Theoretical analysis examines sound-shape perception in electroacoustic music, highlighting how detachment from acoustic sources challenges composition and listening.
The art of music is no longer limited to the sounding models of instruments and voices. Electoacoustic music opens access to all sounds, a bewildering sonic array ranging from the real to the surreal and beyond. For listeners the traditional links with physical sound-making are frequently ruptured: electroacoustic sound-shapes and qualities frequently do not indicate known sources and causes. Gone are the familiar articulations of instruments and vocal utterance: gone is the stability of note and interval: gone too is the reference of beat and metre. Composers also have problems: how to cut an aesthetic path and discover a stability in a wide-open sound world, how to develop appropriate sound-making methods, how to select technologies and software.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Denis Smalley (1997) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched one closely related paper. Consider it for comparative context: