Sound Objects and Spatial Morphologies

Abstract

One of Pierre Schaeffer’s achievements in his musical research was his proposal of the sound object as a basic unit of musical experience and his insistence on listening as a main focus of research. Out of this research grew a radical new music theory of sound-based composition. This article will draw on this extensive research to explore the spaces where this music is heard and present the claim that the space in which music is experienced is as much a part of the music as the timbral material itself. The key question here is the changes made to timbral material through acousmatic spatial listening and the subjective analysis affordance of the listeners’ placement and perspective. These consequences are studied from a phenomenological and psychoacoustic perspective and it is suggested that Schaeffer’s research on timbral and musical concepts can be extended to include spatial features.

Full text

Sound Objects and Spatial Morphologies
ULF A. S. HOLBROOK
University of Oslo, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Rhythm, Time and Motion, Department of Musicology, PO Box 1017
Blindern, 0384 Oslo, Norway
Email: u.a.s.holbrook@imv.uio.no
One of Pierre Schaeffer’s achievements in his musical research
was his proposal of the sound object as a basic unit of musical
experience and his insistence on listening as a main focus of
research. Out of this research grew a radical new music theory
of sound-based composition. This article will draw on this
extensive research to explore the spaces where this music is
heard and present the claim that the space in which music is
experienced is as much a part of the music as the timbral
material itself. The key question here is the changes made to
timbral material through acousmatic spatial listening and the
subjective analysis affordance of the listeners’placement and
perspective. These consequences are studied from a phenom-
enological and psychoacoustic perspective and it is suggested
that Schaeffer’s research on timbral and musical concepts can
be extended to include spatial features.
1. INTRODUCTION
Listening usually takes place in a space and this space can
have a large influence on how this listening is understood.
This article poses a seemingly simple and basic question:
how can we talk about the changes to listening imposed
by spatial circumstances? How is the timbral content of
composed material affected by these circumstances? The
emphasis in this article is on an aesthetic and subjective
analysis with reference to studies into spatial perception,
spatial evaluation and spatial schemata. Specifically, the
discussion will centre on the ‘perceptual unknowns’
which can follow from experiencing and performing
electronic, electroacoustic or acousmatic music in differ-
ent spaces. To discuss these spatial issues, the sound
object is used as a basic perceptual unit. Pierre Schaeffer’s
proposal of the sound object as a mode of understanding
sound as small perceptual blocks was a remarkable
achievement, of which the effects are still being explored.
The sound object is defined as a fragment of musical
sound, suitable for study in itself. A sound object can
encompass a range of significations and features, mean-
ing that it can display many properties at the same time.
The practice of Schaeffer and his colleagues to ana-
lyse sound fragments arose from the repeated listening
to locked groove phonograph discs (sillion fermé) where
fragments could be listened to repeatedly. This attention
and mode of analysis was later referred to as reduced
listening (écote réduite). This shift in focus from the
symbolic representation of music to the perceived
material at hand sparked a new and extensive music
theory of sound-based composition. Importantly, this
theory was based on listening and not on visual input.
When listening to music is diffused over loudspeakers,
we are not privy to a visual experience which makes the
perception of this music wholly centred on the ear. Yet,
our spatial awareness is dependent on all our senses and
it is the interplay between the senses which allows us to
fully experience what we hear.
Music is not just an art of time but also of space, and
music is never ‘just’spatial but always spatio-temporal.
The term spatial audio, popularly used to denote music
which uses multichannel speaker technologies, could be
said to be a pleonasm.
1
All music is inherently spatial, the
experience of a violinist playing on a stage in a concert
hall is as much a spatial experience as hearing a compo-
sition in a 50-channel speaker diffusion. Indeed, Blauert
emphasises that ‘space’should be understood ‘as a set of
points between which distances can be defined’(Blauert
1983: 4). And, in his book Spatial Audio, Rumsey points
out that ‘[e]veryday life is full of three-dimensional sound
experiences’(Rumsey 2001: 1).
As a term, spatial audio describes sets of tools and
methods for how to represent and control sound
material through a process of spatialisation but
unfortunately the term is used both for multichannel
arrays and for representations of soundfields over
headphones, which renders it a rather vague term.
Rather than talking about spatial audio, what we
should consider is that of spatialisation, which can be
defined as an intentional placement of sounds in a
given space through multichannel speaker arrays, a
type of spatial sound design which seeks to convey
information to its listeners through speaker technolo-
gies. As we talk about spatialisation, we need to be
especially aware of the distinction Baalman (2010)
makes between techniques and technologies. Specifi-
cally, that techniques are descriptive of the composi-
tional process and how sounds could be
choreographed in space, and technologies refer to
1
In terms of the intentionality in hearing, Schaeffer (2017: 103) notes
that entendre (to hear) has lost its meaning and that we must accept
that different categories of ears, as musicians, linguists, acousticians
etc., pose different objects of listening. Listening in spatial circum-
stances is no different.
