Teaching with Technology

Understanding the Art of Sound Organization

Teddy’s CTCH603 Reading Log 04.19.2010

For class session 04.21.2010

This week’s article is a discussion on the technical and aesthetic developments in sound.  According to the author Leigh Landy, the book “Understanding the Art of Sound Organization” is an academic grounding to, and support for a comprehensive and objective attempt to gather information into a structured online database called EARS. EARS stands for ElectroAcoustic Research Site. This text discusses the aesthetics of electroacoustic music, its analysis, organization and reception. Landy presents a sound argument that support composers and listeners working together to promote new music. His search for a single umbrella term to describe new music is in constant flux. Categorizations are most difficult to acquire or place on new music when there are so many genres and subgenres.

The text looks at how composers and listeners work together to trace a path through theoretical writings about music. The author goes on to describe what is known as E-music and U-music. E-music is what we refer to as high art or serious music. U-music is more commonly called commercial music or popular music. As state by Landy (2007), the genres and categories in the EARS website is considerably more focused and that differentiation between genre and category is so closely bound up with technology, is part of the complex problem of understanding the shared ground or “no man’s land” between E-music and U-music. Basically, Landy’s goal is to provoke the participation of composer and audience. It is essential that everyone shares in the experience!

Landy initiates a triangulation of feedback, discussion and reflection that is beneficial to the composer and audience of listeners. Collaboration is the effective agent here that helps us stay on track without jeopardizing the integrity of our task. According to Landy, this intention/reception project highlights the emergence of, and need for triangulation using a number of case studies. Immediate sharing of information during the compositional process is a key part of our success. Our article continues by discussing past and present theories of analysis and synthesis of music. The middle ground between E-music and U-music becomes approachable by all. Sound-based music on the EARS website is housed in six main subject headings. These are the discipline of study, genres and categories, musicology of electroacoustic music, performance practice and presentation, sound production and manipulation and musical structure.

Retrieved from: http://web.ebscohost.com.mutex.gmu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&hid=14&sid=a2458a59-ce17-4f0c-bb6d-598a493f51b4%40sessionmgr12