MUSHL 101 Blackboard Assignment #4 – Post Comments Here Instead
Dear MUSHL 101 Students,
Since Blackboard has been down for the last week, let’s work around it. Please post your comments at the bottom of this post. Let’s move the deadline to this Wednesday, May 6th, by midnight. To remind you of the Blackboard Assignment, here it is:
Our class has been primarily based on listening to digital recordings via a CD player or mp3 player and speakers. This article deals with how much of our musical listening experience is entirely reliant upon our ears (rather than, for example, watching a violin player use her bow to produce a sound).
This article in particular is a difficult read, perhaps due to the translation from French into English. I think you may find these Wikipedia links helpful for reference:
acousmatic sound
acousmatic musicBy midnight on Wednesday May 6th, read the article by Pierre Schaeffer and post a comment in response to his remarks on the Discussion Board thread. It can be downloaded here with the provided link “Schaeffer-Acousmatics” or also in the Course Documents section. TO DOWNLOAD THE READING, CLICK HERE.
Again, as a reminder quick word about posting protocol:
Please be specific to the points Schaeffer makes and respond appropriately. Also, feel free to respond respectfully to other student viewpoints. There hasn’t been much discussion or response from one comment to the next. I suspect this is due to the tendency for many of you to wait until the last minute to read and comment…
Now, in preparation for tonight’s lecture on musical theater and film, here’s a great article that you can access in full through the Hunter Library website:
Eric Salzman, “Whither American Music Theater?” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Apr., 1979), pp. 230-244
This article made me think about a conversation I had the other day with a friend of mine. We were talking about the difference between someone who plays an instrument listening to music vs. someone who doesn’t play an instrument or know a lot about musical structure listening to music.
I was telling my friend how I don’t play an instrument and how up until a few years ago, I didn’t know anything at all about music, and that I used to not be able to hear individual instruments at all. Like for example, I couldn’t listen to a band recording and pick out what the guitar was, or even the drums. It wasn’t until I started getting more into music and watching my friends bands play live that I started to be able to differentiate the instruments. Before I could kind of do this (I’m still not that good at differentiating instruments) I just heard the band as being all one sound. So when I listened to music and determined what I liked or not it was based on the general feelings or emotions I got from a band or artist as a whole, (and whether or not it aroused anything in me or not.)
In comparison my friend is really good at playing both drums and guitar and knows a lot about music, and he was saying that sometimes he wishes that he didn’t know as much as he does because he has a tendency to focus too much on what one instrument is doing and then miss out on the overall feeling of what the whole band sounds like together. We were talking about how not knowing what specifically you are listening to can give you a more objective and unbiased perspective of music, as opposed to someone who knows a lot focusing too much on smaller details and loosing the feeling of a song or band as a whole.
The fact that we go to a music store and purchase a cd, record, tape, etc. of our artist of preference; then return home and listen to the content of the tape, cd etc. should make us be perfectly aware of where the sounds are coming from. I humbly tend to believe that the sounds emanating from the speakers (if we know who we are listening to) should not be considered acoustmatic sounds. Just like it happened to the disciples of Pythagoras; they knew all the time that they were listening to their master, only if they had replaced Pythagoras with some other professor and the pupils didnt know who he was, only then acoustmatics should be used, I humbly think. I recently saw a concert of a Quartet for string, the acoustics were nearly perfect I saw who was playning, then when I left, I played the CD in the car and listened to it again on my way home, once again I exactly knew what I was listening to and where it was coming from.
This was a very confusing reading for me, which shows that I need to read more and enhance my vocabulary. But I was interested in the section about “Sonorous Objects”. It made a great point about when we say “thats a violoin” when we hear a piece of music, that we are just alluding to the sound coming from the violin. It goes even deeper than that when it demonstrates how an alien who heard the same sound would think of something totally different. So the soronous object is not the instrument that was played.