Organised Sound 24(1): 20–29 © Cambridge University Press, 2019. doi:10.1017/S1355771819000037
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types of speaker arrays, encoding/decoding functions
and panning methodology. This article is not a survey
of spatialisation techniques or technologies but rather
focuses on the consequences of the techniques and
technologies of spatialisation.
Specifically, I will focus on the consequences of
effects to listening in a sound spatialisation context. I
will not attempt to ‘categorise’spaces but rather will
make the argument that the space the music is per-
formed in is an integral part of the music itself and that
space in itself should be viewed as a musical parameter.
With this focus I will propose a theory of spatial ana-
lysis, which draws on Schaeffer’s ideas on reduced
listening, which will be introduced in section 2. This
theory is further contextualised in section 3 with dis-
cussions focused on listening in the acousmatic
situation.
Electroacoustic and acousmatic music are among
the only musical forms in which spatial properties are a
central exploration. The spatial arrangements in tra-
ditional stereo reproductions of rock, pop and similar
genres does not have the same focus on spatial prop-
erties. In these genres the spatial experience has a lim-
ited relationship towards an actual physical space. The
music is generally recorded in a studio one instrument
at a time, with added panning and effects at the mixing
stage, in order to construct an illusory space in which
the song exists. Classical music recordings and related
genres are dependent on the experience of a specific
space and seek to reproduce an effect of the listener
being present among the audience in a concert hall.
Rather than focusing on a composer’s working meth-
ods and the technical constructions of a work, we
should consider its aesthetic, perceptual and spatial
aspects.
2. PERCEIVING SPACE
In discussing installation art, Claire Bishop points out
the subtle but important difference between the
installation of art and installation art –when con-
sidering that ‘a work of installation art, the space, and
the ensemble of elements within it, are regarded in their
entirety as a singular entity’(Bishop 2005: 6). Experi-
encing an installation immerses the spectators in the
work and the work itself, the space and the spectators
become part of the same perceptual unit.
With a fundamental focus on the technical and
timbral properties of music, the spatial aspects can
often be seen as an afterthought. Indeed, much of
Schaeffer’sTraité is on the treatment and classifica-
tions of sounds. Sound manipulation tools were the
first frontier of this new music, from a long range of
studios and research institutions around the world.
Even now, which will be discussed in depth later, as
tools for manipulating spatial trajectories and for
composing with space have become more and versa-
tile, many composers still work in the stereo format
(Lyon 2014).
The history of electroacoustic music has produced
many striking examples which highlights these experi-
ences (for a good overview see Zvonar 2000). Early
implementations of trajectories sonores were used by
Schaeffer and Pierre Henry during the performance of
their work Symphonie pour un homme seul (1949/50),
where the work was spatialised over four speakers
(Palombini 1993). Schaeffer and Henry used one ele-
vated speaker which provides an indication that they
did specifically consider the compositional value of
elevated sound and possibly did understand that they
could achieve a higher degree of listener envelopment
this way. Likewise, Gesang der Jünglinge (1956) by
Karlheinz Stockhausen used four channels surround-
ing the audience with a fifth channel overhead. We
can view these performances as early experiments
(Manning 1995) in using the room itself as an extension
of the music. These pieces were performed in a tradi-
tional concert hall setting, with the audience seated and
facing in one direction, making the sonic perspectives
and the sonic projections much more predictable.
Edgard Varèse’sPoème électronique at the World’s
Fair in Brussels in 1958 used sound diffused over
400 loudspeakers accompanied by visual projections
(Holmes 2008). Both Poème électronique and Iannis
Xenakis’s composition Concrete PH were written for
performance in the pavilion, a space which would have
a standing and moving audience that would make it
near impossible to foresee the placements of all the
audience members. The experience of these works was
tied to this particular space and when hearing them in
stereo format played back from a CD does not in any
way capture the spatial relationships experienced when
walking through the pavilion.
Interestingly, Pauline Oliveros set up a system con-
sisting of various delay-lines accessible through var-
ious controllers (Oliveros 2003), where the
manipulations of the delay lines could produce new
acoustic spaces based on context and the ultimate
morphological characteristics of the space of the per-
formance. Trevor Wishart defines a ‘sound landscape’
to express the changes to the listening space by a
composition and the subsequent ‘new’space created
(Wishart 1996). Stockhausen also stated that: ‘New
means change the method; new methods change the
experience, and new experiences change man. When-
ever we hear sounds we are changed: We are no longer
the same after hearing certain sounds, and this is
the more the case when we hear organised sounds,
sounds organised by another human being: music’
(Stockhausen 1971: 88).
Space is in some form always present (Ekeberg 2013)
and the presentation of a work from the studio to the
non-studio can in many regards make the transferral
Sound Objects and Spatial Morphologies 21
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difficult for many composers. We experience spaces by
listening not just by seeing, such as the way we can
navigate in the dark. Blesser and Salter (2007: 127)
argue that ‘the principles of physical acoustics remain
universal, their application to musical space is dictated
by the values of the aural architects who are supposed
to represent the composers, conductors and musicians,
as well as the listeners in the audience’. Acoustic con-
straints, lack of technical skills and lack of experience
can be difficult for many composers as the source
material can end up sounding very different at the
venue, which can introduce high levels of reflections
and reverberation in comparison to the studio which is
acoustically treated. In the studio we work in a con-
trolled sphere, where changes to a parameter can easily
be controlled but as we move into a different space, the
more incontrollable morphological traits become pre-
valent and changes to a parameter can have unforeseen
consequences.
2.1. Sound objects
Schaeffer commented that he and his colleagues prac-
tised phenomenology without realising it (Schaeffer
2017: 206) through the use of the phenomenological
epoché. This practice of ‘bracketing out’a sound, of
removing information which is external to the object,
enables a study of the object itself. Edmund Husserl
recognised the epoché as necessary to gain an under-
standing of the everyday objects which surround us,
‘this entire natural world therefore which is continually
“there for us”,“present to our hand”, and will ever
remain there’(Husserl 2012: 59). This ‘natural attitude’
is always present but in order to examine the world we
need to suspend our understanding of it –we need to
place the objects we wish to study in brackets, and
Husserl substantiates this and says that ‘The thesis is
“put out of action”, bracketed, it passes off into the
modified status of “bracketed thesis”, and the judge-
ment simpliciter into “bracketed judgement”’ (Husserl
2012: 58).
To arrive at the sound object, we must suspend our
knowledge of the surrounding world in order to make
subjective judgements about what we hear. The musi-
cal fragment is isolated from its cause and context. As
such, the object is not an end in and of itself but is a
method of analysis to draw out multiple features in an
ontologically complex sound. The immanent objec-
tivity in this listening is grounded on what Schaeffer
refers to as targeting ‘a particular object and the var-
ious modes through which I relate to this object: per-
ception, memory, desire, imagination, and so forth. In
what way is the object immanent in these? Because it
constitutes an intentional unit, involving acts of synthesis’
(Schaeffer 2017: 207, italics in original). Schaeffer’s
comment underlines that a sound object is a
multidimensional unit.
Research on spatial perception and spatial hearing
study how people understand what they hear in spatial
contexts, in terms of perceptual cues in horizontal and
elevated planes and how we locate sources. The spatial
context and proposed theory of analysis this article
deals with is not only considering concert halls, but any
space which could be used as a performance space. As
such, this article is not concerned specifically with
reproduction methods or how to reproduce ‘realistic’
spatial reproductions. Spaces for the performance of
electroacoustic music can vary greatly and can pose
challenges to fixed media pieces and even so to live
electronics.
A‘room’, the space where music is performed, is a
descriptor which does not necessarily convey to us any
information about the inner workings of a space, apart
from perhaps a statement on ‘good’or ‘bad’acoustics.
To examine this descriptor, I will rely on the black box
model as a method of analysis. The black box model is
used to analyse the workings of a circuit, where the
object of study is what changes can be recorded on
the output based on what changes a system imparts on
the input. The changes posed by a system is also the
object of interpretation, specifically an interpretation
which is reliant upon both the artist and the audience
bringing knowledge and experience from everyday life
(Ekeberg 2013) into the listening experience.
Acoustic instruments and models of analogue cir-
cuits can effectively be analysed for their salient prop-
erties using the black box model. Acoustic instruments
have two main components: a sound source and one or
more sound modifiers (Howard and Angus 2009). The
inputs and outputs of the system can be simplified to be
defined as that the output of the instrument is the input
of the room. The morphological characteristics
imposed on the instrument by the space is defined by
Blesser and Salter as creating ‘metainstruments’
(Blesser and Salter 2007). The consequences of acous-
matic listening are that the sources of sounds we are
listening to are not visible, and are projected to us
through loudspeakers (Godøy 2006). When faced with
this listening situation, we experience sounds originat-
ing from a set of loudspeakers and our perception of
these sounds is highly dependent on our placement in
relation to the speakers, the radiation patterns of the
speakers and the shape of the space. The spaces where
the music is performed is integral to the music itself and
as Worrall points out, the relationship between sound
and space ‘is not an abstract ideal’but rather that
‘space is in the sound. The sound is of the space’
(Worrall 1998: 97).
This is of course not to claim that this is a perception
which is in any way unique to electroacoustic music. In
traditional instrumental music we can, by vision,
separate the direct instrumental sound and the influ-
ence of the room by both studying the gesture of the
conductor, instrumentalist and by our previous
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knowledge of the music being performed. Griesinger
(1997) believes that for room acoustics the aural
impression is often dominated by the visual impression;
Thompson, Graham and Russo (2005) find that the
visual impact of popular music recordings enhances a
sense of phrasing and anticipation of emotional changes
in the perceivers. Later, Thomson, Russo and Quinto
(2008) find that facial expressions in singers greatly
influence the emotional interpretation of the music. By
vision we can separate sources from the space and make
judgements on the music, the acoustics and our per-
ception of it. Indeed, in electroacoustic music we have
visual contact with loudspeakers as an indication of the
sound source, despite the ‘actual’source being hidden.
3. MORPHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS
As mentioned earlier, sound objects are ontologically
complex units and can contain multiple features and
different guises which often cannot be easily dis-
tinguished. In defining perceptions of sound, Schaeffer
structured four modes of listening to determine and to
allow listeners to assess their mode of objective or
subjective listening to the sound matter at hand.
Rather than focusing on the derivation of a single
feature, Schaeffer divides listening into four main
categories, which are further divided into sub-
categories of subjective/objective and abstract/con-
crete with the aim of deriving understanding and
knowledge about the sounds:
•écouter (to listen (objective/concrete))
•ouïr (to perceive aurally (subjective/concrete))
•entendre (to hear (subjective/abstract))
•comprendre (to understand (objective/abstract))
(Chion 2009; Schaeffer 2017).
Schaeffer’s axis of the abstract and the concrete are
contextualised through these modes of listening. These
stems from Schaeffer’s early experiments into what he
named musique concrète (music made from concrete,
real-world sounds –a term which was abandoned in
1958 in favoor of musique expérimentale) and is fur-
ther discussed as two ‘isotopes of the real’(Schaeffer
2017: 8). The concept of the abstract and the concrete
is divided as the concrete represents the how we hear a
sound as it exists in the world and the abstract is what
we hear after we have analysed and reduced the sound
from its context to gain an understanding of the
sound’s salient properties. To be clear, the four modes
of listening are not isolated modes of perception but
rather are interdependent and interrelated (Kane
2014). The basis of Schaeffer’s musical research is the
listening experience and not any forms of symbolic
representation, be they measurements or score nota-
tions (Godøy 2006).
Smalley (1997) added a 5ième écoute, namely that of
‘technological listening’or listening to technology.
This occurs when a listener perceives or focuses on the
technological processes behind the music rather than
the music itself. As referred to earlier, a work’s con-
struction is what is often under scrutiny, which means
that the 5ième écoute is a frequently used listening
method. When listening to music where the sources
are hidden from view, then this could perhaps be a
simpler mode of ‘understanding’the music, yet it
poses a problem because the technology is only a
means to achieve a final goal, not a means in itself.
The iterative process of repetition provided by the
technology is a means to establishing the listening
intention and ‘it is through such swirling of intentions
that links are established, information exchanged’
(Schaeffer 2017: 272).
2
Indeed, later theoreticians highlight some of the
same relationships: Richard Rorty (1991) defines
relationships in language as literal and metaphorical
in terms of something familiar and unfamiliar. When
new connections in languages are made, these con-
nections pass over from the metaphorical to the lit-
eral. Also, in morphodynamic theory, this dual
perception is divided into a control space and a mor-
phology space (Godøy 1997, 2018). The control space
represents any paradigms which can impose a change
on a process and the morphological space is the per-
ception of this change. This division between the
abstract and the concrete also influences the separa-
tion of the symbol and the signal, it is the sound object
itself we are studying not a sound which is recon-
structed from a signal: ‘the acoustician is concerned
with two things: the sound object which he listens to,
and the signal which he measures. From his erroneous
viewpoint, all he has to do is first put down the phy-
sical signal, consider what he listens to be its result,
and the sound object as a subjective manifestation’
(Chion 2009: 16).
3.1. Symbol and signal
Musique concrète was theorised and practised as a
mode of making music from real-world, concrete
sounds. Through a process of reduction could we
extract musical values and suitable materials for music
composition from the materials of the real world.
Schaeffer focused on the primacy of the ear (Landy
2007) and sought to create a mode of music making
which transcended the abstract forms of musical
notation which dominated classical music. Through
the metaphor of the acousmatic curtain as a method of
separation of sound and source, Schaeffer was very
clear on what the sound object was not:
2
In the original French, Schaeffer talked about a ‘tourbillon
d’intentions’–a maelstrom of intentions (Schaeffer 1966: 343).
Sound Objects and Spatial Morphologies 23
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•The sound object is not the sound body.
•The sound object is not the physical signal.
•The sound object is not a recorded fragment.
•The sound object is not a notated symbol on
a score.
•The sound object is not a state of mind. (Chion 2009:
32–3)
At the compositional stage sound objects are classi-
fied and described. Then by analysis of their musical
structure, the composer can synthesise new sound
objects (Landy 2007). Indeed, for many composers
working with transformed sound material from many
different sources ‘it becomes difficult to remember
from where the various sounds originated’(Wishart
1996: 67). It is when the sound object is contextualised
in a performed, composed work that we can start to
experience the perceptual effects of the performance
space and this influences our understanding of the
resulting auditory stream.
