caspar menkman

hermeneutics of digitality.

Basically everything in life starts and stops and then sometimes starts again. This blog is not about me, but about the things I like to read and think about, so I will not go into that comment further. I will however tell you how this relates to the things I am writing.

Just a few days ago I was going through a book about the history of aesthetics and later tried to tell my mother my new insights. I drew up a little image that clarified my feelings about the interpretation of digital and “real”aesthetics and summarized that at this moment in time we tend to separate them. As if the digital is an entirely different world and it would be justified to use a different mindset when considering it's objects. I said out loud that the metaphysics of the digital are not at all similar to those of the ''real''. And today I read this:

"Who are we in the digital age? What does it mean for humanity to become transformed through the digital code? What are the epistemological, ontological and ethical consequences? How do human cultures become hybridized and in which way does this hybridization affect the interplay with natural processes and their interplay with the production and use of all kind of artificial products in a digital economy?"

These questions ask for a hermeneutic vision of the hybrid that culture is. A digital hermeneutics would deal with the implications of the tangible to the digital and vice-versa. We would not talk about differences, but would focus on what our current culture politcally, legally, comercially and my favorite aesthetically afford us.

The acousmatic situation

In my last post I talked a bit about timbre and its role in analytical listening to contemporary music. I specifically focused on the limitations of the vocabulary that surround timbre and I ended the article questioning if there might be alternatives that are better suited for listening and qualifying sounds and sound structures. In this post I will explain and critique the practice of 'reduced listening' as it was developed by the French 20th century composer Pierre Henri Schaeffer.

 In his in 1966 published treatise on the modes of listening he argued for a new approach to sound perception that was heavily influenced by Husserlian phenomenology. The sound object for Schaeffer is synthesized together from a continuum of auditory perceptions that transcends the sensual stimuli. He calls this view the natural standpoint. The natural reflex of our consciousness to synthesize and identify an object external from the subject, immediately following retention of this object, out of our perceptions, memory and signification. And he calls the object of our consciousness the intentional object. The mode of listening he described as acousmatic listening.

Regarding sound this means hearing something from a specific distance and at a specific moment and then hearing it again but from a different distance at a different time and still identifying the sound as the same. The process of identification in this practice is outside the pure empirical experience of the sound object. When determining one sound to be the same as another we are already internally making sense of the sound. For Schaeffer this meant that the natural standpoint must be overcome when we are analytically listening to music.

By bracketing out additional sensual cues we create an environment in which we can not judge a sound besides through our perceptual experience. Hearing can no longer be characterized as a subjective deformation in relation to external things. Schaeffer argued for a listening environment in which the source of the sound was hidden and no other sensual cues were given. This kind of experience of sound reduced it to the field of hearing alone. By shifting attention away from the physical object that causes my auditory perception, back towards the content of this perception, the goal is to become aware of precisely what it is in my perception that is given with certainty, or ‘adequately’. Creating an acousmatic experience.

Do we need a new mode of (analytical) listening?

Where pitch and rhythm are relatively easy to understand, the use of the term timbre in contemporary music troubles me. Recognizing the sound of an instrument in a musical composition can be a helpful tool in familiarizing yourself with a piece of music, but the limitations of aurally identifying a sound in the age of computer music have yet to be addressed.

Firstly digital equipment allows us to manipulate sound envelopes in ways that can alienate the most experienced listener. Just altering the attack and decay of a sound, with the fundamental and overtones staying the same, creates a different sonic experience.

Classifying the 'color' of a specific sound is further complicated by the limitations of the vocabulary that is used in this practice. Timbre focuses heavily on recognizing sounds from classical instruments. In short we say this sounds like a flute and this other sound is a percussion instrument. And even with the recognition of the inherent musicality of all (natural) sounds we can stretch our understanding and say: ''This is the wind rustling through the leaves.'' or ''This is a thunderstorm.'', but when we introduce synthetic sounds it gets complicated.

Basically computers grant us the opportunity to create a sound from any given frequency, pitch and loudness with as many overtones as we want. To complicate this even more we can vary the attack and decay of the sound. This means we can create sounds with no reference to any (natural) source. The classical timbral vocabulary fails to address these endless variations and they are simply categorized under electronic timbre.

