Towards a Taxonomy of Electroacoustic Music : Dialectic Continuums as Compositional Tools (original) (raw)
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Towards a Taxonomy of Electroacoustic Music: Dualistic Continuums as Compositional Tools
SSSP 2013, De Montfort University: conference proceedings
Within electroacoustic music much attention has been paid to issues of dualism and categorisation. Two prominent examples of dualistic categorisation being: Simon Emmerson’s creation of a language grid (1986) and Denis Smalley’s spectromorphology (1986), with particular reference to its emphasis on gesture/texture. These discussions are a product of the view that the conventional notation and classification system used in traditional Western Art music is inadequate. Leigh Landy places spectromorphology with the language grid and many other prospective means of classification and analysis (including dualistic pairs) stating that: ‘a more rigorous classification system is needed’ (2008). This paper seeks to enter this debate by highlighting the potential value of a taxonomy of electroacoustic music characteristics. My proposed taxonomic framework is composed of various dualistic continuums, incorporating and expanding on those explored by Emmerson, Smalley and others. These continuums are then grouped into ‘family trees’ such as language, performance mode etc. In addition continuums such as: live/fixed media, studio/field recording, abstract/abstracted language contain fluid movement between the two extremes and it is the centre point of such continuums that provide the material for my compositional output. This paper focuses on the fledgling taxonomy as well as my use of such a system as an aid to compositional decision-making. Furthermore, I will introduce how such a framework could be useful for analysis, pedagogy and composition.
The analysis of electroacoustic music: the differing needs of its genres and categories
Expanding the Horizon of Electroacoustic Music Analysis
This paper reports on our (Arts and Humanities Research Council funded) project New Multimedia Tools for Electroacoustic Music Analysis, designed for a range of genres, drawing together existing methods, engaging the latest interactive and hypermedia tools, and applying them to compare their strengths and weaknesses. This depends on mutually interactive questions such as which tools/approaches, for which works/genres, for which users, with what intentions. We will report on newly developed applications-EAnalysis (Pierre Couprie), OREMA (Online Repository for Electroacoustic Music Analysis) (Michael Gatt)-a forum for sharing and discussing analyses-and preparations for a major new publication 'Expanding the Horizon of Electroacoustic Music Analysis' (CUP). We initially divided this field into genres or 'practices' (e.g. acousmatic, electronica, glitch); but these have hybridised continuously-an installation may include algorithmic generation, be interactive, and use soundscape and acousmatic materials. We need a range of tools for analysis. Descriptions refer to materials or to methods of organisation, but this distinction cannot be maintained. From the listener's viewpoint, does knowledge of a generative algorithm influence perception and hence analysis? Analysis may include socially situated characteristics of production, perception and consumption. Glitch and hacking works analysed from their sound alone would surely lose a substantial part of their meaning. How to capture these additional dimensions, including emotional response? What other traces should run in parallel to standard transcription? Any analytical procedure must balance the gravitational pull of genre with a networked, relativistic world of characteristics which reconfigure depending on initial questions.
Contemporary Music Review, 2016
Register, Dialect, Convolution and 'Crosstalk': reflections on '… the zones of influence and hybridity between electroacoustic, acousmatique music, techno and IDM' Mike Vaughan This paper explores the hybridisation of musical elements, particularly between those that foreground the use of technology across popular and art music. In its original form, the paper was presented to a conference Embracing rhythm…welcoming abstraction (…on the zones of influence and hybridity between electroacoustic, acousmatique music, techno and IDM) held at Salford University in November 2013, and was an intended overview of the topic. In this context, '... zones of influence and hybridity' between different repertoires that are generally understood to occupy different registral strata are viewed primarily as a form of environmental adaptation, expressed through the evolution of musical language. The paper also considers the motivations for attempting to reconcile, through creative practice, the conflicting meanings and aesthetic frameworks signified by different iconic musical materials and idiomatic compositional procedures. In examining these motivations and practices it draws on Barthes' essay musica practica, to explore the significance to the creative artist of the network of relationships that link the different musics we compose or produce to the music that we might listen to or perform, or have encountered during academic training.
Between Plasticity and Performance: an ontological account of electroacoustic music
Electroacoustic music occupies a curious position within the arts. On the one hand, it appears to be aligned with the plastic arts, such as painting and sculpture; composers often refer to the haptic, kinaesthetic and even proprioceptive nature of their compositional acts in terms of crafting, moulding and sculpting sounds in the studio. On the other hand, electroacoustic music appears be aligned with the performing arts, such as drama, dance and most forms of instrumental music; the proliferation of diffusion systems and the increasing sophistication of tools for real-time spatialisation lend credence to associations with traditional notions of performance practice. This paper seeks to demystify this ostensible paradox. It starts considering an ontological distinction that holds between the plastic arts and the performing arts, goes on to consider whether electroacoustic music is ontologically similar to one or the other, and concludes with the following point: electroacoustic music may be characterised by either plasticity or performance but, in many cases, it falls between these polarities. This observation may help to explain why some philosophers, aestheticians and musicologists have struggled to accept electroacoustic music whilst enabling one to identify where the unique value of this exciting and uncompromising art-form resides.
Through a glass darkly: a critique of the influence of linguistics on theories of music
Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 2007
If music is treated as a kind of 'language', then it makes sense for musicology to borrow from linguistics in order to define exactly what sort of a 'language' music is. However, not only does this avoid the challenge of defining music on its own terms, it also brings across a whole lot of unnecessary historical baggage. Through a close analysis of selected texts, the current article critiques some recent work in musicology, showing how it is based on a far too narrow understanding of what constitutes linguistics, i.e. basically formal linguistics. It points out some of the dangers of interdisciplinary work such as Brown's (2001) 'musilanguage' model, and shows how a less than careful borrowing of linguistic concepts can vitiate the usefulness of such system-building. It then traces the source of much of this borrowing in Lerdahl and Jackendoff 's (1983) highly influential work drawing on generative linguistics, and shows how a framework that privileges structure over meaning, system over text, and the cognitive over the social, is unable to provide a broader understanding of music beyond pattern recognition. It calls for a greater methodological scepticism among musicologists towards linguistics, and a greater self-consciousness about borrowings across disciplines.