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.

This essay elaborates a field of general aesthetic considerations relevant to the sonification of data. A set of dialectical tropes are introduced to define the possibility space for organised sonified data: data-in-itself and the listener-for-itself; cognitive support and sabotage; and the Peircean triad of rheme–dicisign–argument. Taken together, these three dialectical parameters elaborate a conceptual space in which strategies can be sought for mapping acoustic parameters to data features, data structure and sonic transformations, all with respect to listener reception. A work-in-progress is discussed in connection with this general aesthetic field, and considerations of the aesthetic space are applied to several works. Finally, the notion of data verité is explored in connection to ‘big data’ and issues related to the transformation of data into information generally.

The process of creating computer-based music is increasingly being conceived in terms of complex chains of mediations involving composer/performer and computer software interactions that prompt us to reconsider notions of materiality within the context of digital cultures. Recent scholarship has offered particularly useful re-evaluations of computer music software in relation to musical instrumentality. In this article, we contend that given the ubiquitous presence of computer units within contemporary musical practices, it is not simply music software that needs to be reframed as musical instruments, but rather the diverse material strata of machines identified as computers that need to be thought of as instruments within music environments. Specifically, we argue that computers, regardless of their technical specifications, are not only ‘black boxes’ or ‘meta-tools’ that serve to control music software, but are also material objects that are increasingly being used in a wide range of musical and sound art practices according to an ‘analog’ rather than ‘digital’ logic. Through a series of examples implicating both soft and hard dimensions of what constitutes computers, we provide a preliminary survey of practices calling for the need to rethink the conceptual divide between analog and digital forms of creativity and aesthetics.

This article explores how ‘noise music’ uses its influences, how it refers to them, and what occurs formally, when using influence self-consciously and formally. Specifically, it takes two artists, Nurse With Wound and The New Blockaders, that emerged at the same time as ‘industrial music’, and through different strategies, incorporated visual art influences into their work, to the point where influence as question is raised. Referring to Harold Bloom, the article notes that influence is not linear, nor is it fixed. The article begins with some general considerations about what noise is and how it works when in contact with music; it then looks in detail first at some works by Nurse With Wound, then at works by The New Blockaders. In so doing, it also pays attention to the material presentation of those works, which is a key part of the formal work of these artists. It concludes with some thoughts about how we can not only apply Bloom to experimental music, but that ‘noise music’ can provide itself as a theorisation of influence.

This article argues that pop music’s increasing assimilation of hip-hop and EDM (electronic dance music) practices combine with computational automation and this has substantial consequences for musical space. Traditional ‘space-makers’ such as reverb or delay are subject to other functions such as frequency filters and compression that interrelate processual layers of textures. Instead of an active-listener-orientated sonic space with distinct source-bonded entities, it is based on a particular sonic materiality. With a new media theoretical approach, I consequently argue that this new type of space can better be understood as a mediatised topological materiality.

This article describes the potential of apps as a platform for composers of electroacoustic music to present their work. It traces a history of changing concepts of structure in music from objects and symmetrical forms to dynamic systems that provide a basis for interactive instruments. Early examples of interactive instruments are presented and discussed. The opening up of music to all sounds is discussed in the context of the origins and growth of global communities within the music world. The structure of an app format for electroacoustic compositions is described and examples of various music apps are discussed from the perspective of the electroacoustic app format.

Teaching live electronic music techniques to instrumental performers presents some interesting challenges. Whilst most higher music education institutions provide opportunities for composers to explore computer-based techniques for live audio processing, it is rare for performers to receive any formal training in live electronic music as part of their study. The first experience of live electronics for many performers is during final preparation for a concert. If a performer is to give a convincing musical interpretation ‘with’ and not simply ‘into’ the electronics, significant insight and preparation are required. At Birmingham Conservatoire we explored two distinct methods for teaching live electronics to performers between 2010 and 2012: training workshops aimed at groups of professional performers, and a curriculum pilot project aimed at augmenting undergraduate instrumental lessons. In this paper we present the details of these training methods followed by the qualitative results of specific case studies and a post-training survey. We discuss the survey results in the context of tacit knowledge gained through delivery of these programmes, and finally suggest recommendations and possibilities for future research.

Composers, producers and educators King Britt and Tara Rodgers discuss music technology history and pedagogy in the context of King Britt’s Blacktronika course at the University of California San Diego, which researches and celebrates Black artists and other artists of colour who are pioneers of electronic music genres. Conducted over email in June 2021, this interview also touches on King Britt’s studio practice and evolution as an artist and educator, as well as on the social and political roots of contemporary electronic music genres.

