Soundscape

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology. The idea of soundscape refers to both the natural acoustic environment, consisting of natural sounds, including animal vocalizations and, for instance, the sounds of weather and other natural elements; and environmental sounds created by humans, through musical composition, sound design, and other ordinary human activities including conversation, work, and sounds of mechanical origin resulting from use of industrial technology. Crucially, the term soundscape also includes the listener's perception of sounds heard as an environment: “how that environment is understood by those living within it” [1] and therefore mediates their relations. The disruption of these acoustic environments results in noise pollution.

The term "soundscape" can also refer to an audio recording or performance of sounds that create the sensation of experiencing a particular acoustic environment, or compositions created using the found sounds of an acoustic environment, either exclusively or in conjunction with musical performances.[2][3]
"Soundscape from Puerto Rico"
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Elements

The term soundscape was coined by Canadian composer and environmentalist, R. Murray Schafer. According to this author there are three main elements of the soundscape:

This is a musical term that identifies the key of a piece, not always audible ... the key might stray from the original, but it will return. The keynote sounds may not always be heard consciously, but they "outline the character of the people living there" (Schafer). They are created by nature (geography and climate): wind, water, forests, plains, birds, insects, animals. In many urban areas, traffic has become the keynote sound.
These are foreground sounds, which are listened to consciously; examples would be warning devices, bells, whistles, horns, sirens, etc.
This is derived from the term landmark. A soundmark is a sound which is unique to an area. In his 1993 book, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Schafer wrote, "Once a Soundmark has been identified, it deserves to be protected, for soundmarks make the acoustic life of a community unique."[4]

 ... and the elements have been further defined as to essential sources:

Consisting of the prefix, geo (gr. earth), and phon (gr. sound), this refers to the soundscape sources that are generated by non-biological natural sources such as wind in the trees, water in a stream or waves at the ocean, and earth movement, the first sounds heard on earth by any sound-sentient organism.
Consisting of the prefix, bio (gr. life) and the suffix for sound, this term refers to all of the non-human, non-domestic biological soundscape sources of sound.
Consisting of the prefix, anthro (gr. human), this term refers to all of the sound signatures generated by humans.

Pauline Oliveros, composer of post-World War II electronic art music, defined the term "soundscape" as "All of the waveforms faithfully transmitted to our audio cortex by the ear and its mechanisms".[5]

Bernie Krause, musician and bioacoustician, redefined the soundscape elements in terms of their three main sources, geophony, biophony, and anthrophony.[6]

Soundscapes in music

In music, soundscape compositions are often a form of electronic music, or electroacoustic music. Composers who use soundscapes include real-time granular synthesis pioneer Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Luc Ferrari, whose Presque rien, numéro 1 (1970) is an early soundscape composition.[3][7] Soundscape composer Petri Kuljuntausta has created soundscape compositions from the sounds of sky dome and Aurora Borealis and deep sea underwater recordings, and a work entitled Charm of Sound to be performed at the extreme environment of Saturn's Titan (moon). The work landed on the ground of Titan in 2005 after traveling inside the Huygens (spacecraft) over seven years and four billion kilometres through Space.

Music soundscapes can also be generated by automated software methods, such as the experimental TAPESTREA application, a framework for sound design and soundscape composition, and others.[8][9]

The soundscape is often the subject of mimicry in Timbre-centered music such as Tuvan throat singing. The process of Timbral Listening is used to interpret the timbre of the soundscape. This timbre is mimicked and reproduced using the voice or rich harmonic producing instruments.[10]

The soundscape consists of three major sources or components. They are the biophony (the non-human, non-domestic animal sound signatures that occur in any given biome), the geophony (non-biological natural sounds that occur in any given biome and that include the effects of wind, water, earth movement, etc.), and anthrophony (human-generated sounds that include entropic electro-mechanical noise, and structured sound such as music and theatre).[11][12][13]

Soundscapes and the Environment

There are two distinct soundscapes, either hi-fi or lo-fi, created by the environment. A hi-fi system possesses a positive signal-to-noise ratio.[14] These settings make it possible for discrete sounds to be heard clearly since there is no background noise to obstruct even the smallest disturbance. A rural landscape offers more hi-fi frequencies than a city because the natural landscape creates an opportunity to hear incidences from nearby and afar. In a lo-fi soundscape, signals are obscured by too many sounds, and perspective is lost within the broad- band of noises.[14] In lo-fi soundscapes everything is very close and compact. A person can only listen to immediate encounters; in most cases even ordinary sounds have to be exuberantly amplified in order to be heard.