In this short space I will not waste more than 20 words complaining about the dense language of Schaeffer’s essay. I though José F. was absolutely right to pick out the point about how an alien’s perception of sonorous objects would be different than ours. I think when we approach very unfamiliar music from very foreign cultures it’s sometimes harder to distinguish the component sounds — but what Cassandra described is probably a familiar experience: once you have seen an ensemble that includes electric bass guitar, you will generally be able to pick it out from the low-pitched notes played on a regular guitar or a keyboard.
This article would be even more interesting (and maybe more confusing) if it used modern digital recording techniques as an examples of the alteration of sonorous objects. I liked Schaeffer’s point about the way slowing down a recording functions like a magnifying glass.
Who would’ve thought esoteric, French-intellectual music theorists would be so verbose? Pleurant!
The article, on the whole, presents a few key points, chief of which is the idea of sonority, or the “sonorous object” as, more or less, subjective and impermanent. Fleshing out this idea, Schaeffer offers the question, “do we hear the instrument or the modification”? This for me is particularly interesting, considering the advances of modern effects processing. My Bloody Valentine, for example, created their sound using heavy distortion coupled with reverb to create a dense, ambient envelope of noise that shaped the listener’s experience. Through the lens that Schaeffer offers, it is interesting to consider the effects themselves, or the final product that they constitute, as the object of sonority rather than a simple electric guitar.
It stands to reason that sonority is a product of perception, much like other visual or auditory sensations. We can only understand what is presented to us, and without knowing more about the actual source(s), it is up to us to identify what is before us.
Acousmatics
Pierre Schaeffer
The 47 year old frumpy woman walked out onto the stage to audition for the show, “Britain’s Got Talent.” Her name was Susan
Boyle. She said that she was from a small village in Scotland. She wore a simple dress, no make-up, and her frizzy hair was plainly combed in place. She certainly did not look like a diva. She said that she was going to sing, “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Miserables. Many in the audience laughed or snickered at her. The judges looked totally bored and unimpressed. One rolled his eyes as she spoke. That all changed as soon as she began to sing. Her magnificent voice filled the concert hall. The laughter turned into cheers. The judges sat up and gave her the attention her talent deserved. Susan Boyle was pre-judged based solely on her dowdy appearance. Had she stood behind a curtain, as did the disciples of Pythagoras, the audience would not have had any pre-conceived notions about her.
Schaeffer said that, “…contemporary radio and recordings, gives back to the ear alone the entire responsibility of a perception that ordinarily rests on other sensible witnesses.” Susan Boyle will soon, no
doubt, be recording a CD that will sell all over the world. “…today it is the radio and the methods of reproduction…that place us, modern listeners to an invisible voice…”
Acousmatic listening was a new experience in the post-World War II world. The source of the sound was not considered important. It was the sound itself. When I hear a bird sing as I walk through the park, I often cannot see the bird. This allows me to simply enjoy the song. When I listen to the radio, I cannot see the commentator, announcer, or DJ. This frees me to imagine the person any way I choose to do so. The sounds, the voices, and the words are paramount, and one listens more attentively. Listening to music on the radio, a record player, a tape recorder, a CD player, a Walkman, or an ipod, is easy. “…without having to produce them, all we have to do is push the button… we then seek to devote ourselves entirely and exclusively to listening.”
I do agree with Cassandra because I have had similar experiences. When I was young, one of my music teachers gave us a classical music listening homework and then asked us to write a reflection paper. I found at that time that I really liked violin and therefore I was picking out the violin part rather than listening to the harmony of orchestra. Listening to music is very subjective. Everybody hears something different.
I also think Jose has a very interesting idea that an alien would hear differently the same sound a human hears. It is happening not just between human and alien, but everyone. As Schaeffer said, “Coming from a world in which we are able to intervene, the sonorous object is nonetheless contained entirely in our perceptive consciousness” (p,79).
