolves from the old loop-scratched structure. I'll have a hunt.

I appear to have just been rambling, but hope it might have raised some relevant points.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
12:46 / 17.12.02
Harmony: the literature ref was probably more in line with something like imagist poetry, maybe.

I'd not been able to tell if you had to write a piece or an essay. Will have more of a think. I think you should talk with the dancer about the sort of physicality you'll have first, and THEN maybe look at texturing around it.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:52 / 17.12.02
Harmony we had a discussion about the expectation of music just happening, I don't know if you remember it, well I think you actually do just have to reduce this to noise and let it happen. If you find the music difficult to conceive of then create the dance and build the sound around it because this should be fun to do. You can play with it a bit and just let the ridiculous take over and more to the point if you want you can stick in a chorus of mooing cows! My god the possibilities are endless.
 
 
grant
15:12 / 17.12.02
How would something like "Stomp!" fit in?

Or the weird instruments used by Tom Waits and Spike Jones? (Didn't Spike play a bicycle once?)

Personally, I think anything that makes a sound can make music, as long as you shape it somehow. That's why God gave us reel-to-reel tape recorders and loop programs like Acid. Especially if you need something danceable.
 
 
telyn
23:16 / 17.12.02
chorus of mooing cows - well a phd student made a piece about his bicycle. Cows might make everyone laugh though, and that would never be allowed.

I think anything that makes a sound can make music - very John Cage (and I think Stockhausen but can't find the quote). Yes that philosophy is definitely part of acousmatica. You have to use original sound material in a musical/gestural way, and probably alter it (so you didn't get too bored) but you can use anything. With the processing tools we have it is possible to make anything sound pretty much like anything in a vague way. Except the human voice. That is very hard to disguise or replicate.

specially if you need something danceable - apparently I don't, well not according to my lecturers. It's meant to be "Sound and Movement" not music and dance. Specifically, we are not meant to have a regular rhythmm throughout the piece (so not like actual dance music then). To be fair, it will probably be a more interesting work with contrasting sections of rhythm/no rhythm. Gives the dancers more to work with.

Stomp - well the person I am working with spent a lot of time choreographing without music, so instead made noises using body slaps, foot stamps etc. I am going to try and incorporate this somehow, leaving spaces in the music for a kind of imitation between music and dancer.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
01:50 / 18.12.02
For what it's worth, most of the acousmatic stuff I've heard tends to tell tales of a journey, either in space or in time. There's lots of stuff that either examines one moment and blows it out, explodes it so you can see (well, hear, but you know what I'm getting at) everything that's going on at that one moment - or else it's about a section of travel: a to b, day to night, life to death, whatever. Because it's not as easily broken into verse/chorus/verse, maybe this sort of approach - picking an idea and saying "yeah! We're gonna do a walk to the shops, musically, and try to convey the feeling and activities of said walk" might help out a bit more. I guess it seems to me that there's more emphasis placed on the idea of working to a theme or an aesthetic ideal than anything else; it can sound like shit as long as it's true to your walk-to-the-shop idea.

Maybe.

Also: wouldn't incorporating dancer noise as part of the "score" be cheating a bit, in strict acousmatic sense? Unless you make your piece about the dancer - have the dancer dancing against a background of themselves dancing? You could do that say twice, and you'd end up with something a little what you get if you stand in-between two mirrors - a dance that stretches off into acoustic eternity? I imagine it'd be a pretty neat percussive-kinda thing, which you could spark up by bits and pieces found on the way to the practice space: sounds of buses, or birds, or the sound of the key in the lock - that kind of thing.
 
 
grant
13:01 / 18.12.02
Modified cow moos and whoopee cushions on the dancer's feet.

It's about the effect of methane and the beef industry on global warming.

Call the piece "Greenhouse."
 
 
at the scarwash
17:29 / 18.12.02
Hey, here's something. Maybe make your piece completely out of noises your "movement" (now that's wank--it's fucking dance if you're moving and not going anywhere) partner makes. Have s/he/it (didn't read pronoun thread, sorry) wear different shoes and mic them in different ways, have s/he/it move at different speeds, close mic breathing and any vocal utterances made, and dump the aforementioned into a decent multitracker, cut, copy, paste et la bas. I've been getting interesting results that way for some recent soundtrack work.

