Concerning my own projects

 

ISCNE:

Of course, positioning the audience as we did in Zagreb requires many adjustements if one is to emulate the sounding ideals of such concert halls, which are considered the standard for most sound engineer and the connoisseur audience. A decision needs to be made: to conform to this and make compromises in the staging, or to experiment with new modes of listening. 

 

 

touchez:

ambulatory, deconstructed

Concert hall architecture

We will later look at the sociopolitical implications of how a concert house is built. For now, I would like to point out how the architecture of the concert hall itself, its acoustics in particular, sculpt our listening. There exists two main types of concert hall architecture, the shoebox shaped hall and the surround hall. The Konzertverein in Wien is a famous example of the first, and the Berliner Philharmonie, an example of the latter. 



Concert Hall Acoustics  

by LEO L. BERANEK 

J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 56, No. 7/8, 2008 July/August 

 

  • there exists standard reverberation time rates for symphonic repertoire (about 1,9s at mid-frequencies in an occupied hall p.53) p.535 

Surround hall 

Ex. Berlin Philharmonics (1963)  and Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles p.538-540 

  • audience surrounds the orchestra: more visual intimacy : my note: perhaps the visual proximity compensates for the auditive distance, making us perceive the sound from the stage as being closer to us than it actually is? See below, not true.
  • experienced as negative by Beranek: the fact that the one listens very differently from different seats (spatial unevenness)
  • visual proximity not necessarily matched by listening proximity: seeing the musicians working hard but with little sounding result in certain parts of the hall
  • no side and rear walls, hence less sound and visual concentration on stage, demand more attention from the musicians to the conductor

The evolution of newer auditorium acoustic measures

by J.S. Bradley  

Canadian Acoustics / Acoustique Canadienne 18(4) 13-23 (1990)

 

 

“[ these studies]  have revealed that a relatively small number of subjective dimensions explain almost all of the variance in subjective assessments of concert hall sound and that only a relatively small number of objective parameters are necessary to describe acoustical conditions in concert halls.” p.19 

 

acoustical parameters depend on the geometry and materials of the halls.p.21  Perceived acoustics may vary from seat to seat and according to the physical, emotional and cognitive state of the listener.  

 

‘It is something very ‘wow’!’  Listening in concert halls, and elsewhere.

Architecture frames listening

The place in which music is heard (its architecture, history, location, function) plays a large part in our listening experience. Buildings, in particular, are social constructs, cultural artefacts and architectonic forms of communication (McMurtrie p.4). Physically, their architecture provides a frame which also affects our way of listening (Boyman and Cache in McMurtrie). That is why Wim Wender’s, in his documentary about the Berliner Philharmonic (Cathedrals of Culture (2014)), gives the building a human voice and lets it it tell its own story.

 

Acoustics, ideologies, identity and pragmatism

 

 

  • Identity

 

a sound that is big and broad, sense of vastness (like the lave flows) at the same time crystal-clear sound (crystal-clear message), sound like Icelandic people and its landscape  - 

Concert house as expression of a place ….Iceland sound

Edward Arenius, Acoustics and Theatre Designes, Arup

 

 

  • Emotions 

Recent research shows that shoebox shaped halls enhance the emotional impact of music (‘a more impressive sound’). From the same study: 

 

‘Earlier research has demonstrated that room designs favorable for lateral reflections tend to increase the perceived envelopment, strength, and width of sound as well as enhance the dynamic range. Objective parameters related to these attributes were found here to correlate with the subjective impact.’

 

https://asa.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1121/1.4944038

 

 

  • Eternal and all-round

 

To create a sound that has ‘always been here’, and that would reflect both Baroque, medieval and contemporary times 

Tateo Nakajima, Acoustics and Theatre Designer, Arup

 

intimate, in spite of the large space, and that could accommodate different types of repertoire

Laurent Bayle, Director if the Paris Philharmonics

 


Critique: early music movement has already replied to this

Architectural acoustics and how it shapes our sound ideal is a very exciting topic, and there is extensive research in this domain. Scenography in Space is particularly interesting in the sense that it shows how conceptions of architectural acoustics in concert halls, in addition to being standardised, are intimately linked to political notions such as democracy or national identity.

