A widespread view among philosophers and scientists is that recorded sounds and assisted hearing differ fundamentally from natural sounds and direct hearing. It is commonly claimed, for example, that the sounds we hear over the phone are not sounds emitted by the voice of our interlocutor, but the sounds reproduced by the phone’s loudspeaker. According to this view, hearing distant sounds through communication and audio equipment is at best indirect and at worst illusory. In what follows, I shall reject these (...) claims and argue in favor of a transparent view of auditory media, including radio, telephone, phonograph, etc. According to this approach, the great gift of Scott de Martinville and Edison is not to have invented devices able to reproduce vanished sounds but rather to have created technological instruments literally able to store and transmit them to future and distant listeners. (shrink)

This book traces the profound impact of technical media on the sound of music, asking: how do media technologies shape sound? How does this affect music? And how did it change what we listen for in music? Based on the information theoretical proposition that all transmission channels introduce noise and distortion, the argument accounts for the fact that technologically reproduced music is inherently shaped by the technologies that enable its reproduction. The media archaeological assessment of this noise of (...) sound media developed in the book draws from a wide range of sources, both theoretical and historical, conceptual and technical. Together, they show that noise should not be understood as unwanted by-effect but instead plays a foundational role in shaping the sonic contours of technologically reproduced music. Over the course of five chapters, the book sketches a broad history of the problem of noise in sound recording, looks at specific analog and digital noise-related technologies, traces the ideal of sonic purity back to key developments in nineteenth century acoustics, and develops an analysis of the close interrelation between noise and the temporality of sound. This relation, it argues, is central to the way in which recorded sound and music resonate with listeners. Ultimately, this media specific analysis of the noise of sound media thereby greatly enriches our understanding of the way in which they changed and continue to change the sonorous qualities of music, thus offering a new perspective on the interaction between music, media and listeners. (shrink)

The year that Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna, 1889, nearby developments already underway portended two major changes of the coming century: the advent of controlled heavier-than-air flight and the mass production of musical sound recordings. Before they brought about major social changes, though, these innovations appeared in Europe in the form of children’s toys. Both a rubber-band-powered model helicopter-like toy employing an ingenious solution to the problem of control, and a working toy gramophone with which music could be (...) reproduced from hard discs, appeared in Europe in time for Ludwig’s childhood. And, both innovations reappear in his work as an adult. The relationship between the advent of heavier-than-air flight and Wittgenstein’s claim in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that a proposition is a picture or model is a topic in its own right, and I discuss it in separate works. 1 In this essay, I consider the way Wittgenstein employed the development of sound recordings in discussing logical form in the Tractatus. (shrink)

Bringing together an international collection of experts, this work explores various philosophical issues surrounding modern music recordings. With perspectives from practicing musicians, musicologists, sound artists, and recordings engineers, this reference asks how theoretical issues related to their work relate to the context of making and using recordings. Additional questions asked by this study include What kind of “spatiality” is generated through recordings, and by what means? What is the nature of “recorded space”? Do recordings reflect musical reality or create (...) one? and What are the philosophical bases of an “ethics” of recording? (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive overview of what sound means in this century. It's primary argument is that sound is the newest sense, having been elevated with the advent of sound recording approximately 100 years ago. With chapters ranging from sound recording to the acquisition of language, this study is meant to engage readers on what the author argues is our primary sense. Chapters on the weaponization of sound, sound refuges, and (...) class='Hi'>sound design are also part of these extensive study by a scholar focused on contemporary rhetoric and mass media. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between psychotherapy and sound reproduction technologies from the early 20th century to the present. Subscribing to a media genealogy approach, it traces the changing status of the recorded voice in therapy as set against broader transformations in the field of mental health. Delving into the recorded voice’s diverse applications across psychotherapeutic approaches, it demonstrates how technology worked to unravel the temporal and spatial formations of the therapeutic setting, thereby unsettling established hierarchies, terminologies, and techniques (...) while at the same time supporting the integrity of the therapeutic situation. The article points to sound media’s capacity to bifurcate the voice into somatic and expressive elements and reassemble them in various configurations, thereby producing the ‘psyche’ through alternative access points. The story of the recorded voice in therapy provides a glimpse into the way technological affordances inform therapeutic concepts and practices, which in turn implement technology in study, training, and treatment. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the sound image as a structural component of cultural memory in the context of the problem of difficult heritage. The explication of the role of sound in the construction of collective memory of traumatic experience is carried out on the example of revealing sound patterns in films representing Stalinist repression. The subject of this study will be the soundscapes captured in film language, through which the experience of collective traumatisation (...) is revealed to us. It is proposed to understand difficult heritage as a form of cultural memory generated by trauma, which is the battleground of two opposing forces: official rhetoric that displaces the memory of traumatic experiences as a threat to collective identity, and preservationist discourse that points to the dangers of forgetting. This paper is an attempt to identify how this contradictory nature of questioning the past is represented through sound. On the basis of comparative analysis, the author identifies key features that unite the soundscape of the films under consideration. Firstly, the stratification of the auditory field into dichotomous facets: musical harmonic organisation, embodying the unifying power rhetoric, and noisy disorganisation, embodying the refusal to obscure and erase the past. Secondly, the difference in the sonic representation of the theme of repression in the cinema of the perestroika era and contemporary films, due to the change of political orientation in relation to the events of the past. The author stresses that the presence of such features relies on the existing mechanisms of labelling power instances and subordinate groups with polar sound characteristics. The author concludes that through the examination of sound recordings of the past it is possible to discover those semantic nuances for which there is no place in visual and written sources that rely on reasoned articulation. (shrink)

