Leigh Landy: Understanding the Art of Sound Organization (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · electroacoustic music, electronic music, music, music history, musique concrète, plunderphonics, sound art, sound recording
The art of sound organization, also known as electroacoustic music, uses sounds not available to traditional music making, including pre-recorded, synthesized, and processed sounds. The body of work of such sound-based music (which includes electroacoustic art music, turntable composition, computer games, and acoustic and digital sound installations) has developed more rapidly than its musicology. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization proposes the first general foundational framework for the study of the art of sound organization, defining terms, discussing relevant forms of music, categorizing works, and setting sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts.
Leigh Landy’s goal in this book is not only to create a theoretical framework but also to make sound-based music more accessible—to give a listener what he terms “something to hold on to,” for example, by connecting elements in a work to everyday experience. Landy considers the difficulties of categorizing works and discusses such types of works as sonic art and electroacoustic music, pointing out where they overlap and how they are distinctive. He proposes a “sound-based music paradigm” that transcends such traditional categories as art and pop music. Landy defines patterns that suggest a general framework and places the study of sound-based music in interdisciplinary contexts, from acoustics to semiotics, proposing a holistic research approach that considers the interconnectedness of a given work’s history, theory, technological aspects, and social impact.
The author’s ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS, www.ears.dmu.ac.uk), the architecture of which parallels this book’s structure, offers updated bibliographic resource abstracts and related information.
Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262122928, 9780262122924
303 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
Comment (0)Brandon LaBelle: Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2006)
Filed under book | Tags: · music, music history, noise, sound art, sound recording
The rise of a prominent auditory culture, as seen in the recent plethora of art exhibitions on sound art, in conjunction with academic programs dedicated to “aural culture”, sonic art, and auditory issues now emerging, reveals the degree to which sound art is lending definition to the 21st Century. And yet sound art still lacks related literature to compliment, and expand, the realm of practice.
Background Noise sets out an historical overview, while at the same time shaping that history according to what sound art reveals – the dynamics of art to operate spatially, through media of reproduction and broadcast, and in relation to the intensities of communication and its contextual framework.
Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
ISBN 0826418457, 9780826418456
316 pages
PDF (no OCR; some pages missing; updated on 2012-11-4)
Comments (2)David Toop: Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds (1995/2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · computer music, electroacoustic music, electronic music, experimental music, music history, sound art, sound recording
Sun Ra, Brian Eno, Lee Perry, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Brian Wilson are interviewed in this extraordinary work of sonic history that travels from the rainforests of amazonas to virtual Las Vegas, from David Lynch’s dream house, high in the Hollywood hills to the megalopolis of Tokyo.
Ocean of Sound begins in 1889 at the Paris Exposition when Debussy first heard Javanese music performed. It goes on to comprehensively map a whole century of ambient music and its legacy.
Publisher Serpent’s Tail, 1995
ISBN 185242382X, 9781852423827
306 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
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