This article discusses the importance of active listening when engaging new audiences with experimental and unfamiliar musical formats. Spatial music is examined as a physically immersive medium in which the audience is implicated as an active component in the execution of its performance. A brief account of the historic context of spatial music will be presented alongside speculation for the trajectory of its future; particularly its potential as a model for audience engagement. This article will first consider how spatially immersive performances have the capacity to activate listeners and how can this help to engage new audiences with new ways of listening. It will also question the notion of inhabiting spatial music, with an investigation of the multiple ways in which spatial music relates to physical space and the terms of its inhabitation. The concept of virtual listening will be discussed in response to trends towards passive hearing, as driven by recent technological developments in acoustic software and hardware, and the resultant abstraction of the spatial and social dynamics of sound in virtual space. The physiological and psychological differences between listening and hearing will also be examined as a means of establishing fundamental differences in the ways that we interact with music, and questioning what our listening habits tell us about audience engagement in the context of experimental music performance. This article will also question the individual roles of the musician, composer, architect/designer and audience in the ongoing responsibility to improve audience engagement in new, or unfamiliar musical works. Importantly, this article will also explicitly examine who we are referring to when we use the term ‘new audiences’. Major developments in acoustic technology during the last few decades have somewhat confused the diagram between music, space and listener. The understanding of which elements are active and which are passive is especially ambiguous at a time when ambisonic and binaural technologies have become developed enough to provide accurate simulations of the abstract, acoustic qualities of spaces, but on virtual terms. Architects, composers, musicians, engineers and audiences are at a crossroads in the development of new music and experimental, spatiosonic practice. ‘Spatiosonic’ is a hybrid term which is used throughout this article to describe work and phenomena which regard space (spatio) and sound (sonic) as equal, interactive partners. This article considers some of the opportunities and limitations at stake in current techniques of composition, performance and listening.

This article starts by arguing that in diverse approaches to electronically produced sound in music of recent times a shift in focus has occurred, from the creation of novel sounds to the manipulation of sound materials inherent in a culture of electric and electronic devices of sound production.

Within these practices, the use of lo-fi devices, circuit-bending, cracked electronics and a resurfacing of older technologies is coupled with digital technology in a process which emphasises the devices characteristic modes of sound production and artefacts. Electronic sound becomes regarded as embedded on a reservoir of qualities, memories and registers of technologies that inhabit our sound environment.

From this starting point our apprehension of technologically produced sound is reassessed, constituted as the crossing of particular conditions of production and reception, cultural traces and codes inherent in the practices and characteristics of media.

This perspective lays the ground for a compositional approach that exposes and problematises the interaction of these multiple conditions.

The pioneering contributions of Daphne Oram to visual music, notably the construction of her unique synthesiser known as the Oramics Machine during the 1960s, have yet to be fully recognised. The development of this synthesiser, in terms of both the creative objectives that inspired its design and also the functional characteristics of the resulting technology, is all the more remarkable for being the product of highly individual endeavour, working entirely without the support and resources normally provided by an institution or a commercial manufacturer. Oram's background in both music and electronics was to prove invaluable in this regard, and her appointment as the founding director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958, having previously lobbied within the organisation for such a facility for several years, provides testament to her standing in both regards. Her decision within a year of appointment to resign from this post and establish her own private studio specifically to develop Oramics is indicative of her determination and commitment to explore new horizons in the medium of electronic music, and this paper provides a perspective of her achievements, drawing on materials in the Oram archive that have hitherto not been studied.

Researching the inside story of music performance, the core of the performative act, is a journey of infinite discovery of self- and musical connection. Establishing the discourse for such an investigation can, indeed, present its challenges. Do we focus on fundamental research methodologies, strive to fit within empirical investigations, or search for new forms of articulation as we choose what to observe and share, and decide what meanings, presences, dialogues or ‘folding in of new substances’ (Schroeder and Rebelo 2009: 137) we wish to pursue in the quest for new understanding? In this paper I will focus on performance for flute with electronics, the influence of voice, and the play with Maskenfreiheit,1 as I investigate performative layers as they have emerged in my own performances of selected notated works. The influence of the electronics is integral to these encounters with extended acoustic instrument, the place of the performer's voice and the ambiguities of projection, through narrative and reflection.

A composer who has worked in the field of computer music for the last 25 years reflects on how technological developments during that time have affected his work in computer music, instrumental music and hybrid combinations of the two. The compositional trajectories traced here often run parallel to opportunities afforded by the evolution of computer technology suitable for the generation of digital audio.