This article proposes approaching the phenomenon of sound as a fabric of relationships. Critiquing the notion of a sound object as it has become defined thanks to the fixity enabled by sound recording, it focuses on the characteristics of sound that converge towards a relational approach and suggests that there is an inextricable link between the vibrating object, the milieu in which the vibration spreads and the subject who listens. It is probably for this reason (...) that current research — whether in music, sound art or other disciplines that centre on sound, from sound studies to environmental ecology — implicitly seeks to move beyond the concept of sound alone in favour of compounds that combine sound with other elements. While the notions of sound ‘spaces’ and sound ‘environments’ appear as the default options here, three other compounds in particular highlight, in their own way, the relational approach: ‘soundscapes’, ‘sound milieus’, and sound ‘ambiances’ and ‘atmospheres’. (shrink)

The author employs current theories from psychology and sociology to examine how recorded music is made and how we listen to it. Setting out a framework for the study of recorded music and record production, he explains how recorded music is fundamentally different to live performance, how record production influences our interpretation of musical meaning and how the various participants in the process interact with technology to produce recorded music. The book combines ideas from the ecological approach to perception, embodied (...) cognition and the social construction of technological systems to provide a summary of theoretical approaches that are applied to the sound of the music and the creative activity of production. (shrink)

The biosemiotic complexity of acoustic communities in the primary forests of Ulu Temburong and Yasunì was investigated with continuous 24-h recordings, using the acoustic signature and multiscale approach of ecoacoustic events and their emergent fractal dimensions. The 3D recordings used for the analysis were collected in undisturbed primary equatorial forests under the scope of the project, Fragments of Extinction, which produces 3D sound portraits with the highest definition possible using current technologies – a perfect dataset on which to perform (...) a multiscale qualitative analysis. The ecoacoustic events detected by a combination of the Acoustic Complexity Indices, ACIft, ACIft evenness, and ACItf evenness, and its fractal dimension were developed according to a biosemiotics approach in which the ecofield theory states that EE functions like a species-specific carrier of meaning. EEs, extracted according to 10 levels of temporal resolution, from 1 to 360 s, confirm the hypothesis that these acoustic communities have an internal complexity that responds to a fractal structure. Yasunì was richer in EEs, with a higher coefficient of variation of hourly fractal dimension. This methodology opens up promising new perspectives in the acoustic assessment of habitat quality and monitoring landscape modification. It also confirms the great potential of the biosemiotics approach in converting acoustic frequencies into ecoacoustic events through encoding procedures that mimic potential species-specific interpretations of the sonic environment. (shrink)

Background: The intrauterine hearing experience differs from the extrauterine hearing exposure within a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting. Also, the listening experience of a neonate drastically differs from that of an adult. Several studies have documented that the sound level within a NICU exceeds the recommended threshold by far, possibly related to hearing loss thereafter. The aim of this study was, firstly, to precisely define the dynamics of sounds within an incubator and, secondly, to give clinicians and caregivers (...) an idea about what can be heard “inside the box.” Methods: Audio recordings within an incubator were conducted at the Pediatric Simulation Center of the Medical University Vienna. They contained recorded music, speech and synthesized sounds. To understand the dynamics of sounds around and within the incubator the following stimuli were used: broadband noise with decreasing sound level in ten steps of 6 dB, sine waves (62.5, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000 and 16000 Hz), logarithmic sweep (Chirp) over the frequency band 20 Hz to 21 kHz, singing male voice, singing and whispering female voice. Results: Our results confirm a protective effect of the incubator from noises above 500 Hz in conditions of “no-flow” and show almost no protective effect of an incubator cover. We, furthermore, observed a strong boost of low frequencies below 125 Hz within the incubator, as well as a notable increase of higher frequency noises with open access doors, a significant resonant effect of the incubator, and a considerable masking effect of the respiratory support against any other source of noise or sound stimulation even for “low-flow” conditions. Conclusion: Our study reveals high noise levels of air supply at high flow rates and the boost of low frequencies within the incubator. Education of medical staff and family members as well as modifications of the physical environment should aim at reducing noise exposure of preterm infants in the incubator. Audiovisual material is provided as supplementary material. (shrink)

