Thinking about Music

Overview

The spaces in which we perform, record or listen to music confer a layer of ‘meaning’ or invite interpretation of the music. That meaning might be created wittingly – in that one of the people involved in the process of music making made a decision or instruction regarding the perceived space and arrangement of the sounds. Or seemingly unwittingly wherein an particular environment such as a church has imposed its acoustic on the sound. I will however argue that such a thing is a part of the cultural heritage of our music making and is based on decisions made centuries ago when it was decided –  for example – that churches should host choral music – the invention and performance of which is not so easily imaginable in a field or small building though just about tolerable in a castle but which would then lack the  cultural milieu in which to make music. You need a strong sense  of worship or the numinous to kick start choral disciplines.

It is interesting that many textbooks, theses and commentaries on perceptual space and  in music approach from the points of view of psycho-acoustic or physics and even perceptual  psychology (See Brian Moore 1997). This text approaches the same considerations from the musicians point of view – more specifically,  from the point of view of the composer, the performer, the producer/engineer and the listener. I am interested in the implications of the decisions made by each of the participants in the music reproduction process.

We can begin with intentionality on the part of the composer ranging from the acknowledgement of and utilisation of acoustic reverberation in the composition of choral works for performance in cathedral spaces, through to Wagner’s demanding ‘space’ requirements for staging  his works – in particular, the Ring Cycle and to the modern era in which sound recording has been the largest catalyst for innovation and development in music.

To what extent does a composer consider the space involved in his composition. In most cases it is an arbitrary arrangement born of necessity: The seating of the orchestra and the acoustics of the environment in which it is performed. Coupled with this is the  ‘rule book’ ways in which recordings are made. The composer can more or less assume that the recording will be from the point of view of ‘the best seat in the house.’

But might composers be freer to specify more. – might there be a whole language of spatial articulation and implication were it to be made available? Examples might involve the consideration in meaning of a song sung in a dry acoustic versus one  performed in a vast stone space.  – the song might be the same but the meanings differ.

From the performers point of view, the spaces in which we perform, and the implied space in which a recording takes place tells the listener how to ‘read’ the piece. Most obviously the  difference between a singer songwriter  recorded in a dry small space will have an intimate  feel whereas the same performer recorded in a church will have a wider, more broadcast aspect. (terminology to be determined within the text below). Performers require feedback from the space around them. singers require reverb otherwise they cannot hear themselves. The right acoustic can enliven a performance of an individual or an orchestra. The singer might well move in a space to be heard better – pianos and instruments may be moved on a stage to favour a particular acoustic. Performers  seat themselves in space and chose where to sit based on primarily – tradition. Composers  communicate through the score to the performers – often with very specific staging instructions (John Culshaw Ring Resounding 1967)

Producers make interpretive decisions concerning the recording often in conjunction with conductors and musicians and in some serendipitous cases with the composers themselves. The decisions they make concern the  illusion of the space in which the sound takes place – and the location of instruments. This decision is more important than might at first seem obvious and has a direct bearing on hearing music correctly (a good example being the loss of identity of a chord that gets spread to widely in space). Composers in the modern world are more involved in the recording process than ever before as they have a knowledge and training and awareness of the techniques available and have thoughts about the controls they would exercise on the sound. Very few however make notations or demands on the recording process in their score. This is a feature that has been available for some time and one of my key outputs is to suggest a means of communication between composer and producer to ensure that the right recording gets made. The score always contains instructions to performers where necessary but rarely is there information on  – for example – the size of room acoustic that would suit the piece best.

I know that many view the presence of a composer in the studio as a blessing at times and a nightmare at others so I have tried to separate out what a composer might intend in contrast to what the producer might think.

And the listener. How do we cater for a lister that these days consumes their music on rather lower orders of equipment that in the hey day of hi-fi. It is true that the equipment has become more reliable and standard but  little attention  is placed to day on seating location with respect to loudspeaker placement – indeed most home do not permit such considerations. Most peoples’ enjoyment of music over loudspeaker is over a spread acoustic with the little  precision in location OR it is through the extensive use of earpieces which in their own way, limit the tonal range and experience of the music.

