Music of Sound Article

The Music of Sound

Creating Music with Digital Audio

Dr. Daniel Hosken
Assistant Professor of Music Technology
California State University, Northridge

Introduction

Composition is one of the fundamental skills in music and experience with composition can lead students to an understanding of fundamental properties of music (pitch, timbre, dynamics, rhythm) and fundamental structures of music (phrases, sections, form). Composition in this context typically requires some knowledge of music notation, keys, scales, and chord progressions that students at various levels may have not yet acquired (or may never acquire). In this article I will discuss several strategies for teaching composition through the direct manipulation of digital audio allowing students to manipulate the basic properties of music and create musical structures without prior knowledge of music notation or tonal materials. These strategies can be useful at many different educational levels including middle school, high school, and college, and may be used to teach composition to college students studying other disciplines.

Steps in a Sound Composition Project

There are several basic steps in a sound composition project:

1. Acquire the raw audio material. Here are some possibilities:

Record sounds of ordinary objects
Record the human voice (either abstract sounds or with a text)
Record musical instruments (single notes, melodies, weird sounds)
Record ambient sounds in various environments (classrooms, hallways, streets, homes, etc.)
Import sound from music or sound effects CDs or the Internet

2. Choose a software tool. It is preferable to use software that allows more than just two tracks of digital audio so that you can mix several different sounds together. The software should also have some built-in effects such as reverse, filters, and time-stretching/pitch-shifting. Most current sequencers, even inexpensive ones, have these capabilities.

3. Create a compositional plan. It is important that students listen carefully to the sounds and think of an overall shape for the composition so that they don't lose sight of the big picture while editing individual sounds.

4. Create the composition. Cut, copy, paste, reverse, filter, pitch-shift, time-stretch, etc. to transform the plan into sound. To keep a project relatively simple, the instructor might limit the available processes to cut/copy/paste, transpose, reverse, and perhaps some reverberation.

Types of Sound Composition Projects

There are a variety of projects that students at many levels can undertake. Here are some possible projects and suggestions for each (these projects could be done as group projects if desired):

1. Collage Composition. Have students make sounds with objects in their pockets or items in the classroom and record them.

Students should identify the pitch, loudness, and timbre of the sounds they record by using relative terms such as “high” and “low” for pitch and loudness, and descriptive terms such as "bright, percussive" or "dull, scraping" for timbre.

Students should consider how sounds could be ordered and spaced to create rhythms that are fast or slow and regular or irregular.

Students should plan a short phrase of, say, 10–15 seconds that starts with some activity in rhythm or pitch and brings it to a conclusion (a cadence). Here are some possible phrases:

A regular rhythm that swoops down in pitch and gradually moves back up
A very dense cluster of sounds in a fast, irregular rhythm that stops suddenly to reveal quiet, gentle sounds.
A build-up from quiet sounds in irregular rhythm to harsh sounds in a regular rhythm.

Students should make several phrases and consider how they might be organized and layered to create larger forms through contrast and repetition. Here basic forms such as "ABA" can be introduced.

2. Sonic Landscape. Using a portable recorder, take the class on a sonic field trip, trooping them through hallways, stairwells, gymnasiums, and even the great outdoors (for those of you who can find some).

Students should be asked to identify the differences in the way the environments sound such as quieter or louder, more or less reverberant (perhaps expressed as "ringing" or "dry"), more natural sound or more manmade sound.
Students should think about what kinds of unexpected sounds are present in these environments such as nature sounds inside a building or noise pollution in the woods.
Students could create an artificial “walk” through these environments by reordering and editing the sounds.
Students could create a story or scene with the various sounds by juxtaposing sound from different environments.

3. Text Sound. Choose a poem or any text, have a student or students record themselves reading it (it might be fun to have it read in different languages as well).

Students could alter the original meaning of the poem by reordering or deleting words.
Students could add new meanings by constructing words not in the original poem from the existing words.
Students could use just the sounds of the words or parts of the words to create an abstract sound experience. For this option, students could be asked to consider the properties of sound and their organization as in the collage project discussed above.

4. "Remixing" Import music (perhaps several phrases or even a whole song) either from a CD (taking care to properly consider copyright issues) or by recording students playing (they could do a remix of a piece that the band, orchestra, or chorus is working on).

Students should listen to the piece of music and identify the phrases and sections
Students could reorder the parts of the music, copy a section/phrase to create a new repetition, or delete a section/phrase (or maybe even just one beat!)
Students could chop up the music into smaller segments and create rhythms and phrases with these smaller segments as with the collage assignment above.

Conclusion

Composing music by direct manipulation of digital audio can be an exciting and rewarding way to introduce students to creative music-making and open up their ears to the world around them. The concepts learned in this process can be easily applied to further study of traditional musical materials and can lead to a better understanding of those materials. For further information and resources, see my webpage: http://www.csun.edu/~dwh50750/musicofsound.html