Like tasting wine

Talking about acoustics it is a bit like attending a wine-tasting for amateurs: since we possess little specific and technical vocabulary to discuss how we listen, we need metaphors and clichés to describe the quality and effect that particular types of acoustic have on us. Non-expert’s vocabulary to discuss acoustics is certainly very different than the terminology used by acousticians or sound engineers (this becomes clear when musicians talk to sound technicians for instance). 

De-sacralising art?...
  • How acoustics shaped musical composition over time / How acoustics shaped musical decisions in performance and the spatial placement of musicians: 
 
An important musical parameter, particularly in church music, is the intelligibility of the text (my remark: in general, speech intelligibility seems to be that which has shaped most of our concerns with acoustics and architecture). the high reverberation of Roman churches, for instance, might have been at the origin of monodic unaccompanied singing; the masculine voice was preferred in Baroque oratorios and recitatives due to the penetrating clarity of its spatial trajectory; the accompaniment of arias is composed in a way such as not to cover the voices with harmonics; 
 
The clarity emanating from an unidirectional sound source was also one of the reasons for grouping musicians together in front of the listeners; decisions about tempi or the distance between instruments, still for the sake of clarity, always depends on the acoustics of the space; reverberation is also the reason why Renaissance orchestra started to place instruments with lower registers, hence with longer reverberation time, behind higher-pitched ones: so that the sound of both high-and low-pitched instruments arrive simultaneously to the ears of the listeners. 
 
Renaissance ears, influenced by scientific discoveries about the movement of the Earth or the systematization of perspective - hence of a certain representation of space - in painting and architecture (see Romanyshyn) also looked for new sensations in acoustic innovations: in polyphonic music, different voices were assigned to different choirs and sometimes groups of instruments or even organs (as in St Markus in Venice) placed in various points of the church, thus creating music with unheard-of spatialized textures (see Gabrieli’s Magnificat for three choirs, later his student Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequiem, where the movement between voices happens vertically, that is, it is sung by groups of singers placed in the various levels and balconies of the church, and symbolising spiritual ascension. Experiments with shaping organ pipes according to the acoustic properties of the space became common. 
 
  • How aesthetic preferences shaped the architecture of concert and opera houses:
 
Opera houses in Italy in the XVII and XVIII centuries: for clarity purposes, creation of an U-shaped auditorium that projected all sounds in one direction towards the centre of the stage, inclusion of heavy fabrics and ornaments in plaster to absorb unnecessary reverb and allow the words of the singers to pierce through with crystalline precision (according to the author, it is possible that the popularization of this kind of stage, very important in Europe due to the popularity of opera as a genre, created limitations, and even stopped existing acoustic experiments happening in other musical genres, for if it presented perfect acoustic conditions for lyrical Italian chant, it was not at all suited for symphonic or choral music, p.70-71).
 
in the 19th century, Bayreuth as model for acoustic innovations: fan-shaped stage for greater visual unity between stage and auditorium; bulkheads on the sides of the stage for a more balanced sonority, orchestra hidden in a pit so as not to interfere with the dramatic action on stage; exploration of the vertical dimension of sound through different planes (stage, middle level and dome). 
 
Large shoebox shaped halls started to be built for orchestral music (Concertgebouw, Musikverien, Carnegie Hall). See in other texts what made the success of this shape. 
 
Clarity and mass of sound also determined innovations in the construction of instruments: new tuning that exterminated natural harmonics, now considered out-of-tune; larger instruments such as the piano adapted to larger halls, finely adjusted mechanics that bypassed sounds such as plucking or random noise and provided a more homogenous and clear sound, better control of dynamics, more possibilities of dynamics gradations. 
 