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Space and the reproduction of space have developed since the invention of sound recording. In the early days of monaural recording space and reverberation were nevertheless available to some degree however the technology of the time demanded close proximity to the microphone to permit direct mechanical transmission form the instrument being played to the soft wax recording the sound. The subtly of a present acoustic largely ignored.

It was only later in the development of sound recording that sufficient fidelity existed for the acoustic to  be captured and heard.

The other dimension taken for granted today is the location in space of the sound source. A monophonic loudspeaker might be able to reproduce a sense of depth through the three prime depth indicators – roll of of high end tone, lowered volume and increased reverberation, but it was only with the advent of  stereophonic reproduction that the location of the sound became a consideration .

Spatial Location in concert music music has of course been a matter of convention, placing violins on the left of the conductor and so on – and early listeners of monophonic recordings may well have transcribed their  concert going experiences onto their listening.

It seems strange to us now to hear stories of  singers miming to recordings of themselves and fooling anyone in the early days of reproduction. Perhaps we do project our mental image of the sound onto the recording.  Certainly, we listen now at a lower level of high fidelity than we did in the 60’s and 70’s – sales of high end  equipment are for a very few and generally, classical oriented listeners.

For the purposes of this  essay, I will consider sound recording form the era of the high fidelity stereophonic recording in the 1950’s to be the beginning but I will not ignore that space and sound take place in earlier form of recording.

Space and location of  live performance of course cannot be ignored, and consideration of those features will be included – particularly with regard to how we demand our recording s to me made (Imagine if you will, Allegi’s Misere recorded in a dead studio environment and you will immediately see how much spacial and soundscape has become embedded in the  performance process and the listeners expectation) . Liturgical sounds belong in ecclesiastical spaces  -we might say, concert sounds belongs in places that sound like concert halls and electro acoustic music belongs in a fictive space created by  computer internally.

But  spatial listening begins with our environment and our listening equipment. We were born with two ears placed to give precise spatial location which presumably, the evolutionary biologists will argue and demonstrate that this gives us a competitive advantage in the world world of self preservation sand fight for food. Further discussion of this is not in my scope.

The early dawn of man as we recognise him does however contain some item of relevance to us. Recent theorists (Cross et al 2012) have posited that the cave dwellers were aware of and placed significance on acoustic properties in caves and that particularly ‘rich’ spots held such significance for theme that this is where they left their marks: cave paintings. Such assertions cannot be proved but there are clear indications and correlations to show that the  sensitivity to location and its sound was a more important facet to early man’s selection of places to be that was previously thought.

Clearly the sound of the environment ‘meant’ something to them. What it might have been we can only guess. To go to caves now ourselves and experience the sound in them – by intoning long vowels for example, leads us to discover echo, reverberation and then high and low spots, sweet and sour spots ands so on.  Recent  reports indicate the we echo-locate in subtle ways and that many blind people  have learned to listen and steer around object reporting lampposts as “a dark shadow past my ear” for example.

We also understand from  physicists that the higher the frequency, the more  specific the  location of the sound hence, low bass frequencies do not require stereo reproduction and may  be left to the work of a single specialised loudspeaker somewhere in the room.  The higher up the frequency bands we travel to the more ‘on centre’ we have to be to experience a strong sense of location in listening. The highest of instruments (unless the reverberation is out of control in the recording) being easy to ‘point to’.

Sound without a space in which to manifest is a largely unthinkable construct even if we take electroacoustic sounds generated in a computer, until we are able to “enjoy” cochlear implant music, the sounds depend upon air for their transmission and in that medium, we find that all spatial clues are generated.

Key features involved in spatial location:

• Tone balance (EQ)
• Reverberation
• Left/right location
• Up and down (which has no meaning in  stereo listening environments but is still a human perception largely ignored by musicians
• Back and front – again with the exception of experiments  with quadraphonic and theatre sound, largely ignored by most musicians and composers. ( except e.g. Berlioz.)
• Relative volumes.
• Proportion of mechanical noise of the instrument (bow noises, breathing, key noises etc.
• Signal to noise – as distance increases our perception of the noises in between  increases. Particularly true of a recording in which a more distant sound gets mixed higher than intended for musical reasons. (Off stage  instruments for example (Trumpets in  Wagner’s  Lohengrin, oboe and Berlioz symphony fantastique etc.)