And of course Acoustimatic music makes sense. But does it have to be about something, or just be interesting?
 
 
telyn
23:14 / 18.12.02
When we (music students and tutors) first met for this course, it became obvious that most of us had interpreted 'sound and movement' as 'music and movement', ie instrumental music, not acousmatica. Out of our group of six, there is only one person who really knows what she is doing with acousmatic music. The rest of us are bumbling along (or like me, attempting to understand this new medium). As a result we are allowed to write instrumentally based works, or use instrumental sound sources.

No one has chosen to make music for dancers using dancers sounds - quite surprising really. I was the closest, considering using dancers feet sounds. We were discouraged from using sounds requiring external recordings, so most people brought their instrument into the studio (I have harp sounds to play with).

And of course Acoustimatic music makes sense. But does it have to be about something, or just be interesting?

Well, I have had quite a struggle with acousmatic music on such a basic level. Rather, when I listen to a piece of instrumental music, what leaps out at me is the harmony. Pitch and pitch relations make sense in such a vivid way that without them I am really bewildered and lost. This is something I am trying to rectify, but it is taking me a while to learn not to listen for pitch, just to listen to sound quality.

As for the use of subject matter, I think as long as it works it's ok. Doesn't matter if it has a specific subject or not. As has been mentioned before, narrative or abstract subject matter is something that rarely translates well through music.

I still like the idea of 'Greenhouse'
 
 
Tryphena Absent
23:37 / 18.12.02
See mooing cows - way forward
 
 
at the scarwash
04:11 / 19.12.02
But doesn't any conjunction of sounds exist in some relationship to one another that is analogous to harmony and melody? I find myself humming along with the most atonal musics in my collection, idly whistling the most abstract Ornette Coleman solos while waiting for customers at work. I think that the most difficult thing about acousmatic music would be for some people to escape the referents created by recognizable soundsources ("oh, okay, that's a harp, and that's either flesh being pulled from a cadaver or the peeling of a grapefruit"), but for me, sounds are interesting in and of themselves, and the relations between them can always be musical. Am I not understanding what acousmatic music is? Has anyone listed any interesting composers that I should discover?
 
 
telyn
19:19 / 19.12.02
I think you have a very good grasp of acousmatic music (but I know I don't). Since I realised I had to write an acousmatic piece, I've spent quite a lot of time listening to the sounds around me, trying to just focus on the quality of the sound. With most music I listen to what the notes mean harmonically, not the sound quality of the notes.
I recognise this is a really one-dimensional way of listening, and I am making efforts to change what I listen for in all areas of music.

(the composers I know of are listed in my topic post)

Do you consider instrumental music to be a very specialised form of acousmatic music?

What do you consider to be music?
 
 
at the scarwash
20:24 / 19.12.02
I consider music to be a sequence of sound and silence (it could be argued that there is never actually any silence in a piece of music, and this is significant) either consciously produced and arranged or simply curated and declared to be music. Of course, in between these poles there's a lot of absolute crap, and there could even be quite a few works that might not qualify as music to me. I guess these latter pieces would probably include a lot of conceptual works on done-to-death themes. But I think I'm one who'd find a lot of things musical that other people would find noise or less.

I also think that looking at sounds harmonically is not at all a limited way of thinking. In any kind of music, all aspects of a sound will have an ultimate impact on the unfolding of the piece. This idea of sound quality you describe is analogous to "Do I write this passage for cello or steam-calliope?" "Power drill or cassette tape-of-AM-Radio-weather-report-that's-been-left-in-the-sun-for-two-weeks?"
Which one is more suited for the piece?
 
 
grant
20:48 / 19.12.02
Y'know, if you can't use recordings and you have to do something on a stage, it might be fun having a musician (a harpist if you like) come out with a harp, a music stand and a metal folding chair, and just start adjusting things. Scraping the chair on the floor. Knocking the stand against the chair. Thumping the chair seat. That sort of thing.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
21:32 / 19.12.02
For your piece, though: you have to present it on tape?
 
 
telyn
00:41 / 20.12.02
Our works will be presented as a performance in the university dance theatre sometime late March / early April. I would expect our lecturers to video the performance and then mark from that for the dancers, but also to refer to the final sound file for musicians. We are only marked on our half of the collaboration, so my mark is independent of my partners'. There is at least one person who will be writing music to perform live at the performance (another allowance they made for unclear course description). In her case I think more attention wil be paid to the video rather than the final soundfile.

