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Sonic Vocabulary: Definitions and Levels of Organization

 

For our purposes, we will look at all sonic phenomenon on four structural levels - from small to large, micro to macro.

 

1)  Event Level: the characteristics of a single sound event. Sound parameters: Pitch, dynamic, duration, timbre. All sonic events have these parameters, plus they occur somewhere (location).

 

Pitch: Frequency of a sound, expressed in cycles per second (Hz). Range: 20 to 20,000 Hz, usual limits of human hearing.

Dynamic: Amplitude or loudness of a sound, expressed in decibels (dB). Range: 0 (nearly inaudible) to 140 dB (threshold of pain).

Duration: Length of time a sound lasts, expressed in units of time (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours).

Timbre: Unique characteristic tone color or signature of a sound, most often expressed verbally (bright, dark, hollow, etc.).

Location: Spatial position of the source of sound, determined by placement on stage or within a given sonic environment (such as left-right placement in stereo audio or 3D placement in surround-sound audio).

 

2)  Gesture Level: Change of sound parameter(s) (event-level) over time.

 

Pitch: Pitch vibrato, slides (glissandi) Melodic statements

Dynamic: Crescendo, diminuendo Dynamic accents

Duration: (The relative change of density of activity over time)

Timbre: Timbre modulation Hocket, or note-to-note instrumentation or sound source change

Location: Gradual or variable shift in a Marked or dramatic vectors of sound across or through the sounds apparent source sonic environment

 

3) Texture Level: Single or multiple sound sources engaged in similar or contrasting activity: ambient (slowly evolving over time, generally background material), rhythmic (repetitions or patterns, becomes background material), solo (foreground material, commanding our attention).

 

Textures are the combinations of a single or multiple sound sources engaged in similar or contrasting activity. Although there are many possible textures representing these various combinations, many styles and genres of musical (and sonic) activity can be examined according to the three following texture types:

 

Ambient textures are slowly evolving sound “landscapes” that have discernible pitch content (as in the Western notion of harmony), or they may not (as in a live recording of a rain forest). Their organization over time is characterized by a relatively slow rate of change. Ambient textures can seem so static, because change takes place so gradually that listeners are sometimes unaware of a specific change.

 

Rhythmic textures are characterized by regular, predictable, and symmetric patterns of sounds that may or may not be of discernible pitch. With any sound repeated at regular intervals creating a rhythmic layer, multiple rhythmic layers then can be combined, with the result sometimes perceived as a single (although dense or complicated) rhythmic texture. Sometimes rhythmic textures that become highly predictable seem static to listeners, receding into the background of their attention.

 

Solo or foreground textures are any sounds in a musical work that become so prominent that all other musical elements recede to the background (such as instrumental or vocal solo). Solo elements typically have a clearly discernible pitch content (melody for example).

 

4) Form Level: The mix of successive and/or simultaneous textures/events/gestures and the change of these textures/events/gestures over time.

 

Form is the mix of successive and/or simultaneous textures, along with gestures and individual sound events often articulating change in the mix of textures (i.e., beginning, key sections, end). Although your approach to form can be very spontaneous or very structured, you need to be able to communicate your formal desires if your work involves more than one person. You can do this best by creating a score, which is a timeline with verbal or graphic descriptions of the kind of activity you want to create.

 

 

Sonic Syntax: Design Principles

 

We can talk about a language of sound design like we can talk about a visual design or verbal design, by investigating VOCABULARY (the basic building blocks) and SYNTAX (how the blocks are put together). You've done this with WORDS all your life, when you learned how to speak whichever languages you know. You've begun to do this with IMAGES and VISUAL ELEMENTS—bitmaps, vectors, graphics, both still and in time, building visual compositions: collage, montage, entire worlds of visual design. Now, we're going to adapt that approach to SOUND. 

 

Above, we've outlined the BASIC VOCABULARY ELEMENTS of sound design—events, gestures, textures, and form. Let's look now at FORM a little more closely, since that's HOW our VOCABULARY gets put together. This is how we will investigate SYNTAX in sound *.

 

The reason we've broken down sound elements into EVENTS, GESTURES, and TEXTURES is to make them MIXABLE (and thus create FORM). Here is a basic MIXING RECIPE:

 

1) Create a number of AMBIENT TEXTURES and a bunch of RHYTHMIC textures. Make your AMBIENT TEXTURES based on SUSTAINED PITCHES (generated by electronic tones, musical instruments, voices), and make your RHYTHMIC TEXTURES out of NON-PITCHED** elements (such as 'unpitched' drums, percussion, and electronic noise). Mix ONE AMBIENT TEXTURE with ONE RHYTHMIC TEXTURE at a time, and you will create a composite texture which functions as a BACKGROUND.

 

2) Once you've mixed an ambient and a rhythmic texture, add EVENTS and GESTURES by a SINGLE SOUND SOURCE (like a single instrument, voice, or electronic sound/noise source).  Don't worry about HOW these events and gestures are put together, just create a SUCCESSION of them, WITHOUT PATTERNS (because that would be a RHYTHMIC TEXTURE) and CHANGING UNPREDICTABLY. You've just created a SOLO TEXTURE, something that functions as a FOREGROUND.

 

3) If you use the HUMAN VOICE (or something that approximates that, such as a robot voice or a wild beest howl), you've already created a SOLO, FOREGROUND texture. If you have multiple FOREGROUND textures, try ALTERNATING them, so they each get a certain amount of attention.

 

So, at any give time you might have ONE AMBIENT and ONE RHYTHMIC texture in the background, with ONE SOLO texture in the foreground.

 

Here are some general principles for mixing sound elements, and how we hear and organize sound as we hear it:

 

1) CHANGE vs. NON CHANGE: Our attention goes to THINGS THAT CHANGE. If they change PREDICTABLY, we pay less attention to them (that's why RHYTHMIC textures, even if they're very complicated and interesting, ultimately drift into the background.

 

2) FOREGROUND vs. BACKGROUND: If there is some element of CHANGE and CONTRAST from the BACKGROUND, that element will demand our attention as the FOREGROUND. 

 

3) INTERACTION vs. PRE-PRODUCED: Keep elements (textures, gestures, events) separate for as long as you can, for interactive (non-linear) use (as in a video game or video jam). Combine them for linear use (film soundtrack).

 

 

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* The Problem of 'MUSIC'— Unless you've studied it across time, geography, and intention, you probably have a rather personal set of expectations, experiences, and definitions of what music is, as well as distinctions between music and sound, noise, and silence. Most of these deal with notions of pitch and duration vocabularies (such as melody, rhythm, harmony) as well as formal constructions (such as 'a song', or 'an instrumental'), and also a context of intention (popular music, commercial music, serious music, sacred music, folk music, etc.). Music is all these things, and the history and literature of music can be viewed as changes (over time, geography, and intention) of different VOCABULARIES of sound, put together with different SYNTAXES (syntacies?) that also change (over time, geography, and intention).

 

To get around the MUSIC issue, we will focus on building designs in sound, using elements of sound. So, yes, we are organizing sound, and we will not really worry if that will be viewed as 'music' or not. 

 

** Yes, drums do have 'pitch', but unless you're talking about a very discretely tuned instrument like timpani, some percussion may be a complex combination of pitches (as you encounter with a tubular bell or chimes), and other percussion may simply be difficult to identify as a 'single pitch' (such as a set of toms, which do project a sense of relative high or low pitch, but may not be easy to 'sing along with').