All sounds are unique in nature. They occur at one time in one place and can't be replicated. In fact, it is physically impossible for nature to reproduce any phoneme twice in exactly the same manner.[14] Today, there is a split between original sounds and unnatural acoustics brought on by the transmission and storage of sound. In other words, recordings have made it possible to simulate any sound environment anywhere. The portability of acoustics has transformed the idea of soundscape because it made hi-fi gadgetry mainstream in a lo-fi setting. Producers have displaced sounds found in the countryside, wildlife, and water and injected them into the homes of people everywhere, further enhancing the lo-fi problem found in urban spaces today.

Soundscapes in health care

Soundscapes from a computerized acoustic device with a camera may also offer synthetic vision to the blind, utilizing human echolocation, as is the goal of the seeing with sound project.[15]

Soundscapes and noise pollution

Papers on noise pollution are increasingly taking a holistic, soundscape approach to noise control. Whereas acoustics tends to rely on lab measurements and individual acoustic characteristics of cars and so on, soundscape takes a top-down approach. Drawing on John Cage's ideas of the whole world as composition,[16] soundscape researchers investigate people's attitudes to soundscapes as a whole rather than individual aspects - and look at how the entire environment can be changed to be more pleasing to the ear.

It has been suggested that people's opportunity to access quiet, natural places in urban areas can be enhanced by improving the ecological quality of urban green spaces through targeted planning and design and that in turn has psychological benefits.[17]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Truax, Barry (2001). Acoustic Communication. Ablex Publishing Corporation. p. 11. ISBN 9781567505375.
  2. ↑ LaBelle, Brandon (2006). Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 198, 214. ISBN 0-8264-1845-7.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Truax, Barry (1992). "Electroacoustic Music and the Soundscape: The inner and the Outer World". In Paynter, John. Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought. Routledge. pp. 374–398. ISBN 0-415-07225-5.
  4. ↑ Schafer, R. Murray (1993). The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. p. 10. ISBN 978-089281455-8.
  5. ↑ Oliveros, Pauline (2005). Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. iUniverse. p. 18. ISBN 0-595-34365-1.
  6. ↑ Krause, Bernie (2012). The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places. Little Brown. p. 278. ISBN 978-0-316-08687-5.
  7. ↑ Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 312. ISBN 0-262-18215-7.
  8. ↑ Boodler ambient soundscape generator written in Python
  9. ↑ fLOW ambient soundscape generator (Apple Macintosh)
  10. ↑ Levin, Theodore (2006). Where Rivers and Mountains Sing, Sound, Music and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  11. ↑ Krause, B (January–February 2008). "The Anatomy of a Soundscape". Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 56 (1/2).
  12. ↑ Krause, B (2012). The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places. New York: Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-08687-5.
  13. ↑ Pijanowski, Bryan C.; Villanueva-Rivera, Luis J.; Dumyahn, Sarah L.; Farina, Almo; Krause, Bernie; Napoletano, Brian M.; Gage, Stuart H.; Pieretti, Nadia (March 2011). "Soundscape Ecology: The Science of Sound in the Landscape". BioScience 61 (3): 203–216. doi:10.1525/bio.2011.61.3.6.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Schafer, Murray (2004). Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 29–38.
  15. ↑ Seeing with Sound
  16. ↑ needs citation
  17. ↑ Irvine, K. N.; Devine-Wright, P.; Payne, S. R.; Fuller, R. A.; Painter, B.; Gaston, K. J. (2009). "Green space, soundscape and urban sustainability: An interdisciplinary, empirical study". Local Environment 14 (2): 155. doi:10.1080/13549830802522061.

Further reading

External links