Some of these might be necessarily linked to the reproductive fidelity of an experience – i.e. To experience as if you were at the concert hall with your eyes closed. In other cases certain decisions might be defined or directed by composers and performers in order to  say something else – a simple example being the movement of a singer across the speakers in an operatic scene.

The  area that concerns this work most though is our interpretation of those  acoustic triggers and how they inform our enjoyment and interpretation of the music.

I will cover the four steps from composition to performance, recording  through to listening to  discuss where these considerations matter with particular reference to  interviews with exponents of each element of the process.

I will be interested in what composers say about how they envisage their work being presented (if they think about it at all) or if they simply leave it to the performers.  How do performers  treat these things – we know in the studio that singers with headphones on need a little reverb to give them some audio feedback but  it that the same thing as an operatic soprano needed a large acoustic in which to perform or that more psychological?

Space and the soundscape is more than just a place in which music can take place – it confers meaning

There is a temptation- largely in musicological circles – to focus on music as being the interaction between score and performance.  “Until recently, musicology and music theory have had little or nothing to say about space in music, for a combination of reasons connected with their focus on the score, their comparative lack of interest in recordings and their intense focus on pitch and rhythm to the exclusion of almost everything else.” (Clarke;  Music,Space and Subjectivity in  Born: Music sound and space). This would seem to ignore a prime function of music: that of enjoyment and delight thorough our erotic relationship with it.  Roger Scruton (1997:) went to far as to argue that listeners focus on sounds themselves space being refined away by intense listening and space only plays an attenuated part in music.” Were he to be presented with a large choir singing in a dead studio environment in which the notes of the chords do not get the chance to blend in an environment  like the one the composer had in mind for the performance he might rethink his statement. In extremis he might find pleasure in focusing on the score itself and leaving us poor mortals to suffer the vagaries of the realised piece. The realisation of the piece is an essential part of its manifestation. Without the performance or recording, the piece is just a score.

Space separates the elements of the music an in the early days of recording  ‘flattened’ leaving the orchestra to organise itself  around the early recording devices. Spatial proximity them becomes a major factor in our appreciation of the music.

The listener suggest that music is not a pleasurable activity I would argue that today – particularly with contemporary  composition in with the realistic record of the piece is the recording itself, that the study of music making might now encompass a realisation of the importance and indeed the transformative effect off the modern recording studio and techniques associated.

Since the early stereo recordings of the Ring cycle produced by John Culshaw in which a studio realisation of the ring cycle brought a new language to the reading of the score-  that is to say an ability to present a audial stage for the listener rather than simply to record a semi staged event in the studio. Such control gave rise to special effects hinted at in Wagner’s score – and perhaps envisaged for future days when they might be realised but the forces demanded of same thunder were always unlikely to be co-ordinated with nature to bring a realistic sound so Wagner’s thunder special effect of a sheet of steel was used – and later improved in the studio through the use of separate room s with controlled acoustics to bring the effect to life – i.e. A higher degree of realism.

Becoming inured

The space in which music is performed or recorded is something which – if agreeable to the listener – will not be registered for more than a few moments whilst they orientate themselves to the sound world being presented.  For example, on playing a recording or a Bach Mass they will quickly establish the ecclesiastical setting (whether real or fictive) and ‘settle’ to that sound. The  acoustic environment will not be registered (but will be heard of course) unless;

It becomes apparent that there has been  shift for some reason. A good  example being  takes edited over a couple of performances during which the audience density changed and a slight shade of reverberation  changed

Or, it becomes apparent that the acoustic is not supporting the music well. A soloist may make an appearance that seems too  distant and blurry – at which point we become aware of the acoustic setting again and possibly have some thoughts about it.

So now it becomes something to which we take exception and wish to criticise.

Interestingly we seldom recall the acoustic environment of a recording unless it was either badly chosen or had some special effect, or a reason for a forefront presence. An example of which would be  Paul Horn’s famous recording of him playing solo flute in the Taj Mahal where  the whole recording is about the building in which he played  arpeggios to  let them blend I to chords that came bouncing back to the listener fully formed. The same performance in a dry acoustic would not  generally be unplayable and would certainly not be an enjoyable experience.

