In 2022, I started this Coursera course, Experiments with Sound, alongside a Kwantlen course I was also enrolled in, IDEA 2900: Sound, Music, and the Creative Self. This blog will document my notes, projects, and written reflections related to the course.
Part 1: Introduction
VIDEO > Art of the MOOC. “Course Introduction.” YouTube, 31 Mar 2018.
Part 2: Analytical Concepts
1 - FREQUENCY: Sound is a time dependent phenomenon. Sound develops and unfolds over time. Acoustic events can be very close to each other or not… frequency is about how often things happen… a description of whether things are heard or not.
The National Parks Service’s website has a page dedicated to explaining sounds in the natural environment, which notes how: “Frequency, sometimes referred to as pitch, is the number of times per second that a sound pressure wave repeats itself. A drum beat has a much lower frequency than a whistle, and a bullfrog call has a lower frequency than a cricket. The lower the frequency, the fewer the oscillations.”
RHYTHM: in music theory the equivalent terminology to frequency and density is rhythm - the systematic arrangement of musical sounds, principally according to duration and periodic stress. A particular type of pattern formed; a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound. Rhythm is music's pattern in time. Whatever other elements a given piece of music may have (e.g., patterns in pitch or timbre), rhythm is the one indispensable element of all music. Rhythm can exist without melody, as in the drumbeats of so-called primitive music, but melody cannot exist without rhythm.
SILENCE: not every single second of our time is full of sound, and there are spots where there is no sound at all. An absence of sound or noise: stillness. It is as important to the structure of any acoustic piece as sound itself.
DENSITY: is a qualifier of frequency. It explains how many things are put in a particular time. The BYJU’s page on the speed of sound describes how: “The speed of the sound depends on the density and the elasticity of the medium through which it travels. In general, sound travels faster in liquids than in gases and quicker in solids than in liquids. The greater the elasticity and the lower the density, the faster sound travels in a medium.”ACOUSTIC: Adjective: the science concerned with the production, control, transmission, reception, and effects of sound. The term is derived from the Greek akoustos, meaning “heard.” … of or relating to the sense or organs of hearing, to sound, or to the science of sounds… relating to sound or the sense of hearing. Also, (of popular music or musical instruments) not having electrical amplification. Noun: the properties or qualities of a room or building that determine how sound is transmitted in it.
ACOUSTIC EVENTS: the interplay between sound and silence that lets us understand a certain narrative, and a sense of moving from A to B.
2 - PERSPECTIVE: Sound perspective refers to the apparent distance of a sound source, evidenced by its volume, timbre, and pitch.
Andrew J Oxenham, in his article called “How we Hear: The Perception and Neural Coding of Sound” describes how: “Auditory perception is our main gateway to communication with others via speech and music, and it also plays an important role in alerting and orienting us to new events… Hearing provides us with access to the acoustic world, including the fall of raindrops on the roof, the chirping of crickets on a summer evening, and the cry of a newborn baby. It is the primary mode of human connection and communication via speech and music. Our ability to detect, localize, and identify sounds is astounding given the seemingly limited sensory input: Our eardrums move to and fro with tiny and rapid changes in air pressure, providing us only with a continuous measure of change in sound pressure at two locations in space, about 20 cm apart, on either side of the head. From this simple motion arises our rich perception of the acoustic environment around us. The feat is even more impressive when one considers that sounds are rarely presented in isolation: The sound wave that reaches each ear is often a complex mixture of many sound sources, such as the conversations at surrounding tables of a restaurant, mixed with background music and the clatter of plates. All that reaches each eardrum is a single sound wave, and yet, in most cases, we are able to extract from that single waveform sufficient information to identify the different sound sources and direct our attention to the ones that currently interest us.”
Specially, the course examines perspective in regards to the intimate, the local, and the global, defined as follows:
An intimate sonic sphere is that which is the closest proximity to one’s own ears. When thinking about the intimate perspective, it is essential to consider the point of reference.
A local sonic sphere is considered to be local when two people can hear each other talk.
A global sonic sphere refers to the entire space a person is situated in.
3 - MATERIAL FRAME: refers to identifying each source of sound - for example, if one listened to an orchestra, one would be thinking about all of the different instruments that make sound in that performance. Also, a voice in relation to a microphone; eating noises; cooking noises; or the sound of chattering people in a large crowd. It is also important when examining the material frame to consider what sounds are important - that is, to decide what is relevant and what isn’t. When you define your material frame, you’re saying this is what matters and this is what doesn’t, and you exclude what doesn’t matter for the material frame.
4 - TIME FRAME: A period of time, especially a specified period in which something occurs or is planned to take place. A time frame is defined as a span of seconds, minutes, days, hours, weeks, months, or years during which something might happen or occur. Other words for this include: interval, lapse of time, period, span, stretch, and timespan.
A conversation, a phone call, and listening to a song with headphones —- all of these have a specific time frame, from a few seconds, to two minutes, to longer than ten minutes. In the case of listening to a song, the time frame is incredibly specific - it’s the length of that song. On the other extreme, when someone is reading a book, depending on the reader and the length of the book, this could last a day, two days, a week, or even a month - and that’s when time frames may intersect. The analytical concept of time frame lets you deal with complex intersections of time frames and pay attention to the ones you care about.
5 - CONCURRENCY: the fact of two or more events or circumstances happening or existing at the same time. With concurrency, the idea of the deliberate or the intentional does not apply: what really matters is that you have a simultaneity of different sounds being produced.
You use this framework to analyze how sounds are sounding together, intentionally or not. To give you an example, you may have a protest happening in a city, and many voices are kind of happening as part of a protest. But that would not be concurrent because they have a deliberate goal of sounding together. But if you add to the idea of the protest and its sounds the idea of, say, the sound of traffic, or a construction crane working in the city. Those are actually concurrent sound phenomena. As such, this analytical concept is designed for you to understand these more complex sound environments as a whole instead of just a sum of little parts. As you would when you just want to identify individual sound sources. You may even think of it as as it's having five or six cameras, or as many as you need. And each one will allow you to focus in very different aspects of a sound scene.
POLYPHONY in sound, or music, polyphony refers to the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other. That is, polyphony, in music, the simultaneous combination of two or more tones or melodic lines (the term derives from the Greek word for “many sounds”). A type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, homophony. What polyphony implies is that many voices add up together to a much greater goal, such as harmony or sound.
Part 3 - Review
FREQUENCY is best used to understand the phenomena of repetition, rhythm, or other temporal acoustic patterns.
Rather than speaking of volume, we propose the concept of 'perspective' to understand sound in its positional context, dividing it into the intimate, the local, and global sonic sound spheres.
When we speak of the 'material frame' of an acoustic phenomenon or sonic composition we are talking about all of the physical elements that constitute its source(s) of sound.
The “time frame” or “temporal frame” is key to understanding the duration and overall development of a composition or sound phenomenon.
Concurrency is analogous to polyphony in music, but unlike that musical term it does not necessarily imply a deliberate arrangement.
VIDEO > Berman Museum of Art. “A Brief History of Sound Art.” YouTube, 17 Dec 2029.
VIDEO > Berman Museum of Art. “Cari Freno on Sound Art.” YouTube, 15 Dec 2020.
Video > True Calling. “Edzi’u: Sound Artist and Indigenous Storyteller.” YouTube, 17 Jul 2019.