Timescale and Gesture in Approaches to Morphological Representation of Electroacoustic Sound
This was was originally presented at the 2008 Electronic Music Studies Conference in Paris, France. It is published with the proceedings of that conference. Download
Abstract: When using real-time data to generate representations, issues of time-scale become immediately apparent. Furthermore, the appearance of gestural aspects of sound, an important aspect of the morphological characterization of the aural, vary depending on the time scale represented. Music theorists are now using the idea of gesture as an analytical tool and applying it as a biologically grounded, inter-modal synthesis that shapes motion (pitch motion, rhythmic motion) in time to create expressive force. Models of force and inertia are applied to musical models of harmony and expression. This paper addresses issues of time-scale and gesture when using spectral data to influence particular aspects harmonicity and the use of signal processing data to develop representations of sound morphologies. The estimation of harmonicity is most often discussed in the signal processing literature as a method of determining fundamental tones (f0) in monophonic or polyphonic, note-oriented music. Frequently this is in an effort to create applications for automatic transcription or characterization of recorded music. Most commonly, noise reduction techniques are used in order to extract “musical” sound and differentiate it from background. In electroacoustic and experimental approaches to music, such concepts function distinctly. How is time scale constructed when using real-time data? How does the aspect of time relate to the geometry of the visualizations? How are gestural representations changed at different time resolutions? This paper evaluates harmonicity as a timbral measure with real-time data to generate 3-dimensional representations of sound. In order to illustrate these approaches I am analyzing the electronic portion of Phillipe Manoury's Jupiter. This expands on my morphological notation system, and continues my research into representations of electroacoustic sound.
Slides from the original presentation in Paris are below.