I must say that I too agree on Jose’s thought. It is true that a person’s hearing or sense of sound would be different from an animal or a monster. As Mr. Schaeffer Sonorous Objects well it’s hard for people with no background in music to make out the different instruments than a person that does have music expertise. I believe that a person with little to no experience in music listening will have a difficult time making out the instruments.
This article illustrated the possible divide between creator and listener.
“In ancient times, the apparatus was a curtain; today, it is the radio and methods of reproduction” (Schaeffer, 77)
There are so many different auditory elements that are involved when listening to the radio. The audience is fed with so much stimuli that sometimes they don’t really know what to make of what they’re hearing. The people controlling the program at the studio have their intentions when playing something or when they’re rambling about the story. The important thing is that those dj’s on the program make sure they’re heard. Their voice is the power of the show because there’s no other attachment for their listeners to grasp. In isolating the audible, the listeners are forced to interpret what they’re hearing on their own.
“The concealment of the causes does not result from a technical imperfection, nor is it an occasional process of variation: it becomes a precondition, a deliberate placing-in-condition of the subject” (Schaeffer, 77)
This addresses the divide between sound and listener. The intent of the sound doesn’t have to have any relation to what the listener perceives. In fact, the listener can perceive a whole different sound. In the case the listener doesn’t know what they’re listening to, they will end up associating the sound to the closest relevance they can attach it to creating a definition for the uncertain sound that they are hearing.
“Such is the suggestion of acousmatics: to deny the instrument and cultural conditioning, to put in front of us the sonorous and its musical “possibility” (Schaeffer, 81)
The idea of sound possibility is widely opened with this statement. In separating the world from the audible composers are able to repurpose different sounds for what they need. Appropriation of sound is evident through movies and radio. Questionable recordings can become totally different things when played because the audience repurposes the sound for what they desire it to attach to.
“In listening to sonorous objects [objets sonores] whose instrumental causes are hidden, we are led to forget the latter and to take an interest in these objects for themselves. (Schaeffer, 79)” I agree with Cassandra in that sometimes we focus on what causes the sound, for example an instrument which creates the sound and music, rather than the enjoying the sound itself. When we watch a performance, there are so many things that distract us visually that it often takes away from the auditory experience. I think as a result of these distractions, we often move our attention away from what we should be mainly focusing on which is the auditory experience.
Also when watching someone play a common instrument such as a guitar or a piano, we have certain expectations of what sound will be created. By listening to an unknown sound with no previous knowledge or background of what would create that sound, would we be able to listen or focus on the sound better? I think we would better devote ourselves to the sound but i also agree with MCruz in that with an unknown sound a person will end up crating a definition for the uncertain sound. In the end we will end up trying to analyz it or compare it with a sound we are familiar with.
In Pierre Schaeffer’s article “Acousmatics”, we know that he invented the name Concrete to the music, he wanted to show that this new music started from the concrete sound material, from heard sound, and then sought to abstract the musical values.
I know the word acousmatic, but I hadn’t realized that it was a kind of official term for a certain approach to electronic music. I’ve found some relevant information on-line, which the acousmatic composers believe in using everyday acoustic sounds that are divorced from their sound sources and performed unrecognizable. Acousmatic music refers to how listeners will experience the sounds, namely as distinct sounds coming from an invisible and sometimes also unrecognized instrument or source.
The difference between composers and listeners is that listeners can focus on evaluating the musical values or imaging the meaning about the music with out figuring out what the instruments are. Listeners could enjoy the environment and the atmosphere. They could feel the fluctuate emotion among the alternative pitch, instrument, tone color and volume. I agree with Cassandra’s preach “Coming from a world in which we are able to intervene, the sonorous object is nonetheless contained entirely in our perceptive consciousness” (p79) because I have had the similar experience. I used to listen to the Chinese orchestra music, however, when I went to the London philharmonic orchestra concert two months ago, which differs from Chinese orchestra music, they both use the same instruments but they give different feeling to the audience. For listener, to experience what the music presenting is the most important task, but understanding the source is secondary.