The overall concept for a Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe positioned music as integral part of it from the very beginning in 1985. The following text does not list accomplishments by discussing individual works, productions and research projects; this report describes and contextualises what happened and how it happened, it talks of people and concepts, of politics and ideas. It tries to illuminate the complex path between politics and technology, individual interests and cultural perspectives that led to and shaped ZKM. The uniqueness of ZKM is not only that it comprises museums as well as institutes, which actively produce art. The uniqneness of ZKM also lies in that music was planned as an equally important partner in the original concept, and that the Institute for Music and Acoustics still holds a major position in the institution today even though ZKM as a whole shifted towards the dominance of visual media. The focus of this text is on how the Institute for Music and Acoustics forms an integral part of ZKM as a whole while evolving its own inner direction and dynamics.

The musical use of realtime digital audio tools implies the need for simultaneous control of a large number of parameters to achieve the desired sonic results. Often it is also necessary to be able to navigate between certain parameter configurations in an easy and intuitive way, rather than to precisely define the evolution of the values for each parameter. Graphical interpolation systems (GIS) provide this level of control by allocating objects within a visual control space to sets of parameters that are to be controlled, and using a moving cursor to change the parameter values according to its current position within the control space. This paper describes Interpolator, a two-dimensional interpolation system for controlling digital signal processing (DSP) parameters in real time.

In discussing different sound environments - sound in the field of art as well as sound in the context of our daily sonic environment - this article makes reference to semiotic theories.

Sound without source. Electroacoustic media shape our perceptive realities. There are multiple tools available to record and reproduce sound, but is it possible to handle the fleeting nature of sound, the escape of sound? Certainly there are tools to manipulate sound, to create new soundscapes in this way. We can generate virtual sound-projecting soundscapes via speakers, via headphones in a new context - but what are we listening to?

Every sound evokes images. The concept of ‘musique acousmatique’, according to François Bayle, amplifies Pierre Schaeffer's notion of the ‘objet sonore’. ‘Musique acousmatique’ refers to sound projection, and thus to our imagination while concentrating on listening. In listening to acousmatic music, we can find three tonal levels, and this tripartite concept of listening refers to the tripartite semiotic concept introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Finally, sound affects us emotionally. In contradiction to the term ‘objet sonore’, the term ‘sound event’ coined by R. Murray Schafer stresses the necessity to analyse sound in its context. It is the sonic environment which determines the meaning of the ‘sound event’. Thus, from my point of view, the concept of soundscape can be compared with Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotic theory about the arbitrary meaning of signs. Signs are determined by their systems.

Semiotic concepts offer an interesting approach to sound perception. Let's listen to soundscapes before sound escapes.

This article investigates two current incarnations of ‘lo-fi’ music and questions the extent to which these subgenres are actually low in fidelity. In essence, mainstream ‘hi-fi’ productions use similar effects, such as filtering to sound like a radio or adding noise to sound like a vinyl record. To understand lo-fi today, this article explores music by a lo-fi hip-hop producer and a lo-fi ambient producer, drawing upon the analytical methods of Alan Moore and Dennis Smalley. First to be discussed is Glimlip, one of the many anonymous producers behind the popular Lofi Girl YouTube streams. The next discussed is Amulets, an ambient musician known for using hacked and looped cassette tapes. Analyses of their music demonstrate a level of care in production that goes against the idea that lo-fi is primitive or naive.

This article proposes the audio reality effect as a meaningful translation of Roland Barthes’s literary reality effect to the sonic realm. This refinement of transcontextuality and source recognition is applied to electroacoustic music and soundscape composition using the works and writings of Emmerson, Truax, Wishart, Smalley, Fischman, Young, Norman and Field. Lastly, this study mimetically analyses 2 seconds / b minor / wave by Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto in order to demonstrate the relevance of mimesis and the audio reality effect for understanding current musical practice.

Although the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musics has been progressing for over a century, many early attempts tended to treat Chinese material in a rather superficial manner. This resulted in mere ‘Orientalist’ Western pieces and rather bland pentatonic/romantic ‘Chinese’ music that simply harmonised the basic outline of popular Chinese melodies with Western chord progressions. The use of recent technologies has greatly accelerated the pace and depth of this hybridisation and solved many of its artistic problems. Technological advances now make it possible and practical to incorporate the subtle but essential elements of traditional Chinese music, and of course other world musics, in works that seem satisfying for Western and non-Western audiences. This paper presents a brief historical overview of the hybridisation of Western and Chinese musical traditions, examines common pitfalls of many early attempts, and reviews how these issues are addressed compositionally and technically in the author's recent electroacoustic pieces, Li Jiang Etudes No. 1, 2 & 3.