{"id":688,"date":"2018-10-01T13:09:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T13:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/?p=688"},"modified":"2019-09-23T15:13:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T15:13:50","slug":"lecture-02-sonic-structures-timescales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/2018\/10\/lecture-02-sonic-structures-timescales\/","title":{"rendered":"Lecture 02: &#8211; Timescales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>In which we briefly contextualise the course to come by considering sound, structure and time and draw some distinctions between the analytical and experiential. We then get started with a practical demonstration of software in-action.<br>\n<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Time-scales at work in this course<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the work that you&#8217;ll be doing over the next weeks, we can think of the various activities in terms of some broad scales:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><em><strong>synthesising<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong> shaping<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>phrasing<\/strong><\/em><\/li><li><em><strong>composing&#8230;.<\/strong><\/em><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Curtis Roads offers the following depiction of the various (sonic) time scales we can consider, and different ways of thinking about them:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/files\/2017\/09\/Road-Timescales.pdf\">Road-Timescales<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Orders_of_magnitude_(time)\">en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Orders_of_magnitude_(time)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Useful explanation of the Haas\/Precedence Effect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"605\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Tx0qUKRT4mc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>To start to get us accustomed to our software, I&#8217;ll give us some simple examples whilst we go through this diagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Structure and Perception<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>As a thought to keep in mind over the coming weeks, as you synthesise, shape, phrase and compose is the importance of distinguishing between some of Roads&#8217; categories as <em>perceptual <\/em>artefacts versus concrete objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, the way Roads describes a &#8216;<em>sound object<\/em>&#8216; is quite distinct from the way the same term is used in the tradition that has emerged from Musique Concr\u00e8te. For Roads it is &#8220;a basic unit of musical structure, generalising the traditional concept of a note to include complex and mutating sound events&#8221; (Roads, 2015,&nbsp;<em>Composing Electronic Music<\/em>, OUP, p 50) . A valuable concept, worth having a name for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, for Pierre Schaeffer, there&#8217;s a subtle but nonetheless important distinction in that the sound object is an &#8220;object for human perception and not a mathematical or electroacoustical object for synthesis.&#8221; Meaning that the deciding factor is in what we hear: even if there are &#8216;objectively&#8217; a number of events happening together, if we hear them as a unity then that would constitute a single sound object (for Schaeffer).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m raising this point because it is in this gulf between what (and how) we perceive versus what is given (e.g. by our tools) that the enterprise of structuring sound lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Delving into Software&#8230;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Time for a more in-depth example of some patching. We&#8217;ll move slow, but don&#8217;t worry: it should be videoed so that you can refer back to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Some examples then<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Stucke for orchestra, op.10\/ <em>Sehr ruhig und zart&nbsp;<\/em>by Webern.&nbsp; A complete piece in 42 seconds.<br>\nPerformed by LSO cond. Pierre Boulez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/files\/2017\/09\/lecture_02_resources.zip\">lecture_02_resources<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-file\"><a href=\"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/files\/2019\/09\/lecture_02_resources_Sept2019.zip\">lecture_02_resources_Sept2019<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/files\/2019\/09\/lecture_02_resources_Sept2019.zip\" class=\"wp-block-file__button\" download>Download<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In which we briefly contextualise the course to come by considering sound, structure and time and draw some distinctions between the analytical and experiential. We then get started with a practical demonstration of software in-action. Time-scales at work in this &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/2018\/10\/lecture-02-sonic-structures-timescales\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lecture 02: &#8211; Timescales<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1210,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688\/revisions\/1210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/sonicstructures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}