More specific orchestral practice allowed by the newly created concert halls and determined by the timbre of the instruments (no substitution of instruments as was usual until then), orchestral thinking in layers rather than simply as differentiation between melody and accompaniment, contrasts between intimate and more grandiose moments. 
 
Later, composers such as Debussy or Charles Ives sought to break with the massiveness of Romantic orchestral sound by focusing on nuances of tone, pointillistic sounding textures or superimposed rhythmical layers that created a sensation of mobility. This exploration of sound rather than than of harmony continued in the efforts of the first electroacoustic composers, who discovered the musical potential of field recordings, that is, the musicality of real life (Pierre Schaeffer) or pioneered new modes of projecting sound in space (Stockhausen). As to the latter: the spatialization of sound through electronic means allowed for: a multiplicity of simultaneous points of projection, causing an effect of depth and sonorous “relief” (p.76), ubiquity; mobility in the circulation of the sound from one speaker to the next (rotations of Osaka, explain): a new, multidirectional mode of listening. 
 
Soundscape: a reconstruction of acoustic milieus, ambient sound; introduced the idea of sound immersion and of being somewhere else through sound while at the same time reflecting on how we listen to the world. p.76
 
Newer efforts in composition include site-specific experimentation: when social contexts and/or unusual architectures inform musical production; experiments that take into account the physical presence and participative potential of the spectator. 
 
 
 Stockhausen as an example of use of space:

⁃ Reconceiving of musical spaces as in Gruppen (concert halls redesigned to accommodate multiple orchestras) 

⁃ outdoor performances (Sternklang) 

 

automated environments in which performers move (Obici)

 

 

 

American Experimental tradition, Cage employed with spatial separation respectively

in his Imaginary Landscape Nos. 1 and 4 from 1939 to 1951, or the later installation

Writings Through the Essay: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, in 1985. 

 

 

playback environments: Probably the most famous example is the Phillips Pavilion at the 1958

World’s Fair, designed by Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001), which hosted the tape piece Poeme Electronique

by Edgard Var.se (1883–1965). Varèse recorded the piece on four separate tape recorders,

which gradually desynchronized over time due to differences in playing speeds (Kendall,

2006). The final piece was presented over 425 loudspeakers in the finished pavilion, featuring

nine different predetermined ‘routes’ for the sound to travel over (Zvonar, 2006). 

 

 

Soundscape: a reconstruction of acoustic milieus, ambient sound; introduced the idea of sound immersion and of being somewhere else through sound while at the same time reflecting on how we listen to the world. p.76 

 

Newer efforts in composition include site-specific experimentation: when social contexts and/or unusual architectures inform musical production; experiments that take into account the physical presence and participative potential of the spectator.  

 
Xenakis: 
 
 http://microphonesandloudspeakers.com/category/chapter-4/page/3/
 
 

Interplay between concert space acoustics and musical composition

The convergence between music creation and spatial conditions is old as music itself, not the least because the acoustics, architecture and function of performance spaces have always influenced the music being made for them and vice-versa. To describe the evolution of spatial composition in proper fashion, however, would lead me to a long historical incursion into practices and examples by Gabrieli, Tallis, Mozart, Haydn, Berlioz, Mahler and Ives to name but a few of the composers whose work in many ways prefigured those that I intend to discuss. If I limit myself here to the discussion of practices developed after 1945, however, it is because such an incursion, albeit relevant and interesting, would  would bring me too far from the scope of this study. For further reading on the matter, see Caznok, Yara.  Música: entre o audível e o visível. 2nd edition. São Paulo: Editora UNESP. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte. 2008. Coleção Arte e Educação. and Braxton, Boren, The History of 3D sound. In Immersive Sound: The Art and Science of Binaural and Multi-Channel Audio. Edited by Agnieszka Roginska, Paul Geluso. Routledge, 2017. 

'A Day in the Life of a Listener'


How do we listen today in our everyday life? 