When moving the sounds from the studio into the
performance space, the control over the non-anecdotal
and reductive perception of the sound is gone. The
sound world is thrown open and with that open to
interpretation of the sources, origins, intended and
unintended consequences of the sounds. Where
Schaeffer insisted upon the perception of sounds as
sounds and to disregard their causes, he tried to
describe sonic material by placing it outside of history
(Kane 2014) as an autonomous unit.
Schaeffer had introduced an idea on the motion
of sound travelling between static loudspeakers –
trajectories sonores (Harley 1998a) in his 1952 book À
la Recherche d’une Musique Concrète (The Search for
Concrete Music). Next to spatial trajectories, he wrote
about static and kinematic relief, where static relief
contrasts static and moving sound objects and kine-
matic relief denotes the movement of sound sources by
gestures of the performer (Harley 1998b). The use of
spatial projections and trajectories, along with the
‘creation’of spaces, would suggest that Schaeffer con-
sidered space to be a musically important parameter in
itself, yet he did not consider the potential con-
sequences of the spatialisation as he did with the con-
sequences of listening and analysing material in the
studio.
The split between the auditory perception of source
and the resulting processed sound will again be diffused
when the reduced objects are presented as signals to be
experienced during a performance. Dependent on the
sounds, the listener can have very different experiences
of the space portrayed in a composition. ‘A sound mass,
through density, texture and amplitude, can suggest a
volume of space through implied spatial occupation’
(Barrett 2002: 316). The space of a composition, the
apparent source width the individual sound sources of a
composition occupies can and will again be influenced
by the performance space. Stating that ‘the space of
sounds –it is within that concept that the modality of
acousmatic functions’(Bayle 2007: 242), François Bayle
is directly concerned with how to occupy space in his
compositions. Whereas many composers are tied to the
loudspeakers as instruments, Bayle attempts to detach
this notion and use ‘the loudspeaker not as an instru-
ment but as a projector of sonic images’(Desantos 1997:
14). Bayle has been more interested in exploiting the
loudspeakers to create ambiguous spaces to ‘create
sounds emerging in irregular motion from ambiguous
locations’(Desantos 1997: 13–14). These types of spa-
tial design are interesting because they can combine
musical elements which would be perceived artistically
weak had they not had this distribution.
3.2. Ontological differentiations
We have seen so far that the features of sound objects
become available to us through a listening intention,
reduced listening, which allows us to examine and
analyse salient properties of a musical fragment. Then,
it is important to establish and discuss the correlations
between the information related to room acoustics and
to the musical, sonic information to examine the var-
iations in sensorial value and to examine the structural
relationships between the various objects and their
spatial correlate.
The black box model allows for an extension to
reduced listening analysis of the subjective spatial
perception of our listening experience. We experience
music in a space (enclosed or open) and this has a
considerable bearing on the perceived experience,
often the morphological characteristics of a space can
complement a performance of electroacoustic music.
For Schaeffer, the phenomenological reduction was
intrinsic in his formulation of the acousmatic situation,
and this reduction seeks to ‘create an investigation
containing its own immanent logic, structure and
objectivity’(Kane 2014: 34) in order for the composer
to experience and sense the sound object.
For this purpose, the black box is an addition to the
phenomenological reduction which Schaeffer based his
listening theories on –a reduction which allows us to
make subjective judgements, based on listening, to the
actual effects of a room on a sound. In the Traité,
Schaeffer refers to the relationships between the phy-
sicist’s signal analysis and the studies of the experi-
mental musician as that of anamorphoses, or warping,
which is derived from a visual phenomenon where a
distorted image appears normal when viewed from a
specific angle. The acoustician would seek to explain
the black box of the individual (Chion 2009: 16) but the
musical experimenter should study the sound world for
itself. Observing a sound object is only possible by lis-
tening to it again (Chion 2016) and by each subsequent
listening we understand more of the sound’s properties.
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The physical signal is in itself not a sound object and
the non-linear relationships between the subjective and
acoustic features of a sound are briefly noted by Chion
as the acoustician’s‘erroneous viewpoint’. This failing
of the acoustician to see the true relationship between
the physical signal and the perceived sound is groun-
ded upon the separation of the signal of the measure-
ment as an objective description of the perceived
sound, and as the acoustician is concerned with the
signal which is measured, ‘he forgets that it is the sound
object itself, which is given in the process of perception,
that determines the signal to be studied’(Chion 2009:
16). This perspective reminds us that the black box
model treats the room as an ‘unknown’and it is
through listening to the resulting sound that we can
establish the changes imparted to a sound by the space
we are listening in.
Music perceived in a spatial setting like a concert
hall can be described by the two terms ‘spatial
impression’and ‘spaciousness’. Spatial impression is a
term used to describe whether a room is perceived to be
large or small, and spaciousness describes how envel-
oping a space is perceived to be (Blauert 1983; Grie-
singer 1997, 1999). Derived from work on concert hall
acoustics, this psychoacoustic research can offer us
valuable insights into evaluations of electroacoustic
music through the perception of qualities in repro-
duced instrumental music. Despite existing standards,
spaciousness, spatial impression and envelopment are
interpreted variably in the literature and as multi-
dimensional features they can be difficult to pin down.