Music is not exact science, but it does need a vocabulary that is accurate. I think that if we want to level the sonic 'playing field' we need address these difficulties by changing our systems of defining timbre.

The elements and relations of sound: Timbre

Picking up where I have left off some one and a half month ago, in this post I will try and go into the concept of timbre. One of the most difficult basic aspects of music compositions. In short timbre is what distinguishes two tones of identical pitch, loudness and perceived duration. This means that a high C on one instrument sounds different that on another. Someone playing the violin for instance creates a totally different sound when playing the exact same note on a flute. We call this difference a tone's timbre, the musical color of a sound.

The vibration of sound waves is quite complex. When producing tones, instruments create sound waves that vibrate at several frequencies simultaneously. We call the basic tone played by an instrument the fundamental, while the additional frequencies are referred to as overtones or harmonics. We do not hear this mixture of frequencies as separate sounds. Yet the timbre of an instrument is determined by the changing relations between overtones in a sound and its fundamental.

The color of sound that is produced by an instrument is determined by which overtones it emphasizes. The relative volumes of the overtones determine the sounds timbre. The intensity of a sound overtime is rarely constant, when overtones attack and decay at different rates, the sound produced may change independent of the overall volume heard.

Soundwaves

Every sound has a waveform. This waveform is the movement a sound makes when traveling through air (or water or any other matter). In traditional music, composers often use instruments finely tuned to produce evenly spaced waves of sound. Because of this the actual end product sounds interesting and the tones go well together. Soundwaves that are not evenly spaced are often referred to as noise. For instance thundering clouds and the sound of the surf. Even if they sometimes can sound pleasantly, they are often unsuited for musical compositions.

The most noticeable difference between musical tones is the difference in frequency between them. In my earlier entry I already noted that the pitch of a tone depends on the frequency of the oscillation of a sound. When the sound frequency is higher, the wavelength of the tone becomes shorter and the pitch of the tone higher.  So for instance in the picture below tone 1 is one octave lower then tone 2, tone 3 is two octaves lower then tone 1 and one lower then tone 2.

Next up is a bit more explanation on musical waveforms and how exactly work!

 

The elements and relations of sound: rhythm

Suppose I have been quiet the last week, have I? Well I am back now and will shortly go in to the concept of rhythm with you. Rhythm is something most of us are familiar with, it is something we learn about in elementary school and we tackle it from time to time when we move (clumsily) around the dancefloor. They say you either have a rhythmic sense or you don't, but what exactly is it?

It is generally defined as a movement marked by the the regulated succession of strong and weak elements over time. Musical sounds and silences in recurring patterns. Where pitch and harmony govern the vertical aspects of sound (or sound depth) rhythm has everything to do with the recognition of sounds and group of sounds overtime.

Sounds, groups of sound and silences are easily distinguished from another by their qualities such as length and strength and together they form rhythmic units. These units establish and maintain an underlying metric level, a basic unit of time that may be audible or implied. We call this unit the pulse or tactus of the mensural level or in short the beat. Often this unit is a recurring element throughout a musical piece. This said, the beat is not necessarily the fastest or slowest component, of the rhythm but the one that is perceived as basic. It is the tempo to which listeners tap their foot or dance to.

In short the rhythm of music is a simple unit of sounds and silences that regularly recurs in a musical piece and leads the expectations of the listener.

The elements and relations of sound: pitch

To understand music and its contents more deeply we have developed a set of terms to define the characteristics of a given composition. These terms give us the tools to talk about music in an abstract way and to communicate objectively about it. Through the characteristics intrinsic of a given tone and the relations between different tones we create structures that we classify as music. To get a better understanding of the terms that are central to the concept of music I will touch on their surface in the next few posts.

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency related scale.¹ On one end of the spectrum we have very high pitches and on the other very low. Earlier I stated that sound is the sensation excited in the ear when the air or other medium is set in motion. Differences in pitch correspond with the differences in oscillation in the air when it reaches ones ear. When the air vibrates very fast we hear very high pitches and when it goes slower the sound will be lower. In music notation, the different heights of notes indicate different pitches. A coherent succession of pitches is called a melody.