Speech sounds can communicate perceptual information through iconicity, or shared resemblance between sound and meaning. Prosody, which encompasses vocal characteristics such as pitch and intensity, can similarly be recruited to communicate meaning by evoking physical features of a referent. This study used English‐like pseudowords to investigate whether iconicity between word form and object properties would affect pronunciation, with the prediction that congruent mappings between label and referent would elicit similarly iconic prosodic modulation. Experiment 1 used size‐sound iconicity to (...) establish perceptual mappings. Participants were presented with three animal figures of varying sizes, small, medium, and big, and asked to assign a label to one of them. The labels were pseudowords designed to be small‐sounding, ambiguous with respect to size, or big‐sounding. We found that small‐sounding pseudowords were more likely to be matched to small referents, and big‐sounding pseudowords to big referents. Participants exhibited no preference when naming medium‐sized animals. Experiment 2 assessed how iconic mappings between labels and referents influenced vocal production. Participants were shown three animals of differing sizes along with a label that was preassigned to a particular referent. Participants were then asked to pronounce aloud the target pseudoword, and responses were recorded. Although the relationship between label and referent did not significantly predict the acoustic form of vocal productions, participants instead produced prosody that reflected the size evoked by the pseudowords themselves, suggesting that not only are language users sensitive to sound to size iconicity in spoken language, but that sensitivity modulates speech production. (shrink)

Listening After Nature questions the reality of auditory natures. It argues that the line between wilderness and industrial culture is dull, and the natural world is presently a critical construct that entangles humans, animals, sites and technologies. Bringing new insights to the field of environmental sound arts in areas such as field recording, acoustic ecology and soundscape studies, Wright examines contemporary and archival audio works and calls for a 'post-natural' approach to sound. The book propels sounds arts (...) discourse into critical relationship with the environmental humanities and contemporary approaches dealing with the consequences of Anthropogenic change. Critical and imaginative, this is a book that forges urgent debate between sound, ethics, aesthetics and ecology. (shrink)

When The Sound of One Hand Clapping came out in Japan in 1916 it caused a scandal. Zen was a secretive practice, its wisdom relayed from master to novice in strictest privacy. That a handbook existed recording not only the riddling koans that are central to Zen teaching but also detailing the answers to them seemed to mark Zen as rote, not revelatory. For all that, The Sound of One Hand Clapping opens the door to Zen like (...) no other book. Including koans that go back to the master who first brought the koanteaching method from Japan to China in the eighteenth century, this book offers, in the words of the translator, editor, and Zen initiate Yoel Hoffmann, "the clearest, most detailed, and most correct picture of Zen" that can be found. What we have here is an extraordinary introduction to Zen thought as lived thought, a treasury of problems, paradoxes, and performance that will appeal to artists, writers, and philosophers as well as Buddhists and students of religion. (shrink)

Recording has transformed the nature of music as an art by reconfiguring the opposition between the aesthetics of perfection and imperfection. A precursor article, ‘The Art of Improvisation and the Aesthetics of Imperfection’, contrasted the perfectionist aesthetic of the ‘work-concept’ with the imperfectionist aesthetic of improvisation. Imperfectionist approaches to recording are purist in wanting to maintain the diachronic and synchronic integrity of the performance, which perfectionist recording creatively subverts through mixing and editing. But a purist transparency thesis (...) cannot evade the fact that the recorded image is crafted; against creative editing, however, the imperfectionist ideal of the ‘complete take’ is humanistic and anti-mechanistic, and not mere Romantic illusion. The article concludes with a discussion of the question of the artistic status of recording, and contrasts the possibility of a non-acousmatic sound art with the essentially acousmatic art of music. (shrink)

From Stage to Studio: Performances versus Recordings in Classical Music presents a cultural study of classical music-making through the analysis of live and studio performances of orchestral and operatic repertoire conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. The close listening analysis is based on detailed research into Mackerras's private collection of over 600 reel-to-reel and cassette tapes containing recordings of over 1,000 live performances which he conducted between the 1950s and the late 1990s. This is contextualized with evidence collected during ethnographic fieldwork (...) observations, presenting the opinions of Sir Charles, orchestral musicians from major London orchestras and opera houses with whom he was working (Philharmonia, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal Opera House, English National Opera), and production team members working for recording industry leaders (such as Decca, EMI, and Chandos). This ethnography of classical music-making gives a voice to performers and music professionals, brings to light some important and heretofore hidden issues and explores a fascinating time of intense change in the recording industry. Including consideration of ways forward for performance, education, and recording, this book will be relevant to specialist practitioners, as well as music enthusiasts interested in concert life and recording studio habits, professional performers, recordists, music students, educators, and scholars interested in classical music. (shrink)