I cannot, for example, recall the acoustics in any particular way of an all time favourite album – Joni Mitchell “Blue”. I  know it will be  an average performance space acoustic, it will be  in proportion to the need and If I go back and listen with  the intention of hearing the acoustics specifically I will not be surprised. … I wasn’t – it was as I thought – professionally invisible to the process hence correct.

By contrast I can recall very well, some of the Deutch Grammaphone string quartet recordings from the seventies  which were recorded, to my ear, in large halls with too big an acoustic, losing detail in the recording.  Generally the faster the music the more detail gets lost in the overlapping of sounds.

The only other  circumstance where the  acoustics are recalled are when one has had a professional interest in the recording or the selection of the  location for the performance.

As a guitarist I have a ‘professional’ interest in recordings of guitar and can recall the acoustic of most – possibly because it is such a difficult instrument to site that I look for the better recordings – which to my mind are from small churches or larger  chambers appropriate to the flow of the music. There is an argument that Alhambra palaces are  fine for Spanish repertoire that might have ben composed in such places – or performed there  – the technique of leaving  notes ring as long as possible paying attention only to the rhythm at the front of the note, is not true for  Northern European repertoire in which the details in a Bach lute suite would be lost if all notes sounded as long as possible in this way and would therefore demand a less lively acoustic to make sure that the  players damping of a string was not frustrated by an acoustic that  competed with it.

Discussions about how the  performance space will affect both the players  ability to hear themselves and for the eventual listener to discern detail often involved long discussions with the players and sometimes the composer. (A compromise that can be made is to the use the noises  in the close proximity to the instrument  slightly mixed into the larger acoustic to give presence to the front edge of the note but the larger acoustic for the  duration and blending of the sound.

I have no idea about the acoustic in Alfred Brendel’s piano recordings, much loved thought they are. They must be agreeable and not  ‘present’ to the level where a comment becomes necessary. To a certain extent the recordings fit the canon of piano recordings.  We are used to hearing them played in  small  concert halls or large rooms and the wise producer will usually arrange that the recording sounds in the same way. We are only disconcerted when  something else  has taken place such as a recording in a vast auditorium with microphones too far off the piano.  As a matter of interest it takes between four and eight microphones to get a good balanced sound from a fine Steinway sited on the stage of a large concert hall.  – most are fairly close and a distant microphone is mixed in to agree the final level of the acoustic space present. The music itself will demand how it is to be mixed. (this is a major theme in this  thesis)

This inurement is true for all recordings and performances in which the space is only a setting. Where space isa dimension being deliberately and musically exploited, and the instrument placing is not natural (for example being recorded in a dry studio acoustic as was the case during the seventies and eighties when there was a fashion for dead spaces. Studios these days are more commonly designed to have a rich character of their own (see air Studios for example). The dead studios would depend on high end reverberation boxes to supply the necessary  space acoustic. Not in the case of classical recordings which has always  taken place in a live space but often has artificial reverberation added later in post production to sweeten the  overall presentation.

Where space is a dimension being exploited for effect and instrument placing is not natural but placed in an imagined space (albums such as ‘Dark side of the Moon’ are prime examples of a highly controlled and largely  illusory acoustic.) The is also evident in ‘Art music‘ and electroacoustic music.

Early electroacoustic works such as”Gesang der Junglinge” and later works such as Different trains by Steve Reich whose sound world depends upon the sampler and the modern studio for the realisation of the piece. In this the sound world is ‘constructed’ to suit the composer’s intention – but which still leans towards a naturalness.

XXX is clearly something in which we are expected to be disturbed or alerted by the ‘hopping’ location of the sounds .

There are only a few reasons why  a composer might want to  specify the spatial elements of the piece.

1 To subvert the normal run of things – perhaps to cause the listener to listen afresh

2 To suggest dramatic content (particularly in programme music) such as  emotional distance, movement across the stage, softness, etc.

3 As an effect to delight the ear – more as an extra ‘entertainment’

Note- you don’t find reference to ‘entertainment’ of music in many books on musicology. This might suggest that music has far more purposes – true but not to mention its prime component seems slipshod.

Such composers feel more in control of the elements of their work and thus use spatial  controls to the full.