After reading this article, I could not help but reflect on our last class when you showed the musical makings for The Lord of the Rings. It seems that the article is directly related to the audio/ recordings music on The Lord of the Rings when Schaffer speaks of the sonorous objects. We saw that on the tape, there was much imitation and mixture of sounds that it was hard to recognize what exactly was making the noise when all the sounds came together. For example, with the adding of the rain, the swords, the army etc, all came together. I could not recognize the rain in the background because I was only listening to the main sound that was directly related to the visual of which was taken place in the movie. However, I do understand that this article is mainly base on the radio and not the television, but I feel that it is closely related to his arguments on the matter of sonorous object since we always have a visual to the music when listening to it. I thought the article was a bit confusing, with the exception to the sonorous object. I did not quite understand the acousmatic fiest section.
Schaeffer said, “…radio and recordings, gives back to the ear alone the entire responsibility of a perception that ordinarily rests on other sensible witnesses.”
The idea that not knowing where the sounds come from and that music could be an entirely different experience due to the way we perceive what we hear, I believe to be true.
I’ve been to many concerts before, and as much as I love hearing bands live, and when theres multiple artists on stage, its hard to focus on all of them at the same time, which causes you to pay attention to one at a time, and at that moment, say youre watching the singer, you are hearing and focusing on the vocals is performing and almost missing out on the song as a whole.
But when there is an apparatus, blocking you from seeing where the music is coming from, I think it makes the listening experience more rewardable because your focusing on the entirety of the song, rather than paying attention to just some elements that make it up.
In “Acousmatics” by Pierre Schaeffer, the author mentioned how people were able to make different recording from a single sonorous event. This reminds me of the making of Lord of the Ring, where people were able to go to a stadium and make a the whole crowd say some words and march, and was later able to apply it in the movie. It’s incredible how something totally different and unrelated can end up in the movie. The author also asked what correlation can we expect from what is recorded and the variations that we are hearing. Well, I would say the quality has to be better and more clear but had no idea that they had to edit the whole piece so much before it was to be presented. It is like they have to do the whole movie over and over again to get everything right. Whatever was recorded was probably very noisy, voices unclear, and we would hear the wind and all sorts of things that we would not heard in the actual movie.
In the article, the author mentions about the difference between direct and indirect listening. Direct listening is through a curtain, while indirect listening is through a speaker. Personally, I get more confused by indirect listening than direct listening. It is hard for me to recognize the sounds of instruments without actually seeing them. For instance, when I went to a concert, I can easily understand the sound, because I see the instruments. Both seeing and listening would help me understand more about the music.
Nowadays we have CDs, Tapes and IPods, which give more convenience to enjoy the music without actually going to the concert. When people record the sounds they can make it fast, slow, loud, soft or repeat. There are many ways to modify the quality of music. Although I enjoy the music, indirect listening gives me a hard time to tell what kinds of instruments are used in it.
This was my least favorite article that we have read this semester. I agree with many of my classmates; I also believe that the language of the article was very dense and it was slightly hard for me to grasp the concept of it fully.
One point that really stood out to me was when Scaeffer stated that “the differences separating direct listening (through a curtain) and indirect listening (through speakers) in the end become negligible”. I do not fully agree with this. I think that there is a significant difference between hearing a band live and listening to them through speakers.
When Scaeffer stated “In listening to sonorous objects whose instrumental causes are hidden, we are led to forget the latter and to take an interest in these objects for themselves” I thought he made an interesting point. I can see where he is coming from. When the instruments are taken out of the picture and we are able to just focus on the music itself, the music becomes much more powerful and our sole focus is on the sound of the music.
I agree with the previous posters that listening to music is subjective. The same music/sound can be heard and different interpretations can be derived by different listeners. It applies for picking out different instruments in the song or different animal sounds. When I listen to a song with friends, sometimes we hear different things. Some of us would hear certain instruments and how it was being played, while most of us would just hear the lyrics and general sound that comes out of the speakers. The one who could identify the instrument and the way it was played, was in a band and plays that instrument. Since he has more experience and knowledge about that particular instrument, he was drawn to hear that part more clearly, and can pick out things that no one else would even notice.