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded environmental sounds instead of sounds of traditional Western musical instruments. Centered in Paris around the composer, music theorist, engineer, and writer Pierre Schaeffer, this became known as musique concrète because of its use of concrete recorded sound fragments, manifesting a departure from the abstract concepts and representations of Western music notation. Furthermore, the term sound object was used to denote our (...) perceptual images of such fragments. Sound objects and their features became the focus of an extensive research effort on the perception and cognition of music in general, remarkably anticipating topics of more recent music psychology research. This sound object theory makes extensive use of metaphors, often related to motion shapes, something that can provide holistic representations of perceptually salient, but temporally distributed, features in different kinds of music. (shrink)

Nonfictional field recording is a genre of music which offers a glimpse of art beyond our late-capitalist age. The ongoing ecocide which we, in a state of abject detachment, are witnessing and abetting calls out for artists to reconnect and reengage with the nonhuman world that has been deemed valueless by our civilization. Countering the disenchantment of nature wrought by scientism, human-centrism, and above all capitalism necessitates a dissolving of the barriers we set up between ourselves and our environment, (...) a task which can be only accomplished via religion or art: an art—like field recording—which affords reconnecting its audience with the enchantment of the ignored world surrounding them. In this article, Toshiya Tsunoda’s exemplary Somashikiba —recorded in locations forgotten by civilization—will be examined via interpretive tools adapted from Ueda Shizuteru’s Kyoto School aesthetics and Takahashi Mutsuo’s poetics. Ueda’s philosophy offers a way of understanding perception which eliminates the subject-object division. Takahashi’s project of recovering the spirituality of place through poetry is a model of historically and politically engaged art. Looking, as these contemporary Japanese thinkers have done, to the precapitalist, pre-formalist past to rediscover art’s function as a medium which reconfigures the listener’s perception of reality, I argue for the urgency of sound art such as Tsunoda’s which aids in the re-enchantment of the world to a future beyond capitalist, humanist “civilization.”. (shrink)

“Listening to music” and “listening to sound recordings” have become perfectly synonymous in our society. The aim of this paper is to question the legitimacy of this supposed equivalence, which almost all listeners have taken for granted. Our sonic universe is saturated with recorded sounds: what space does it leave to music? What reasons could justify a radical distinction, or even opposition, between the exposure to recorded sounds and musical activity in the strict sense of the word? According to (...) tried and tested phenomenological method, through conscious attention to what appears, we return “to the matters themselves”: namely, the conditions under which sonorities can become music. After a first, introductive part reflecting the exceptional marginality of recording in mankind’s musical history, the second part of the study sketches a phenomenological description of a genuine musical process; the final part examines the consequences of sound registration with regard to such a process and to various aspects of music making and listening to music. It is thereby shown that recordings are by no means a vector of democratizing musical culture. (shrink)

Who produces sound and music? And in what spaces, localities and contexts? As the production of sound and music in the 21st Century converges with multimedia, these questions are critically addressed in this new edited collection by Samantha Bennett and Eliot Bates. Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound features 16 brand new articles by leading thinkers from the fields of music, audio engineering, anthropology and media. Innovative and timely, this collection represents scholars from around (...) the world, revisiting established themes such as record production and the construction of genre with new perspectives, as well as exploring issues in cultural and virtual production. (shrink)

A culturally diverse historical record shows considerable evidence of a significant role for musical sound in healing processes. Very little of this information is used in contemporary medical practice. In part that is a function of paradoxical, inconclusive, and sometimes contradictory research results. Reviewed research literature is categorized as follows: physical healing, psychological healing, spiritual healing, and healing practices of indigenous peoples. The combination of ethnographic, descriptive and clinical data in the literature review demonstrates the complexity inherent to investigating (...) this topic. Most of the clinical research uses quantitative methodologies. Because of the diversity of musical sound, infinitely variable individual responsivity, and the variable significance of a variety of influences, quantitative studies about musical sound healing phenomena are only minimally revealing. It is suggested that whether or not a sound facilitates a healing response depends on how it is experienced. Further, how this happens as well as the distinction between sound and music is in large part a function of the meaning sound is given. This is the first study to examine in detail the meaning of such an experience. This study uses the phenomenological methodology developed by Giorgi to analyze four descriptive protocols detailing first-person responses to a question about musical sound-facilitated physical healing processes. The analysis results in a single general structure of the essential meaning of this experience revealing the relationships for each subject connecting an altered state of consciousness , spiritual awareness, cognitive understanding, history of related experiences and active, intentional choice. Despite their apparent individual differences all subjects used musical sound in ritualistic ways to facilitate an ASC which incorporated visual imagery and spiritual support. Half the subjects used music and sound for themselves, the other half participated in a sound-based ritual for the benefit of someone else. A phenomenological approach further provides a way to demonstrate the subtle interrelationships expressed by the ethnographic, descriptive and clinical data. Broad implications of the results of this study are discussed concluding with some directions for further research and a brief discussion on the value of a phenomenological approach to medical diagnosis and treatment. (shrink)

