Mattias Sköld 80% seminar: Sound Notation

Abstract

This compilation thesis details steps taken to develop and evaluate the new Sound Notation system for composition, analysis and transcription with the capacity to describe all types of sound. Ideas from electroacoustic music analysis are combined with traditional notation to form a hybrid system. In this notation, all symbols are related to physical qualities in the sound, so that a person or a computer can identify the symbols from their sonification or musical interpretation.

Pierre Schaeffer early identified musique concrète’s lack of music theory and music vocabulary as a major problem for its integration with music theory and musicology. Schaeffer, Smalley and later Thoresen would go a long way to provide the genre of electroacoustic music with classification, terminology and graphical symbols for the benefit of its study. But if we are to think of music as a language, it becomes apparent that the lack of a shared inter-subjective notation system is a problem. Such a notation system would provide soundbased music with possibilities that were previously only afforded music based on pitch structures. This includes trancriptions and re-interpretations of musical works, notation-based ear-training and (computer-aided) composition.

The Harmony of Noise

Discussant

Professor Cat Hope PhD
Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance

Visiting Professor, Kings College, London 2022-23
Fellow, Hamburg Institute for Advanced Studies 2022-23

Arts, Monash University, Australia
profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/cat-hope/
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