Soundscape Models & Compositional Strategies in Acousmatic Music
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21810/aer.v11i1.6125Abstract
Soundscape recordings of nature may often provide us with a valuable sound-basis as a primary compositional material, offering a rich sound world to transform and develop certain compositional strategies. Soundscapes can also be an inspirational source, offering a number of sound images and sound behaviours to be approached mimetically, and thus to develop a certain type of ‘nature-oriented’ musical language.
The soundscapes recorded on the Greek island of Corfu between 2006 and 2007 during the study of the Lake Antinioti area were captured at different times of day or night and during all seasons of the year. As such they constitute entities of different sound-environments, often demonstrating antithetical relationships regarding the existence of sound sources and sound-behaviours within their boundaries. To define these relationships through listening, one needs to consider a number of characteristics regarding sources and sound-behaviours and the manner in which these co-exist within the recorded soundscape.
Through the application of certain processing techniques, soundscapes may be transformed into different soundscapes or they may be deconstructed to their individual components. In the current research our aim was to create a rich variety of original ‘sound vocabulary’, overcoming basic problems existing in the recorded sound material (noise elimination, presence enhancement, event isolations, enhance- ment of tonality etc.) and further explore the transformational potential of the recorded and created sounds.
From a macro-perspective, and as can be concluded through the research, different ‘models’ of sound environments can be found within an acousmatic musical context. Such environments can be described as ‘real-like’ (or ‘verisimilar’), ‘abstract’, or ‘hybrid’, depending on the degree to which they suggest the real world in which their constituent sources can be recognized, and also on the relationship between sounds and spaces with regard to recognition.
