The inner ear as a musical instrument (original) (raw)

Playing the Ear: Non-Linearities of the Inner Ear and their Creative Potential

2016

This thesis concerns the application of psychoacoustic phenomena relating to the non-linear nature of the inner ear as an electroacoustic compositional tool. The compositions included in this portfolio explore the validity of a variety of non-linear inner ear phenomena within composition by employing them as primary compositional devices. Psychoacoustics research into the non-linearities of the inner ear has proven that the inner ear has much more to offer the composer than has been previously considered. By reversing the role of the ear from, what Christopher Haworth describes as, 'being a submissive receiver', to becoming an active participant in the creative process, an exciting level of opportunity opens up for both the composer and listener. A focus is given in this research to auditory distortion products and bandwidth phenomena with references to the author's own compositional material. While it is relatively common for composers to have explored various elements of psychoacoustics in their work, a project of this size, which explicitly explores such material, has not been carried out until now. The work of Maryanne Amacher, Alvin Lucier, Diana Deutsch, and others has highlighted the possibilities of employing psychoacoustic principles in music. This research takes a new approach by placing a direct focus on the benefits of the utilisation of these non-linear mechanisms of the inner ear for the composer, while also positing a number of new creative methodologies with respect to the non-linearities of the inner ear. Bregman claims that just a 'trickle of studies' in auditory research had been published by the late 1960s. Such a finding coincides with the birth of digital audio, which has facilitated such research to flourish and so the employment of electroacoustic music as an investigative tool into auditory studies seems a natural inclusion into the field. Adorno once stated that the ear is a 'dozy and inert' organ and, by reconsidering such a view, one can destabilise common assumptions about psychoacoustics and the potential of the ears within music composition. With a specific focus on phenomena relating to the non-linear biomechanical mechanisms of the inner ear, this research seeks to highlight the added physical dimension that can be experienced by the listener whose ears are being performed.

MUSICAL EXPERIENCE BEYOND AUDIBLE SOUND AND ITS RELEVANCE FOR ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC COMPOSITION

This paper addresses the question as to how far music is experienced independently of the presence of sound. A number of musical examples are discussed in order to show that inner and mental forms of listening not only play a decisive part in the musical experience, but that they cannot be removed from the perception of any musical event. The conclusion is drawn that sound can never be perceived 'as such' but that it is always interpreted, extended and complemented by inner listening processes. The last chapter of this paper debates if the incitement of inner listening processes is relevant for electro-acoustic music, as the post-medium characteristics of the computer allow for a very nuanced application of sounds with referential qualities.

Music and the Transhuman Ear: Ultrasonics, Material Bodies, and the Limits of Sensation

Article here: https://academic.oup.com/mq/advance-article/doi/10.1093/musqtl/gdy001/4951391 Between 1876 and 1894, prominent acousticians argued that humans could hear as high as 40,960Hz. While this was ultimately discredited, recent post-tonal works have notated pitches that explicitly play with, or exceed, the ordinary range of human hearing (cf. Schoenberg, Per Nørgård, and Salvatore Sciarrino). This article asks what kind of listener such works imply. Amid recent moves toward sound as vibrational force, it argues that hearing has a special role in determining our natural sensory limits and human identity, and that attempts to push against these limits foreground the underlying matter of what status the biological body has for performance and the perception of music if the body constitutes an assemblage subject to variation. In a historical critique of auditory sense augmentation, it principally contrasts Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of Umwelt with a transhumanist worldview which anticipates—and for some, already realizes—the enhancement of biological sense capacities through technology. The discourse of transhumanism poses questions for musical listening as soon as the body becomes an assemblage subject to variation. It raises the question of how identity—ours as well as that of musical works—might be affected by “morphological freedom,” the extent to which self-identity becomes the lost referential when agency is distributed between biological and non-biological parts, and it asks what value are the new intellectual vistas that emerge when musical experience is conceived in material terms as communication between bodies.

SENSORY ENGINEERING - AFFECTS AND THE MECHANICS OF MUSICAL TIME

No, what sensory engineering means here is not that weird thing, that you see on some websites, not sado-maso fashion, psychoactive pictures or sensual designed virtual environments. My focus is on musical microtime-structures beyond concious perception that can be located in the range of milli- and microseconds. But there are some similarities. If we are working with electronic media designing auditory sensory stimuli in the field of a preconcious affective perception we are also in an open and rarely reflected laboratory of the senses and cultural behavior. There is a zone of indefiniteness (“Unbestimmtheitzone”, Michaela Ott) not only in the individual process of sensual experience between the primary affection and the aware cognition of structure and effect but also in the cultural process of adaption and the establishing of codes for these procedures of design. In music, this zone includes topics from the intonation of tones (e.g. Autotune-FX) on the overtones of sound to microrhythm and artificial space. Electronic and especially digital media have made this area of preconscious musical time accessible by looping, rasterize, masking and automated analysis for a differentiated design, but without being accompanied by a corresponding and widely established practice of conscious and reflective listening. While pitch relationship (such as counterpoint) and macrorhythm (e.g. stylized dances) were part of the musical notation of Western cultures and its literacy led to composition teaching and aesthetic writings in a broad cultural and philosophical discourse (e.g. Affektenlehre), this electronic media type of sensory engineering (with Kodwo Eshun) is an open, experimental and dynamic practical knowledge of direct Affizierung (‘affectedness’). Rhythmic structures beyond our conscious cognition are, for instance in Hiphops breakbeat science or as groove quantize in sequencers subject of practical and aesthetic research and generate a new epistemic situation: the knowledge of designing the rhythmic feel of a song or track, its swing, off-beat and groove diffuses into the mechanical grid of technical equipment and its control.

Sound in the Ecstatic-Materialist Perspective on Experimental Music

2021

What does a one hour contemporary orchestral piece by Georg Friedrich Haas have in common with a series of glitch-noise electronic tracks by Pan Sonic? This book proposes that, despite their differences, they share a particular understanding of sound that is found across several quite distinct genres of contemporary art music: the ecstatic-materialist perspective. Sound in the ecstatic-materialist perspective is considered as a material mass or element, unfolding in time, encountered by a listener, for whom the experience of that sound exceeds the purely sonic without becoming entirely divorced from its materiality. It is "material" by virtue of the focus on the texture, consistency, and density of sound; it is "ecstatic" in the etymological sense, that is to say that the experience of this sound involves an instability; an inclination to depart from material appearance, an ephemeral and transitory impulse in the very perception of sound to something beyond-but still related to-it. By examining musical pieces from spectralism to electroacoustic domains, from minimalism to glitch electronica and dubstep, this book identifies the key intrinsic characteristics of this musical perspective. To fully account for this perspective on sonic experience, listener feedback and interviews with composers and performers are also incorporated. Sound in the ecstatic-materialist perspective is the common territory where composers, sound artists, performers, and listeners converge.

Instrumentality in Electronic Music

2011

There is nothing intrinsically musical about a laptop computer, but there has in the past two decades been a rise in popularity of using portable computers to perform music. Computers powerful enough to create music were once exclusive to Universities and music studios. Now computers are as accessible to people as traditional instruments and have fully opened the world of electronic music to the non-musician through the use of graphic interfaces. This commentary will discuss the relationship between instrumentality and the performance and composition of electronic music by examining traditional methods of instrumental performance and the relatively modern idea of performing live with a laptop computer. The issue of imperfection will be discussed and how certain ‘errors’ have become widely acceptable even to the point where whole genres have arisen entirely from their creation. I will look at the way glitch music began as a genre entirely reliant on the computer for its creation into...