It is well known that the Ministry of State Security in the former German Democratic Republic was deeply involved in wiretapping and eavesdropping on both foreigners and its citizens. It is less widely known that, against this background, the Stasi developed a keen interest in technologies and techniques of speaker identification, such as the visualization of recorded sound and aural analysis. How exactly did Stasi employees analyze the sound of voices? How did listening become a legitimate way of (...) knowing in this context? And why did speaker identification not become as powerful as the Stasi had hoped? Empirically, this essay draws on documents from the Stasi’s former archives. Theoretically, it builds on “sonic skills” in the sciences to clarify the identification practices and distinguishes between the “logic of forensics” and the “logic of surveillance” to understand why the Stasi ran ashore in its sound analysis endeavor. Finally, it aims to contribute to understanding the information paradox in the Stasi historiography and its implications for the history of science. (shrink)

I'm Professor of Physics at the University of Washington in Seattle . I do basic research in ultra-relativistic heavy ion physics with the STAR experiment, using the RHIC facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory, colliding gold nuclei to produce systems that look something like the first microsecond of the Big Bang. I do not work much in cosmology and astrophysics, although I've published a paper or two in those areas, but I do write a bi-monthly science column for Analog Science Fiction/Fact (...) Magazine . One of my columns was entitled BOOMERanG and the Sound of the Big Bang " and was published in the January-2001 issue of Analog. It described the then-recent Antarctic balloon flight that mapped the small-angle temperature variations of the cosmic background radiation. Following the lead of the scientists involved in the project, I described the temperature variations they observed as, in effect, a recording of the "sound of the Big Bang" when the universe was 376 thousand years old. (shrink)

We ran a pilot experiment to explore, using a new psychophysical method, the hypothesis proposed by Zietz and Werner in the ’30s, that a sound presented simultaneously with an afterimage can change its phenomenal appearance in non-synaesthetes. The method we adopted is able to directly collect and visualise the apparent changes in intensity of the afterimages, by recording observers’ interactions with a physical feedback mechanism, without referring to verbal descriptions. These first findings support some of the most meaningful (...) observations reported by Werner and Zietz, according to which the colours of the afterimages ‘disintegrate’ at the hearing of a low sound and ‘concentrate’ for a high sound. This relationship is particularly evident with the Yellow stimulus, where the perceived colour intensity of its afterimage seems to have a faster negative change with a low-pitched tone sound, and an increase in intensity and duration when perceived simultaneously with a soprano sound. These data are also coherent with the crossmodal correspondences between both pitch and loudness in audition and lightness and brightness in vision reported in the literature. (shrink)

Recent research into how musicians coordinate their expressive timing, phrasing, articulation, dynamics, and other stylistic characteristics during performances has highlighted the role of predictive processes, as musicians must anticipate how their partners will play in order to be together. Several studies have used information flow techniques such as Granger causality to show that upcoming movements of a musician can be predicted from immediate past movements of fellow musicians. Although musicians must move to play their instruments, a major goal of music (...) making is to create a joint interpretation through the sounds they produce. Yet, information flow techniques have not been applied previously to examine the role that fellow musicians' sound output plays in these predictive processes and whether this changes as they learn to play together. In the present experiment, we asked professional violinists to play along with recordings of two folk pieces, each eight times in succession, and compared the amplitude envelopes of their performances with those of the recordings using Granger causality to measure information flow and cross-correlation to measure similarity and synchronization. In line with our hypotheses, our measure of information flow was higher from the recordings to the performances than vice versa, and decreased as the violinists became more familiar with the recordings over trials. This decline in information flow is consistent with a gradual shift from relying on auditory cues to predict the recording to relying on an internally-based (learned) model built through repetition. There was also evidence that violinists became more synchronized with the recordings over trials. These results shed light on the planning and learning processes involved in the aligning of expressive intentions in group music performance and lay the groundwork for the application of Granger causality to investigate information flow through sound in more complex musical interactions. (shrink)

From Edison’s invention of the phonograph through contemporary field recording and sound installation, artists have become attracted to those domains against which music has always defined itself: noise, silence, and environmental sound. Christoph Cox argues that these developments in the sonic arts are not only aesthetically but also philosophically significant, revealing sound to be a continuous material flow to which human expressions contribute but which precedes and exceeds those expressions. Cox shows how, over the course of (...) the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, philosophers and sonic artists have explored this “sonic flux.” Through the philosophical analysis of works by John Cage, Maryanne Amacher, Max Neuhaus, Christian Marclay, and many others, Sonic Flux contributes to the development of a materialist metaphysics and poses a challenge to the prevailing positions in cultural theory, proposing a realist and materialist aesthetics able to account not only for sonic art but for artistic production in general. (shrink)