  •  A short video by  by Prof. Dr. Marcel Cobussen and Hafez Ismaïli M'Hamdi from Leiden University and the University of the Arts in The Hague created for the course Music and Society. Analyse.
  • Notes on an article by Cout Mann from 2019 about how the 2010s 'changed our music listening habits — and music itself', that is, between the interplay between habits, the market, listening and music-making. Notice the shift from a culture of listening for the sake of listening to a functional culture.

 

 

Personal music libraries. 

Popularity of Streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music, music stored in the cloud rather than in hardware, 

musical experience decreasingly self-contained and private, more overtly collective

Functional, consumed (streaming services are based on consumer experience)

“Recorded music simply materializes around us whenever we need it,” Jayson Greene wrote for Pitchfork in October. 

choices based on moods and needs

 

curated lists (based on emotions, needs (running, etc) and moods rather than genre)

Diversity

streaming drastically increases a listener’s eclecticism. 

removal of cost barrier: listeners take more chances

listen less often to the same thing

Collected data:

 

people’s music preferences alone, but also the emotional tendencies and moods that the music fosters and indicates, that are so valuable to advertisers. 

data related to our emotional states, moods and feelings

Influence on music production

musicians rely on curated streaming playlists for exposure

songs as adverts

changes in writing: shorter intros, faster tempi 

longer albums, for more revenue

 

  • This pop music mentality spills over into YouTube and Instagram, which have become major gathering spots for music makers and listeners. These platforms, and the way users engage with them, are suited for simple, digestible, meme-worthy music.

 

in the pop world, cross-pollination

 

  • today’s music environment has erased longstanding collaborative barriers between major pop stars and smaller artists.

 

  •  Add the other article on streaming research.

Music Sound and Space, Georgina Borne

Interfences. Noise-based listening in concert

 

What is noise?

Etymologically, the term "noise" in different Western languages (støj, bruit, Geräusch, larm etc.) refers to states of aggression, alarm and tension and to powerful sound phenomena in nature such as storm, thunder and the roaring sea. It is worth noting in particular that the word "noise" comes from Greek nausea, referring not only to the roaring sea, but also to seasickness, and that the German Geräusch is derived from rauschen (the sough of the wind), related to Rausch (ecstasy, intoxication), thus pointing towards some of the aesthetic, bodily effects of noise in music.

 

 

Today, we are surrounded by noise - noise is the very definition of the urban landscape. 

And noise has slowly integrated musical practice (already Russolo, Varese, and Pierre Schaeffer saw noise as integral to musical composition) Composer Catherine Lamb embraces noise in prisma interius, the first piece that I will perform for you tonight.  In prisma, the sounds of the street picked up by microphones placed outside of the concert hall are filtered by the musical tones of the keyboard. In Lamb s piece, noise contaminates the music. But what if the noise of the present would contaminate the past? What happens is that the classical listening universe is confronted, ‘overexposed’ to contemporary noise.

 

 

Catherine Lamb: Prisma Interius II (2017) for solo secondary rainbow synthesizer 

From within a porous space to the outside. 

 

Prisma Interius II is part of a series of works by Lamb involving a synthesizer which processes street sounds into ‘tonal material’ incorporated into the music. This occurs because the rainbow synthesizer, as it is called, places resonant band pass filters on a live stream from a pair of microphones set up just outside the space of performance, so that there is a constant relationship between outside, inside, and the harmonic space occurring in the room. (Adapted from Simon Cummings in 5against4 and from an original text by Lamb)

 

 

J. Brahms: Study for the left hand on the d-moll Chaconne by J.S. Bach (1877/1720) + Sachiko M / Toshimaru Nakamura / Otomo Yoshihide: Good Morning (2004)

 

In this experiment combining three hundred years of music history, audience and performer are exposed to the dialogues and interferences arising in the meeting between the silent and almost sacralised space of Classical music performance and the contemporary, and in many ways less soothing, sound world of Japanese noise music. 

 

 

 

https://knops.co/magazine/noise-biggest-problem-20-years/