Awareness of the sound world

Generally we are not aware of the spacial characteristics of  a recording – unless the are wrong. WE may be alerted to its nature when something changes – a movement of the acoustic or or an instrument in the sound field This happens more in rock and pop than in concert music music but is a mainstay of the electroacoustic composer whose whole audio world is about setting the ears  alight ( find quote)

We might listen to  song such as ‘strawberry Fields’ by the Beatles as an indication of what can be done when we ‘play’ the acoustic field as a part of the song.  What Strawberry fields shows us that there are levels of meaning unfolding with  the sing that are reflected in the  acoustic treatments. To single out just the spatialisation would be a mistake.  Engineers and producers usually work by feel and in the moment on such ideas and they are seldom programmed by the songwriter. The recording is a relatively early demonstration in the popular domain of what can be accomplished. The electroacoustic musicians ten years earlier had paved the way.

Movement

A sound source might be made to move within the performance space (as opposed to the recorded space) There are few occasions when  this might occur naturally (i.e. Without an instruction from the composer) – live or staged opera being one instance, marching bands being another (Charles Ives).

Other movements in the soundscape will be more or less a special effect – for example the ‘dramatic’ fly chase and swatting in Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma – Which track?) in which we are entertained by the realism of the effect of a stereo recording  depicting realistic movement in space. In the same album there is a track  – Granchester Meadow, in which a bird flies across the loudspeakers. Not in themselves, however musical events.

Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland shows us rapid panning effects to  break the sound field into a fictive space that gives us no real image of a performance space. The space is in your head and to try to extrapolate a real space would be a mistake.  We are expected to live with the uncertainties.  It is to real space what our experience of a roller coaster is.

It is hard to separate today where the acoustic decisions made are simply to sound good or to some extent involuntary or arbitrary. Many composers leave such questions in the hands of the production team at the studio or the performers. (popular music producers constantly search for novelty and as new sounds or techniques were invented they were readily  lapped up by the industry. Phasing in Rainbow chaser, and Thunderclap Newman – something in the air, beach boys use of theramin, very early synthesiser on Abbey road and so on.

One can find few examples of ‘meaning’ attached to spatial phenomena – perhaps a sense of remoteness, offstage or behind and distant instruments being the most common cliche for such emotions. In contemporary works space is treated as a firm dimension of the the sound which is considered as a part of the composition process.

Spatialisation of  of sound by ‘placing’ then in a sound field will give a greater clarity and ability to focus on individual melodic lines.

Seating and spatialisation in a String Quartet.

We expect a quartet to be seated on one particular way and with this image we are comfortable

V1 V2 Vla Vc

Actually and more accurately they will be seated:

V2 Vla

V1 Vc

SS

This  semi circle  give them eye contact and the ability to take non musical cues form each other. It also faces the sound into a central sweet spot (SS) and this of course is where the wise recordist will place the principle microphone. In recent years we have seen a few examples of the following variation:

V2 VC

V1 Vla

This arrangement brings the lower register more to centre and assists in the spatialisation and separation of parts between V and Vla. It is possible that this seating position ins in recognition of the role of recording and the basic tenant of recording that Bass belongs in the middle. This  principle (more or less adhered to in 100% of cases) began as a means a dividing the hard work that a loudspeaker undergoes between the two speakers of a stereo system equally (there are early  stereo pop albums in which  the image is subverted – placement of sounds in Beatles recordings is somewhat counter intuitive or even bizarre at times. An example of subverting a principle almost before it has become established.

It is true that modern loudspeakers no longer need such kind consideration, but the  listeners ear and expectations are set as they are to expect the treble  balance to favour the left – whether in the quartet right up to the full symphony orchestra. It might seem that the natural playing position of the violin demands that they sit to the left  of the conductor, but that is more a matter of historic custom. I can think of no instance when the violins have appeared en mass to the right with the embarrassing exception of a record company that put out an Opera with left and right channels swapped by mistake (A hastily withdrawn and re-released Peter Grimes)

We ‘read’ sound from left to right with respect to treble and bass (which may seem counter intuitive given the placement of the treble on the right of a piano).

Of course a composer would be free to specify a different seating for a quartet and I can think of many reasons to offer:

VC Vla

V1 V2

Such a seating might suggest that dialogue effects across the space between the V1 and V2 are being made prominent and confining the lower parts to the centre. This might still give good eye contact between the players