The term ‘spatial impression’has generally been used
as a ‘cover all’term (Rumsey 2002), where envelop-
ment is defined as a listener being surrounded by sound
and engulfment is considered a unique 3D audio attri-
bute, which rather than being surrounded by sounds,
produces a sense ‘of being covered over’(Sazdov, Paine
and Stevens 2007: 4).
Unfortunately, according to Griesinger (1997), sev-
eral researchers equate ‘spaciousness’with apparent
source width (ASW) and he goes on to highlight that ‘a
concert hall can be spacious, the reverberation of an
oboe can be spacious, but the sonic image of an oboe
cannot be spacious’(Griesinger 1997: 721). Thus, the
term ‘spaciousness’is used to describe the degree to
which we perceive a room to be enveloping but this has
no bearing on the perception of the source. In smaller
rooms ASW has little relevance as it is difficult to dis-
tinguish if the sound image is wide or just diffuse
(Griesinger 1999).
It is important to emphasise that these attributes are
multidimensional and must be studied in their inter-
action, as we must with complex sonic material. For
electroacoustic music, these attributes can be more
unclear and can pose problems by attempting to
separate the perceived acousmatic source from the
spaces in which it is performed. The ‘Locations of
sounds (both moving and static) can help with the
stream segregation of sounds; that is, it is possible to
distinguish different sonic streams from each other,
because the sounds will be coming from a different
position’(Baalman 2010: 210).
Albert Bregman’s theory on Auditory Scene Ana-
lysis (1990) describes a process by which a listener can
separate multiple sounds within an audio scene into
discrete auditory streams. Stream segregation can help
us in determining the spatial trajectories of the sounds
and their localisation but determining where the sound
ends and the space begins is a more complex endea-
vour. Earlier studies have shown that if listeners are
unfamiliar with the sources and the space, localisation
can be difficult but the auditory system is able to
quickly become familiar with both the sound sources
and the room conditions (Plenge 1974). Indeed, when
listening to multiple sound sources coming from one
loudspeaker we would have a problem separating the
sources but this changes as the number of loudspeakers
increase. Here we can ‘tune in’to one or the other,
dependent on the one we wish to follow (Pierce 1999).
This is also referred to as ‘the cocktail party effect’,
which is described as our ability to follow what one
person is saying in a room full of chatter from other
people (Bregman 1994: 529; Pierce 1999: 90).
4. SEPARATION OF SPACE AND SIGNAL
The sound object and the study of sound fragments
enables a certain level of resolution to be part of our
focus (Godøy 2006), which offers a different focus than
the study of large-scale forms. This mode of analysis at
the compositional stage allows us to examine, classify
and quantify the sounds we are dealing with.
When listening to music in a concert setting, we
perceive the direct sound, emitted from the source, and
the indirect sound, where the sound has been reflected
off one or more surfaces. Concert halls, venues, gal-
leries, bars and all places which can be used for the
performance of music sound different. The space
the music is performed in becomes an integral part of
the music itself and the morphological changes to the
music creates a contextual relationship which can be
accessed through reduction.
Griesinger (1997) has found that the sonic back-
ground of a performance space can have unique tim-
bral and spatial properties and the sonic background
can impose very distinct morphological characteristics
on the sound which is projected through the space.
These changes imposed by the space are also described
as timbral coloration of the sound. Smalley uses the
term ‘spatiomorphology’to highlight space as an
experience in itself and specifically when hearing a
space through spectromorphology (Smalley 1997). The
perception of spatiomorphology is tied up to timbral
Sound Objects and Spatial Morphologies 25
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composition and is firmly grounded in the perception
of space in the composition, rather than examining the
spatial concerns in the performance of the music.
Smalley’s timbral classifications are important in ana-
lysing timbral composition but do little in terms of
analysing spatial concerns. Building on these spectro-
morphological categories, Smalley later (2007) theo-
rises spatial concerns in acousmatic music and through
rigorous classification and analysis of the different
types of spatial groupings offers composers modes of
integration in different approaches to acousmatic
music, specifically so that ‘we can use spatial concepts
to investigate soundscapes, source-bonded approa-
ches, and more “abstract”or “abstracted approaches”
to celebrating the unique richness of the only aesthetic
medium that can truly explore sonic space’(Smalley
2007: 55).
We can, through our experiences and conditioning,
recognise and understand a musical phrase performed
on an acoustic instrument. From this knowledge and
experience we can separate the source from the per-
ceived influence from the room. Electroacoustic music
does not follow the same timbral recognisability and
the host of different effect and processing techniques
available through technology can provide a range of
expressibility which is not available to other music. In
these situations, separating the resulting sound from
the space could be next to impossible.