I don't think the lecturers really know what kind of work they are going to get from us, the entire course has seemed very 'let's set this up and see what happens'. Very exciting, but also very unnerving. There aren't clear criteria, or many examples of this type of work.

Oh yeah any sound has a specific frequency pattern (I forgot about that - cheers). Do you know if the sound quality can just be described usign frequency content (Spectral analysis) or if there is some other property that can change?

I'm looking forward to playing with the recording of vocal harmonics I made. You make them by making a really 'dirty' note (basically as close to white noise as you can) in the lower part of your voice and then use different vowel shapes to act as a filter. It can take a while to get it right but it's dead wierd when you do.

Acousmatic music makes a lot more sense if you consider it as a phenomena of the brain finding patterns in sound. Acousmatica is often non-metred, and so dramatic timing plays a much greater role than music with a distinct rhythm. 'All music is gesture' - I've heard this said before.
 
 
The Strobe
13:11 / 20.12.02
What do you mean by "sound quality"?

The purity of it?

The texture of it?

The volume of it?

These are qualities a sound can have.

Similarly, a sound can be "high quality" simply because it is sampled at a high samplerate, but that doesn't mean there's not a place for low-samplerate stuff. Most early hip-hop wouldn't be the same if the drum-samplers hadn't been 12, not 16 bit - the lower resolution leads to a fatter, crunchier, more punchy sound. It's why people hold onto Sp-12s rather than replacing everything around them with Protools 192HD rigs.

Are you letting this affect the way you listen to music too much? I mean, it's a fascinating new direction, etc... but if you'd signed onto a different paper with a different speciality of modern music attached, would you have become convinced that you'd been listening "wrong" before and start listening as that style demanded? You describe changing the way you listen to music as a result of this, but I'm not sure it's entirely NECESSARY. Yes, it's interesting, and certainly useful - but can you turn it on and off at will? Can you stop hearing sound quality if you don't want to, or is all your listening going to get hung up on it? I used to get hung up listening to technical aspects of music without ever feeling it - now I can turn it on and on at will, and it's the greatest discovery I ever made. You need to hear music with different hats on, not every hat all at once. Or else it gets too much. For anybody.

But yes: can you please define "sound quality"? Spectal analysis might give you a frequency range of a sound, and you can see where its strong harmonics etc are, I think anyhow. But is that the quality of the sound? To call a violin sound "glassy" or "fragile" or "brittle" is to describe its quality too. What is this "other property" bar frequency you are trying to find? I mean, pitch and volume, there are two qualities for you. What others do you want? Do you want sound to just condense itself into two quantifiable properties, graph it X-Y, bigger is better quality, ta-da? It won't do that for you in the slightest. I think the phrase "sound quality" is very vague, and trying to listen for it seems equally vague and pointless. I don't think this is what you mean, but I'm not sure what it is you DO mean by the phrase.

(Interesting about vowel harmonics - different vowel sounds to act as a filter - just like a vocoder, then... (though I believe the technical term is "modulator").
 
 
Tryphena Absent
14:56 / 20.12.02
I always get the feeling that you're way too intellectually connected to the music that you listen to or even just hear, as a musician it's not a bad thing to have that relationship with sound, but as a listener and someone who enjoys music you have to recognise that what you like isn't necessarily dependant on its structure. People have this obscure relationship to the sounds they listen to, personally I can't explain why I like or need to hear certain songs, it's just there. Stop over-analysing, stop composing, get a load of sounds you like and throw them together in some weird and glorious way and then think about what you've done. It might not be right but you'll be halfway there for the failing.
 
 
grant
15:01 / 20.12.02
Sound has frequency (which is pitch), amplitude (volume), and waveform (timbre). Sound editing programs are good at altering the first two but are generally only tweaking the third. Changing timbre takes work.
 
