5 Categories for Soundscape and Instrument

Numerous creative possibilities exist in how to combine field recordings with instruments, and to categorize them. I took into consideration the “liveness” of the two main elements, and the performance location. In the end, these two parameters seemed most neutral yet informative because they are based on basic facts of the piece, essentially their instrumentation and intended physical location. Naturally there are major differences between pieces that occur in a sheltered venue versus ones that are outside exposed to the elements, and whether an instrument and soundscape is heard live further affects the nature of the piece.

The categories are broken into three columns: venue, soundscape, instrument, and the two options for venue are indoor/outdoor, and live/pre-recorded for the soundscape and instrument. Below some different possible listening experiences and composition effects of the categories are explained.

 Table 1: Five Categories of Field (Recording) Sound with Instrument(s).

Venue: One type is indoors, where the audience is sheltered from most unwanted sounds. This can be a concert hall, church, industrial building or an apartment, for instance. Here the composer (and performer) can expect a certain degree of control of light, sound, stage settings, temperature, etc. The opposite is a performance outdoors, which is subject to variable weather conditions, animals, machines, and people, among other things. (Of course this element of chance and surprise can be welcome in certain pieces.) If the performance is outdoors, the sound will be truly surround as opposed to the standard frontal approach of concerts, although the composer may influence audience placement. 

Soundscape: A pre-recorded soundscape brings a captured field recording to a desired space, while the original visual information is removed and left to the imagination of the listener. Even if the field recording is unedited, there is a degree of control and choice by the composer to present a certain tape. If the soundscape is pre-recorded there is the possibility of editing, layering, processing, and otherwise modifying the audio, as well as amplifying it in various speaker configurations of stereo, surround, etc. A live soundscape shares the sound source in its place of existence, including visual and other stimuli. A composer has less/little control over the sounds heard compared to the studio. The distance of sound source can be much greater in a live setting. In the case where the soundscape is live and indoors, some composers have encouraged performers to open doors or create live transmission lines to bring in the soundscape.

Instrument(s): Whether the instrument is live or pre-recorded also transforms the creation and effect of the work as a whole. With a live performer comes the benefit of spectacle – witnessing a human creating vibration of sound waves through body movements on their instruments, knowing that the music is made for the audience in shared time. The ability of responsiveness and interaction of a musician adds flexibility and drama, and even simply someone for our eyes to watch during the piece. Again we can visually connect the sound source with the sound (of course a performer can be offstage or darkness, but the cause is generally known). In a performance that includes pre-recorded instruments we loose the visual information and connection with the performer, and questions arise of how much editing or processing was done on the recording. Was it improvised, notated, or spliced in the studio? Who is playing and where? As the player and place is removed, what kind of imagined place does our mind create?

These questions and possibilities combine in interesting ways in each category with the various options of pre-recorded or live-ness of the soundscape and instruments in their venues. This chapter shows some possibilities of compositional approaches and their results for each category, and each piece provides a further point of discussion of ideas sparked by the thoughts of the composers and the pieces themselves. 

Top

Previous                                                                                                                                    Next