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies present within scholarship on (...) both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from popular music studies; 4) the forms of music analysis and the kinds of musical material commonly employed within popular music studies. I suggest that the field would greatly benefit from a true engagement with anthropological theories and methods, and that the “chaotic conceptualization” of musical structuration and the critical discourse would likewise benefit from an attention to recorded sound and production aesthetics. (shrink)

The ancient Greeks already used to give ethnic names to their different scales, and observations on differences in music of the various nations always raised the interest of musicians and philosophers. Yet, it was only in the late nineteenth century that “comparative musicology” became an institutional science. An important role in this process was played by Carl Stumpf, a former pupil of Brentano’s who pioneered these researches in Berlin. Stumpf founded the Phonogrammarchiv to collect recordings of folk and extra-European music (...) and a dedicated journal, the Sammelbände für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft. Gifted in the field of science no less than in that of musicology, Stumpf developed an empirically-oriented approach to phenomenology, deeply divergent from Husserl’s and highly influential over the Berlin school of Gestalt psychology. A self-declared “outsider” among armchair philosophers, Stumpf experimentally investigated the perception of sounds and the origins of musical consonance. Developing the physiological studies of Ernst Weber on the sense of touch, Stumpf discovered that two sensations of tone, given at the same time, tend to mix in a certain degree. Musical consonance – he claimed – lays in this level of “tonal fusion”, not in the allegedly “natural” series of the harmonic partials of a vibrating chord, as suggested by the naturalists of all times from Pythagoras to Stumpf’s great contemporary Hermann Helmholtz. Accordingly, no musical system can claim for preponderance over the others: Stumpf’s researches in comparative musicology served to corroborate his theses on “tonal fusion” and the psychological foundations of consonance. Although Stumpf later revised and finally abandoned this theory, its permanent value lays in its opposition to dominant naturalistic approaches. The commitment for comparative musicology at the Berlin School is then no concession to a positivistic fashion for exoticism. The fundamentally Eurocentric stance of naturalistic theories of music is also fiercely contrasted by Stumpf’s pupil Erich Hornbostel, who suggests that music ought to be considered as culture, rather than as nature, and focuses attention on the eventually melting human cultures. The Berlin school flourished until the Nazis forced most of its exponents to emigration and, for tragically obvious reasons, heavily discouraged researches on these topics. (shrink)

Conveying emotions in spoken poetry may be based on a poem’s semantic content and/or on emotional prosody, i.e. on acoustic features above single speech sounds. However, hypotheses of more direct sound–emotion relations in poetry, such as those based on the frequency of occurrence of certain phonemes, have not withstood empirical (re)testing. Therefore, we investigated sound–emotion associations based on prosodic features as a potential alternative route for the, at least partially, non-semantic expression and perception of emotions in poetry. We (...) first conducted a pre-study designed to validate relevant parameters of joy- and sadness-supporting prosody in the recitation, i.e. acoustic production, of poetry. The parameters obtained thereof guided the experimental modification of recordings of German joyful and sad poems such that for each poem, three prosodic variants were constructed: one with a joy-supporting prosody, one with a sadness-supporting prosody, and a neutral variant. In the subsequent experiment, native German speakers and participants with no command of German rated the joyfulness and sadness of these three variants. This design allowed us to investigate the role of emotional prosody, operationalized in terms of sound-emotion parameters, both in combination with and dissociated from semantic access to the emotional content of the poems. The findings from our pre-study showed that the emotional content of poems (based on pre-classifications into joyful and sad) indeed predicted the prosodic features pitch and articulation rate. The subsequent perception experiment revealed that cues provided by joyful and sad prosody specifically affect non-German-speaking listeners’ emotion ratings of the poems. Thus, the present investigation lends support to the hypothesis of prosody-based iconic relations between perceived emotion and sound qualia. At the same time, our findings also highlight that semantic access substantially decreases the role of cross-language sound–emotion associations and indicate that non-German-speaking participants may also use phonetic and prosodic cues other than the ones that were targeted and manipulated here. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 64–65 Notes on Notes on Sound, July 18, 8:34pm Isaac Linder Paul de Man begins his landmark text, Allegories of Reading , with a cheeky epigraph from the philosopher Blaise Pascal. It reads, 'Quand on lit trop vite ou trop doucement on n’entend rien' (When you read too quickly or too slowly you hear nothing). The epigraph is cheeky because in the course of de Man's work he avoids elucidating at what speed one would one would (...) be able to properly hear the texts to which they are attending. For de Man the force of literary tropes—the way they seduce and structure their multiple readings—relies on the intimate proximity of figures and properties in the relational linkages of a text. Textual spatialization trumps and belies the importance of the tempo and temporality. Enter the "site"-specific text videos by the Korean-American writer and improvising musician, Bonnie Jones. In these works, unique to the venues that have solicited them, the time of writing is captured and stored in a complex digital apparatus in the first instance, along with all of the hesitations, repetitions, and sudden keystrokes attending its production. Speed is pro-scribed— written in advance—and the time (five minutes and sixteen seconds) of Notes on Sound is spatialized into an affective mesh that ensnares the viewer in a doppler effect created between the speed of writing and the speed of reading. We're caught in the tempo of Jones' decisions (that is, unless we fast forward, pause, or rewind the text; unless it freezes or takes too long to load). We find ourselves subvocalizing along to a deceptively simple prompt ("please now together count back from one hundred") as the phonetic units that comprise the video permute into polyphony and warp like the minimalist pixelations of a concrete poem into the grammar of the Notes (that is, unless we are reading along out loud). We are forced to feel our form of reading as it unfolds, in a manner arguably more proliferate and protocolized than would have been known in Pascal's time. Would he have been able to hear anything? With its understated use of syntax and short-circuiting Notes on Sound is without a soundtrack, but by no means silent: Meditation on counting, on the sound of counting, and what counts as sounding; on the way we count on sound as a pre-text for things to ring true, as they do in the famously less calculable arenas of, say, emotion and poetry. Notes on Sound is a record of these. If I become more emotional about this it is only because it forces us to hear her.  . (shrink)

