ï~~Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2009), Montreal, Canada
August 16-21, 2009
Abraham Moles defines it like this: "Sound image of an
animated place" [2], and the electroacoustic soundscape he
defines it as a: "Closed collection of ordered elements in
time through a tape, that expresses more or less a situation,
that is, an idea sound scene"1.
I agree with Schafer and Truax's definitions, although they
do not specify in what type of acoustic spaces there are
soundscapes. We would have to ask if an interior space
where there is almost non-acoustic activity is a
soundscape. These definitions are too general and they do
not specify situations. We will concentrate on exterior
recorded soundscapes.
To be able to talk about electroacoustic soundscape, we
have to create a new definition: It is the recording (mono,
stereo, multi track or three dimensional) of a soundscape,
where the particularities of the recording, types of
microphones and their position (if they are static or they
move) will determine its qualities.
3. SOUNDSCAPE CHARACTERISTICS
Schafer states that the main qualities of a soundscape are:
keynote sounds, the particular sounds that characterize and
give sense to a place, and for that reason, are not listened
in a conscious way and remain in the background; Signal
sounds, the sounds that exist in the foreground and are
listened in a conscious way, they represent more figures
than ground, and most of the times they are codes (in
Mexico the noise of the street knife sharpener, the siren of
an ambulance, etc); Soundmarks, the sounds that the
individuals identify as key sounds of their community (the
bell of their church, etc). Schafer is talking here of the
characteristics of a soundscape form a social
anthropological point of view, while I will concentrate on
the psychoacoustic characteristics4. Nevertheless, Murray
talks about sounds that manifest as ground, which I
interpret as background sounds, and as figures manifested
in the foreground, and also about a third level called field,
which is the place where one listens to the soundscape.
The first two characteristics will be fundamental in my
later analysis of electroacoustic soundscapes. For me,
background and figure are two types of distinct structures
that can be both in the first or second planes, backgrounds
have a continuous character while figures have a
discontinuous character. The third characteristic is
eliminated when the soundscape becomes a stereo
1 For Moles, soundscape is a short sequence between 4 and 8 seconds
including an idea composed by one or various signs that describe
something happening ( and idea scene). The soundscape described by
Truax would be for Moles a Sound Spectacle [2]
The work of Schafer was a brake through in the study of soundscapes,
but "In the past several years, mostly as a result of technological
developments in field recording and data analysis, it has become
necessary to focus more specifically on the complex sources of
soundscape acoustics in order to more accurately explain and probe the
root of this phenomenon" [1].
recording, although in it will remain an image of the
position that the individual had towards the soundscape,
and which Moles defines as a: proxemic perspective
system [2].
Other two important characteristics defined by Schafer are
important for the analysis of soundscapes, hi-fi and lo-fi
situations. In the former, sounds are superimposed less
frequently and we have perspective (background
amplitude), foreground and background. These
soundscapes exist more in the countryside than in the city
and more in the old times than in modern times. In lo-fi
situations "individual acoustic signals are obscured in an
over dense population of sounds", it is very difficult to
distinguish figures and clear backgrounds, and there is no
perspective. Lo-Fi soundscapes are typical of big cities,
due to traffic noise in the streets and highways [4].
Even though Schafer describes different types of sounds
that exist in the different soundscapes, the aim of our
research is far from entering in such details. However,
there are important sounds that almost always end up
functioning as background sounds, and that have
proliferated in the technological modern age (from the
industrial revolution to today), these are the flat line
sounds [4], constituted in nature by the remote sound of a
cascade, the ocean listened from a distant place, the
constant sound of the wind against the leaves, different
insects in tropical places, etc, and in modern times by
ventilators, constant electric sounds, the highway afar, etc.
Although I will not go into descriptive details, these flat
sounds are very common in different types of soundscapes
and are part of the background, from which we can
sometimes perceive figures in the first plane.
Other two terms used by Schafer and that could be of use
to us are Gesture and Texture. The first one refers to a
figure constituting the only distinguished event, and the
second one refers to "the generalized aggregate, the
mottled effect, the imprecise anarchy of conflicting
actions" [4], like the sound of many people talking in a
restaurant. Relating to texture, Schafer also makes the
following classification: Texture of the listened sonic
environment: hi-fi, lo-fl, natural, human (I would specify if
its human in nature, towns, rural areas or cities) and
technological.
On the other hand, Truax talks about density as a
possible descriptive parameter. In the next section I will
develop these variables and will introduce new ones.
5 Where "the subject that perceives is in a well defined place in the
world, in a listening point of view, and the ensemble of this world is
organized completely around him, in successive steps, from the nearest to
the furthest, by the proxemic or perspective law that states that all similar
things from other places and the phenomena of the circumscribed world -
visual and audible- diminish necessarily in order of importance with the
distance that separates them from the point of view of the listener" [3].
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