For example, during a concert you could experience
certain modulations of the sound material which per-
haps did not sound intended based on the preceding
material. And as a sound is faded down, it turns out
that the composition had masked background sounds
such as a ventilation system and the effects experienced
as part of the work were in fact external to the work.
This would profoundly change your experience of the
work given that the timbral and spatial qualities of the
work fuse with the sounds of the room.
Music posits an ontological problem, in its nature as
an intangible and temporal existence (apart from the
score or the recording), yet something which often is
referred to as a powerful physical being (Cox 2017).
Being in a listening situation we are not just faced with
a sound and our only experience is of this one sound,
but rather we perceive an apparent source, this source’s
relation to the listener through the analogue-to-digital
converters, cables, speakers, walls, floors, ceiling and
other listeners. To gain an understanding of this
spatio-temporal experience and to attempt to access
and analyse these sounds, we can look to this proposed
theory of separating the space from the signal.
Through reduction, we seek to discard all informa-
tion which is not available to us through an immediate
perception of the phenomena which appear to us pre-
sent in consciousness. Our conscious awareness makes
up only a small part of our perception of the world,
where objects retreat to some hidden realm which
supports our perceptions but seldom make themselves
visible (Harman 2011b). Our intentional focus is on an
object before us in perception and ‘all perception,
judgement, love, hate is perception, judgement, love,
hate of some object’(Harman 2011a: 173). At any time,
we only come in contact with very few features of the
objects we encounter and when we love or hate some
object, we love or hate some features of that object.
4.1. Spatial morphologies
If we focus intently on our perception, when we are
faced with a circle or dome of speakers, the room
(walls, floor, ceiling, drapes, windows), the audience,
the chairs and our own listening perspective becomes
our point of focus. Just as isolating a single sound
object in the studio, in the concert hall we are in a
spatial setting confronted by a type of macro-object
where we are faced with the total sound of the work
and the space fused together.
A move from one space to another can, and prob-
ably will, prompt the use of EQing and filtering to
compensate for the altered perception of the work in
the new space. This can be a difficult position for many
composers, where the desire most likely will be to
communicate the exact sounds which were produced in
the studio, without the morphological changes impar-
ted by the space. The perception of spatialised music
usually happens in specific acoustic environments, ‘and
the choice of these conditions may be part of a com-
position’(Trochimczyk 2001: 40). Not only the choice
of venue and space but also all the changes imparted by
the space becomes a part of the composition. The
spaces are as integral to the work as the work itself.
Despite multichannel diffusion being an integral
part of the development of early electroacoustic music
(Holmes 2008; Manning 1995), a survey conducted
among 52 composers find that both technological
constrains and problematic spaces contribute to
the lack of use of multichannel composition (Peters,
Marentakis and McAdams 2011). Among the issues
recognised by composers is that many venues make
equidistant loudspeaker setups difficult (as many ren-
dering algorithms require carefully installed and cali-
brated speakers) and also that ideal placements of
speakers would not be possible due to constraints with
stage or lighting design (Peters et al. 2011: 16). Some of
these problems, next to the fact that many composers
only have access to stereo setups in their studios and do
not have ready access to multichannel facilities could
be among the issues which is ‘holding spatial music
back’(Lyon 2014: 851).
RT60 (reverberation time) is a measure of how long
it takes for the sound pressure level (SPL) to drop by
60dB (Howard and Angus 2009: 301). This is an easily
understood parameter but it says nothing about the
amount of reflections, arrival times of these or their
26 Ulf A. S. Holbrook
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strength, which cause rooms with the same RT60 to
sound very different (Halmrast 2015). We experience
the room effect as the direct sound, followed a series of
early reflections and (late) reverberation. If a reflection
arrives later than 30 ms after the direct sound it is
perceived as a distinct echo. According to Rumsey
(2001), early reflections 50–80 ms after the direct sound
can have a broadening of the spatial effect of the
sources. The early reflections can cause interference
effects in the direct sound, particularly from comb fil-
tering (Halmrast 2011) and all interferences from the
surrounding space introduce coloration in the sound,
which is experienced as changes in timbre (Halmrast
2000). These changes in timbre influence the way in
which we perceive the sounds which arrive at our ears
and the grouping of these sounds into a coherent
whole. This coherent whole is our understanding, per-
ception and analysis of a composed work.
Despite the potentially distorting effects of rever-
beration, a recent study which samples 271 spaces from
daily life, not just concert halls, has found that
human listeners are able to distinguish both source and
environment from an incoming sound (Traer and
McDermott 2016). These findings indicate that
humans rely on the acoustic effects of the environ-
ments which they encounter to correctly interpret
sound and partially separate reverberant sound from a
sound source, indicating it as a cocktail party problem
‘rather than simply a source of distortion or noise’
(Traer and McDermott 2016: E7863). This study finds
that listeners can distinguish the environment in which
a sound exists effectively. However, when viewed in the
context of electroacoustic music, this study has sig-
nificant shortfalls as it rests on the use of impulses,
short speech samples and modulated noise rather than
the timbral and textured complexity frequently
encountered in electroacoustic music.