The acousmatic music refers to how listeners will experience the sounds, namely as music distinct sounds, not like a landscape coming from an invisible and sometimes also unrecognized instrument source which strictly speaking will define all recorded music as acousmatic.
Pierre Schaeffer also talks about the sonorous object. The sonorous object is a fragment of sound, typically in the range of a few seconds often even less, perceived as a unit. Sonorous objects are constituted, studied, and evaluated according to various criteria, and sonorous objects that are found suitable are regarded as musical objects that may be used in musical composition. In the selection and qualification of these sonorous objects, we are encouraged to practice what Schaeffer called ‘reduced listening’, meaning disregarding the original context of the sound, including its source and signification, and instead focus our listening on the sonorous features.
Adding on to CassandraK’s post, I too, was unable to distinguish different instrumentation in music until I myself had experience in playing music. Afterwards, you learn to appreciate the piece much more when you can see all the work that goes into it. In Schaeffer’s article, the section of ‘Listening to Effects’ he saids that the instrumental are hidden. It is uncommon for one, when first listening to a piece of music, (especially one with vocals) to identify the instruments. This can be in comparison to the foley recordings in film we discussed on Monday. When we watch a movie/film we do not listen out or pay attention to instrumentation and sound effects, instead we view and hear the overall picture. However, with out the sound design of either a film or a piece of music, it would just sound blan and boring.
I really thing this article is very interesting. I also think that the reading is deep in a way because it was for kind of hard for me to fully understand it.
What really capture my attention was the part of the article about the difference between direct and indirect listening. I do agree with the previous entrance about direct listening, which is through a curtain and indirect listening, which is through speakers. There is a big difference and one as a musician can notice it. There is a lot that you loose when hearing through speakers no matter the quality.
Schaeffer: “…radio and recordings, gives back to the ear alone the entire responsibility of a perception that ordinarily rests on other sensible witnesses.”
There is alot to say about this phrase. First as I said before, speakers will never provide a music with the same quality as a live band. On the other hand radio and recording have a lot of advantages. Not knowing the origin of the music can in a way change the way we listen and process the music. You can concentrate in the piece as a whole.
Schaeffer also mentioned that for the traditional musician and for the acoustician, an important aspect of the recognition of sound is the identification of the sonorus sources. I think that it is true that you can be confused by the sound of different string instruments. I do agree that knowing the sources is important way of recognizing, but it is not primary.
I find myself agreeing with a lot of my classmates. Normally, I wouldn’t necessarily care about the wordiness of an article, but I found myself reading several sentences repeatedly to fully understand the point.
There was a particular section on which he alluded to the relationship between the origin of sound from the object, and what we, as listeners, would take from that sound, if we were not able to identify it. Would it still be considered a sound if the origin is unknown? Though we cannot identify it, a sound has been made, regardless.
In this article, Pierre Schaeffer, discusses “acousmatic listening” which is hearing sounds without observing how it comes about. He refers to sounds having a life of its own away from its main sources. Listening to the radio and recordings allows for more than just regular sounds such as instruments or even voices. This technological systems of recordings opens the door for any sound whether it be digitally mastered or different imitations of sounds to be altered without listener knowing unless they view where the sounds originated from. Distinguishing between sounds can be difficult nowadays because so much of music is digital and synthetic sometimes resembling original sounds or noises that are totally different.
Some listeners are not really searching for the source of these sounds they just listen to the music and judge its quality on their own perceptions. Although it is good to listen to music just for enjoyment at times; I believe having a sense of some of the musical elements gives a better understanding and allows listener to appreciate how the sounds are produced through the visual. Also I agree with slowing down the music as Schaeffer mentions in passage to hear certain details enabling one to hear distinctions between sounds and make observations on original/ recreated sounds. Due to technology a lot of sounds are manipulated so it’s interesting from time to time to see how music is transformed from its source. Think article was very interesting gives listeners a new perceptive in what they should pay attention to when listening to music and how to be more engaged into it.
this article explores, in a very complicated way i must say, a difference between ‘pure listening’ to sonorous objects possible due to various recording devices versus traditional listening enhanced by visual experience and / or awareness of the original source of the sounds. Obviously both options have their advantages. When listening to sonorous objects the musical perception is not diluted by ‘cultural conditioning’ and certain expectations of recognized instruments. This way sound is perceived as a whole allowing a different, and probably more innocent and objective way of acoustic observation. In traditional listening, knowledge is power and the listener absorbs sounds through a prism of subjective experiences and expectations. Personally, i’m siding with educated listening. I take pleasure in recognizing the composer, instruments, familiar melodies and techniques. It may have something to do with the fact that music is a new and not fully explored subject for me and i absolutely understand that professional musicians who probably see scores and notes every time they here a sound would appreciate the possibility of a detached musical experience.
Like it did with Renne, this article reminded me of the Lord of the Rings DVD we watched in class. Sometimes when I am listening to music, I am able to single out each instrument and what melody or beat it is playing especially with guitars, drums and the piano, and that gets in the way of trying to listen to the entire piece together instead of singling out each souns. When it came to a movie, I never knew there were so many different sections of sound put together, and it is almost as if we take it for granted that we don’t appreciate and notice each individual sound.
This article was very hard to grasp because of the way it was written as if he wanted to sound extremely intellectual, but the points he brings up are quite interesting.
I know this is a day late but I was finally able to read the article and respond on my work computer. For some reason my home computer was having problems with Adobe reader.
I found the reading “Acousmatics” by Pierre Schaeffer to be very interesting. I had never really thought of accousmatics or sonorous objects in the fashion which Schaeffer describes. Having grown up in a world where music was already being recorded on to tapes, then CDs, then MP3s my idea of music was very different from say someone who grew up with music being something always connected to instruments. To me music started out with accousmatics by listening to tapes and the radio. I had never really seen a live performance until I was probably in sixth or seventh grade. So the idea of listening to a sound strictly for that sound and not for the way it was created is something familiar to me and probably to a lot of people in my generation. Schaeffer writes “For the traditional musician and for the acoustician, an important aspect of the recognition of sounds is the identification of the sonorous sources. When the latter are effectuated without support of vision, we will discover that much of what we thought was heard was in reality only seen and explicated, through the context.” This quote really formalizes how many people view music. However, like i previously stated the more advanced our musical technology gets I feel that it will create a more sonorous-friendly environment in which people will be listening purely to the sound and less to the way the sound i created.
I can definitely agree with what Anya mentions about Susan Boyle. If let’s say we never seen Susan’s appearance and we based solely on her voice, we can conclude that laughter or judgments wouldn’t have existed. This would oppose to section A, pure listening, in the reading because Susan’s voice outshines her unattractive appearance.“ Often a surprise, sometimes uncertain, we will discover that much of what we thought was heard was in realty only seen, and explicated, through the context”
A few post mentioned when reading this reminded them of the lord of rings clip you showed in class. I felt the same way because in section D, Variations in the signal, talks about how we can take one sonorous event and form it into various angles.
Acoustmatics and phrenology are not recent ideas, but with current technology, we are able to recreate sounds as real if not more real than the original sonourous objects that may have produced them. In the 21st century, the distinction between actual and digitally edited media has been harder and harder to make, and the same will go with acoustics and acousmatics. Such distinctions soon will be quite irrelevant and thus shouldn’t be as highly emphasized. Schaeffer is definitely onto something.
Susan Boyle is an incredibly talented lady who’s been subjected to considerable ridicule in the media. IMHO she deserves all of the success that she is having.