Recent computational models of perception conceptualize auditory oddball responses as signatures of a learning process, in line with the influential view of the mismatch negativity as a prediction error signal. Novel MMN experimental paradigms have put an emphasis on neurophysiological effects of manipulating regularity and predictability in sound sequences. This raises the question of the contextual adaptation of the learning process itself, which on the computational side speaks to the mechanisms of gain-modulated prediction error. In this study using electrocorticographic (...) signals, we manipulated the predictability of oddball sound sequences with two objectives: Uncovering the computational process underlying trial-by-trial variations of the cortical responses. The fluctuations between trials, generally ignored by approaches based on averaged evoked responses, should reflect the learning involved. We used a general linear model and Bayesian Model Reduction to assess the respective contributions of experimental manipulations and learning mechanisms under probabilistic assumptions. To validate and expand on previous findings regarding the effect of changes in predictability using simultaneous EEG-MEG recordings. Our trial-by-trial analysis revealed only a few stimulus-responsive sensors but the measured effects appear to be consistent over subjects in both time and space. In time, they occur at the typical latency of the MMN. In space, we found a dissociation between time-independent effects in more anterior temporal locations and time-dependent effects in more posterior locations. However, we could not observe any clear and reliable effect of our manipulation of predictability modulation onto the above learning process. Overall, these findings clearly demonstrate the potential of trial-to-trial modeling to unravel perceptual learning processes and their neurophysiological counterparts. (shrink)

Alcohol addiction can lead to health and social problems. It can also affect people's emotions. Emotion plays a key role in human communications. It is important to recognize the people's emotions at the court and infer the association between the people's emotions and the alcohol addiction. However, it is challenging to recognize people's emotions efficiently in the courtroom. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, no existing work is about the association between alcohol addiction and people's emotions at court. In (...) this paper, we propose a deep learning framework for predicting people's emotions based on sound perception, named ResCNN-SER. The proposed model combines several neural network-based components to extract the features of the speech signals and predict the emotions. The evaluation shows that the proposed model performs better than existing methods. By applying ResCNN-SER for emotion recognition based on people's voices at court, we infer the association between alcohol addiction and the defendant's emotion at court. Based on the sound source data from 54 trial records, we found that the defendants with alcohol addiction tend to get angry or fearful more easily at court comparing with defendants without alcohol addiction. (shrink)

In a century where humans and machines—powered by artificial intelligence or not—increasingly work together, it is of interest to understand human processing of multi-sensory stimuli in relation to attention and working memory. This paper explores whether and when supporting visual information with rhythmic auditory stimuli can optimize multi-sensory information processing. In turn, this can make the interaction between humans or between machines and humans more engaging, rewarding and activating. For this purpose a novel working memory paradigm was developed where participants (...) are presented with a series of five target digits randomly interchanged with five distractor digits. Their goal is to remember the target digits and recall them orally. Depending on the condition support is provided by audio and/or rhythm. It is expected that the sound will lead to a better performance. It is also expected that this effect of sound is different in case of rhythmic and non-rhythmic sound. Last but not least, some variability is expected across participants. To make correct conclusions, the data of the experiment was statistically analyzed in a classic way, but also predictive models were developed in order to predict outcomes based on a range of input variables related to the experiment and the participant. The effect of auditory support could be confirmed, but no difference was observed between rhythmic and non-rhythmic sounds. Overall performance was indeed affected by individual differences, such as visual dominance or perceived task difficulty. Surprisingly a music education did not significantly affect the performance and even tended toward a negative effect. To better understand the underlying processes of attention, also brain activation data, e.g., by means of electroencephalography, should be recorded. This approach can be subject to a future work. (shrink)