 
The Strobe
16:45 / 20.12.02
I thought it was timbre. (Wonderfully word).
 
 
telyn
16:27 / 21.12.02
Ok I haven't worked out my responses to everything yet but I figured I'd post this much.

What do you mean by "sound quality"?

When I used the phrase 'sound quality' and said I was listening for it, I didn't mean I was listening for a sonic ideal. That wasn't what I meant at all. When I use the word 'quality' I mean

An inherent or distinguishing characteristic; a property.

(thank you dictionary.com) I am not trying to listen for some specific thing, rather I am paying attention to what something sounds like, what constitutes that noise. Especially non-instrumental noises. Normally I would ignore them, but in this case that would be like a painter discarding all the paints that weren't blue.

Spectal analysis … But is that the quality of the sound?

Spectral analysis would give a quantitative description of the sound, but probably wouldn't tell you a huge amount about the sound directly. Instead you could use it to compare two distinct sounds and see what they had in common. A spectral analysis wouldn’t tell you what you hear, or what a sound might mean to you (associations, emotional effect etc). I would expect S.A. to be a useful tool, nothing more.

what you like isn't necessarily dependant on its structure
I don't often think about structure when I listen to a piece of music. The structure of a piece of music takes time and effort to work out, structure is possibly the least obvious characteristic of music upon first listening.

not every hat all at once
That's obvious. You can only focus properly on one aspect at a time.

Changing timbre takes work, and the only methods I have of changing timbre are various processing tools. We have EQs, pitch accumulators, pitch shift, time stretch and a host of other devices to play with, but they often give a very ‘alien’ feel to the sound (which isn't generally what I want).
 
 
telyn
01:34 / 23.12.02
...but if you'd signed onto a different paper with a different speciality of modern music attached, would you have become convinced that you'd been listening "wrong" before and start listening as that style demanded? You describe changing the way you listen to music as a result of this, but I'm not sure it's entirely NECESSARY?

Yes it is necessary, this is why:

a, There is a difference between a new style and a new medium. This is a new medium, why should I expect how I listen to pitched stuff to work for listening to stuff without pitches?

b,

I always get the feeling that you're way too intellectually connected to the music that you listen to or even just hear,

This describes exactly what I am doing wrong. For a long time I have tried to analyse any music I hear around me, partially for aural practice, partially for fun.

I wasn't taking in a piece of music as a whole, or listening to what it sounds like, I was just listening to what it ‘means’ in terms of harmony and voice leading. That is a very one sided view point.

Can you stop hearing sound quality if you don't want to, or is all your listening going to get hung up on it? I used to get hung up listening to technical aspects of music without ever feeling it - now I can turn it on and on at will, and it's the greatest discovery I ever made.

Most music I listen to for pleasure I do not analyse as I listen to it. Maybe I do it once, but then no more. I really enjoy taking it apart, putting it back together and then I can listen again and feel the flow of the music so clearly. That’s the way I relate to music, to get inside it and see how it ticks and then be able to ignore all that and just enjoy it in a very intimate fashion. The problem I had with acousmatic music is not being able to do that, to get inside of it in the same way.

I know what I have to do now, which is just stop listening for anything in particular. This is what you were telling me I should do (ie "don't listen intellectually") and also what I shouldn't do ("don't change your listening just for this"). Well I know why I should so it's all ok.

personally I can't explain why I like or need to hear certain songs, it's just there.

Sometimes there is something specific that I can say 'I like that' but then I don't know why I like that specific thing. No one knows why music works. That’s what I hoped I would find out at uni, but my lecturers are in the dark as much as I am. Attempting to write music is one of the best ways to understand as much as you can - you have to go exploring. That's how I am aiming to write, trial and error. I don't have another method. I'll have lots of attempts at random mixtures, leave them a bit, and then listen and decide if I like them. Not very intellectual at all!
 
 
telyn
20:19 / 01.04.03
Well the final performance for this course was last friday, and it went ok. I just wanted to say thank you to y'all for talking to me about it and that it did make a difference. I finally twigged what the hell I was meant to be doing with the sound, and even if my execution of my idea was poor at least I had some grasp of what/why/how. In the end I decided it was easiest to think of sounds as if they had a taste, and that to arrange a set of sounds was like planning a menu very carefully.
 
  
Add Your Reply