5. EMBODIED OBJECTS AND SPACES
The sound object was defined as originating externally
but existing in the listener’s consciousness based on a
listener’s specific perspective and listening situation.
When listening to music we extract information from a
continuous sensory stream, which indicates that there
is an ongoing mental simulation where we process
sensory information as a re-enactment of what we
perceive (Godøy 2006; Wilson and Knoblich 2005).
The sound object is the ‘sound itself, considered as
sound, and not the material object’(Schaeffer 2017: 8)
and likewise, it is not ‘the psychology of the auditor
that matters, it is the particular spot where the latter is
positioned that does’(Chion 2016: 172). It is our par-
ticular spatial position when listening to music which
matters in both our understanding and our analysis of
what we hear. Our unfamiliarity with the sounds and
with the spatial conditions can quickly change, given
listening intention. We try to understand our context
dependent on the perspective from which we experi-
ence our situation by attempting to recognise patterns
and make connections between what we hear (Kendall
2010). Faced with the acousmatic listening experience,
listening is our primary mode of analysis and the
breakdown of the incoming auditory stream is ‘a
multimodal, embodied experience of objects and
actions’(Kendall 2010: 68). This theory of spatial
reductive listening embodies a subjective mode of
analysis to access these experiences from our particular
position.
The control of relative amplitudes of distributed
audio material to a set of loudspeakers generally does
not address issues of precedence (Kendall and Ardila
2008); if the signals played back over the speakers are
different, they will be perceived as different sources
comings from different spatial locations and our spa-
tial segregation will work more clearly. Indeed,
Halmrast has pointed out that ‘the average person
perhaps does not notice such coloration of the sound
because often there are several surfaces at different
distances that more or less randomise the comb filters,
or perhaps the person has not experienced the original/
direct sound by itself, unmodified by the reflection’
(Halmrast 2015: 257).
The salient properties of a sound which is examined
and studied in the studio can quickly be changed when
the sound is perceived in a different space. Then we
experience that ‘no sound event, musical or otherwise,
can be isolated from the spatial and temporal condi-
tions of its physical signal propagation’(Augoyard and
Torgue 2014: 4). The act of reduction on a sound leaves
us with the sound itself but when we perform the same
reduction in a space other than the studio, we are not
just left with the space itself, but the inevitable inter-
play between the sound, the space and the listeners –
and the experience of the sound being of the space.
6. CONCLUSION
The relationship between the heard sound and the
‘room’has been the contextual focus in this article, as
something else than a measured objective signal. The
room is an object which the listener forms in his or her
conscious mind while listening to music and this
emerges in response to an auditory experience. The
conception of the room forms through a reduction of
information to access the direct salient features of the
listening experience. By an intentional focus in our
listening we draw out important features about what
we hear in the interplay between the space and the
sound. A large part of programme notes and CD liner
notes which follow many electroacoustic works can be
very vague in terms of musical meaning and have a
Sound Objects and Spatial Morphologies 27
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strong weight on a work’s structure, construction and
approaches to timbral manipulation. And in the cases
of multichannel presentations of works, the composi-
tional reflections on a work’s spatial aspects are more
or less gone, apart from maybe specifying which order
of ambisonics the work is made in.
Pierre Schaeffer theorised the sound object as an
intentional unit in musical research as a means of ana-
lysing sounds for their salient properties. His use of the
phenomenological epoché of ‘bracketing out’asoundto
examine its salient qualities has in this article been pro-
posed expanded to include spatial features. Through
this article I have attempted to discuss the issue of how
spatial circumstances pose changes to our listening by
focusing on the listening experience and the uncontrol-
lable acoustical circumstances surrounding it.
The main elements of the discussion are based
around the timbral changes to sounds made by reflec-
tions and randomisation of filters, the perspective of a
listener dependent on his/her placement in a room
surrounded by speakers and the repeated focus on the
need to listen to the resulting sound in the space where
the source and the space fused to a single entity. Much
of the acoustic literature is concerned with concert
halls and it is argued that regardless of space of per-
formance, the morphologies imposed by the space to
the source as apprehended by the listeners should be
considered as part of the music. This article has pro-
posed a mode of analysis of the subsequently received
auditory stream grounded in Schaeffer’s‘reduction to
the object’to expand the ‘new’experience of the music
and the distribution of sound objects in the space.
Specifically, this enables a subjective analysis based on
the listeners’placement and perspective, rather than a
measurement and analysis made from an idealised
centre. This reduction treats the room as a black box of
perceptual unknowns and if we are to free ourselves
from symbolic representations of measurements to
make judgements about the space, we need to suspend
everything but our listening to be able to make artistic
and aesthetic judgements about the space and the
music. Listening was at the heart of Schaeffer’s musical
research practice and it should be so for us.
Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by the Research
Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence
scheme, project number 262762.
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