Bioacoustics is an interdisciplinary field bridging biological and acoustic sciences, which uses sound technologies to record, preserve, and analyse large datasets of animal communications. But it is also a world, made of the meanings created through inter- and intra-species communication. This article empirically explores a variety of bioacoustics research, including interviews with researchers, as part of a broader qualitative study, in order to theorize the expanding sense and sensation of a global biosphere and sonic data. By giving a sustained (...) and detailed account of the science of bioacoustics, particularly how its modes of measurement allow for a new way of understanding what is involved in the de-centred modes of hearing that re-centre acts of listening and, by extension, the nature of the relation between researcher and researched, the article contributes to methodological discussions regarding the longstanding questions of how researchers and scientists are implicated in the knowledge and objects they collectively produce. (shrink)

The book addresses how music (especially opera), the phonograph, and film served as cultural agents facilitating the many extraordinary social, artistic, and cultural shifts that characterized the nascent twentieth century and much of what followed long thereafter, even to the present. Three tropes are central: the tensions and traumas---cultural, social, and personal---associated with modernity; changes in human subjectivity and its engagement and representation in music and film; and the more general societal impact of modern media, sound recording (the (...) development of the phonograph in particular), and the critical role played by early-century opera recording. A principal focus of the book is the conflicted relationship in Western modernity to nature, particularly as nature is perceived in opposition to culture and articulated through music, film, and sound as agents of fundamental, sometimes shocking transformation. The book considers the sound/vision world of modernity filtered through the lens of aesthetic modernism and rapid technological change, and the impact of both, experienced with the prescient sense that there could be no turning back"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

We performed an EEG graph analysis on data from 31 typical readers (22.27 ± 2.53 y/o) and 24 dyslexics (22.99 ± 2.29 y/o), recorded while they were engaged in an audiovisual task and during resting-state. The task simulates reading acquisition as participants learned new letter-sound mappings via feedback. EEG data was filtered for the delta (0.5–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–13 Hz), and beta (13–30 Hz) bands. We computed the Phase Lag Index (PLI) to provide an estimate of (...) the functional connectivity between all pairs of electrodes per band. Then, networks were constructed using a Minimum Spanning Tree (MST), a unique sub-graph connecting all nodes (electrodes) without loops, aimed at minimizing bias in between groups and conditions comparisons. Both groups showed a comparable accuracy increase during task blocks, indicating that they correctly learned the new associations. The EEG results revealed lower task-specific theta connectivity, and lower theta degree correlation over both rest and task recordings, indicating less network integration in dyslexics compared to typical readers. This pattern suggests a role of theta oscillations in dyslexia and may reflect differences in task engagement between the groups, although robust correlations between MST metrics and performance indices were lacking. (shrink)

Audioscan Milano explores the strategies and experiments in the field of sound and noise of Milan’s legendary Studio di Fonologia Musicale. A multimedia installation composed of hundreds of field recordings of the city of Milan, Audioscan Milano provides its audience with a multisensory experience of the urban soundscape and the opportunity to interact with it digitally. The manipulation of noise and its transformation into musical sound via sophisticated electronic equipment emulates the Studio’s audio techniques but also exposes the (...) reasons behind its failure to attract a wider audience. Visitors to Audioscan Milano expect to hear urban noise rather than musical sounds and, despite some enthusiasm around being able to mix sound objects on the map and move them around the room, they fail to appreciate the technical subtleties of the procedures behind the music. Ultimately, Audioscan Milano constitutes an important link to Italy’s musical heritage of the 1950s and 1960s and can learn from its limitations, particularly when it comes to engaging the audience to play a more active role in the auditory experience of the city. (shrink)

We explored differences in the course of physiological functions and in the subjective evaluations in response to listening to a 7-min recording of the sound of a chainsaw and to the sounds of a forest. A Biofeedback 2000x-pert apparatus was used for continual recording of the following physiological functions in 50 examined persons: abdominal and thoracic respiration and their amplitude and frequency, electrodermal activity, finger skin temperature, heart rate and heart rate variability. The group of 25 subjects (...) listening to the sound of a chainsaw exhibited significantly lower values of blood volume pulse amplitude, lower values in peak alpha frequency HRV and higher values in peak high-frequency HRV. In the time interval from 80 s to 209 s, in which the two groups showed the greatest differences, lower values of blood volume pulse were also recorded while listening to the sound of a chainsaw. Listening to the sound of a chainsaw is associated with a greater feeling of fatigue and higher tension, while listening to the sounds of a forest is even considered to elicit feelings of improved learning abilities. The assumption that listening to the sound of a chainsaw results in higher defense arousal was confirmed. The greater variability which is exhibited by a majority of physiological functions while listening to the forest sounds may also be an innovative finding. It seems that there are two types of arousal following from correlations between physiological functions and subjective assessment. Low values of blood volume pulse amplitude are especially important from the health perspective. They correspond to the amount of vasoconstriction which occurs in the endothelial dysfunction related to increased mortality, incidence of myocardial infarction, leg atherosclerosis and topically to COVID-19. (shrink)