The use of simultaneous pitches in a composition is called a harmony. Harmony is often said to refer to the 'vertical' aspect of music, as opposed to the horizontal progression on the musical staff. A harmonized composition usually sounds pleasant to the ear, however many modern composers in the last century have been playfully experimenting with including dissonant pitches in their pieces. They consciously created 'tensions' in their compositions that were later resolved into a consonant (relaxed) harmony.

Lastly like almost everything around sound, perspectives on dissonance are colored by knowledge and culture. Arnold Schoenberg put forth the concept of the emancipation of dissonance into consonance. A dissonant harmony could be 'domesticated' through time by including it in enough compositions. An example of dissonance over history is pictured in the image above.

¹ Klapuri, Anssi. Davy, Manuel. Signal processing methods for music transcription. Springer, 2006. p. 8.

On Listening.

While it is interesting to think about music from a macro level, it is more helpful to zoom in on the actual day-by-day reception of sounds. As noted here for an individual to perceive a sound composition as music, one needs to be able to recognize elements in the composition that are familiar. And to be able to recognize these elements one needs to listen instead of merely hear the sounds. In the field of psychology they make this distinction through three types of hearing: pseudo-listening, selective attention and listening.

Pseudo-listening is the process in which the recipient of information (be it speech or music) gives the appearance of listening while he really is not. Even when the message travels from the sender to the receiver, the content of the message does not reach its intended goal. In a more simple design for me this is the difference between hearing and listening. While someone in the audience might respond to the sounds, he does not have the knowledge to appropriately decode (and thus respond) to it.

When someone consciously decides not to make sense of a message being sent, we call it selective attention. The major difference between this and pseudo-listening lies in the lack of effort one makes to even acknowledge the perceived sound. In music theory this field was explored in the 1920's by Erik Satie. With musique d'ameublement he proposed sound compositions, that addressed the boundary between sound and music, as an environmental commodity not much unlike temperature and light. These compositions were meant to be barely noticeable and add to the atmosphere of its surroundings. Nowadays we are constantly confronted with examples of this type of sound in public places (eg. grocery stores, malls, elevators).

Listening is when someone actively tries and is able to make sense of an aural message being sent. If sounds heard by an audience fit within their range of knowledge, they can decode and attribute a meaning to it. Understanding structures of sound is like making sense of grammar, before you do recognize patterns you'll have to learn what they 'look' like. To listen effectively you must listen with the goal of understanding. These are very different from the things that would be classified as hearing.

If to perceive something as music is to make sense of the composition of sounds. Then the practice of learning to listen is central to the concept of music. 

Understanding Sound.

As stated in my last post qualifying something as music is a subjective action. I personally can say that I perceive one composition of sound as music and another merely as noise¹. And this goes for everyone. But does this mean that in general music is culture specific or in other words: is it possible for sound to be music in one culture and non-music in another?

This is all about cultural preferences. Attributing qualities to an object through cultural perspectivism is not necessarily bad, but in a discussion aimed at creating a better macro understanding of the concept music, too much is hinged on taste. And as most people personally have experienced one's taste (be it in food/music/activities) is malleable through exposure. Or as Adorno put it: “The familiarity of … is a surrogate to the quality ascribed to it.”² We can learn to appreciate something we perceive, by first recognizing and then creating an understanding of the object. Something that does not register as music for you now, can through understanding grow on you.

When talking about sound from an theoretic angle it is important to distance yourself from your aesthetic appreciation in favor of a an objective approach. There is no way of formulating a spectrum of sound compositions that can be qualified as music. Therefor I feel as if it is best not to ask what is music, but to treat any sound composition as music.

¹ Again addressing noise music later.

² Adorno, Theodor W. On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening. in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, edited by Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1982), p. 298.

Cultural Perspectivism and Music.

Jaques Attali stated that music is the production of sounds within models that are accepted within a given culture. I like this statement. It shows how hard it is to stay away from cultural perspectivism when you are talking about something like music. There is no such thing as a law or superior will underneath human valorisation of sound. Attali shows a way of interpreting the concept of music without being inclusive or exclusive. But does this way of approaching cultural objects really help?

It leaves room to assert that listening with understanding greatly varies among individuals and cultures. And as such there is no transcendental concept of music. A composition can be perceived as a masterpiece by one and as noise¹ by someone stemming from a different perspective.

 

¹ I plan to talk more about noise later.