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THE AURAL SONOLOGY PLUG-IN version1.0
for lAcousmographe 3.7
About The Aural Sonology Project is a novel approach to the
analysis of sonic and structural aspects of music-as-heard. It has
been the aim of the Aural Sonology project to develop a conceptual
structure of analysis and theory that is not uniquely reserved for
a particular compositional style or expression, but addresses music
appreciation in Western art music on a general basis. A central
concern for the project is the development of aural consciousness
through a systematic application of different ways of listening.
Audio-visual technology facilitates the making and the presentation
of the aural sonology analyses. The implementation of the
analytical system on the Acousmographe (developed by INA/GRM) opens
a new chapter for the use of the methods.
The approach is particularly useful for dealing with music for
which no score is available (e.g. electroacoustic music) or
(instrumental) music in which there is no simple one-to-one
correspondence between score and the aural phenomenon. The
analytical tools are partly oriented towards spectromorphological
analysis, partly towards analysis of form-building features. The
spectromorphological analysis is based on the sound-object, which
is constituted by the listening intention to hear the sound simple
as a sound (reductive listening). The description and
categorisation of sound-objects were initiated by P. Schaeffer and
his team at GRM, and published in Trait des objets musicaux (1966).
The Aural Sonology Project has revised his ideas and translated
these ideas into a conceptual structure with corresponding graphic
signs. Sound-objects are grouped into categories and described more
closely. These signs are incorporated in the Aural Sonology Plug-In
of the Acousmographe. Analyses relevant for musical form-building
are:
Time-fields (the temporal segmentation of the musical discourse)
Layers (the synchronous segmentation of the musical discourse)
Dynamic form (time directions and energetic shape) Thematic form
(recurrence, variation, and contrast) Form-building transformations
(simple and complex gestalts, transformations
between them (e.g. proliferation/collection, fission/fusion;
liquidation/crystallization).
The choice of an adequate graphic sign does not happen
automatically, but must be chosen by a user that knows the
definition of the signs. They will be found on the web-site
www.auralsonology.com which is under construction. A book
documenting the full project (Lasse Thoresen with the assistance of
Andreas Hedman: Emergent Musical Forms: Aural Explorations) is
forthcoming in the publication series Studies in Music of The
University of Western Ontario.
Lasse Thoresen (2013)
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Installation IMPORTANT: The Acousmographe version 3.7 or higher
must already be installed before continuing with the Aural Sonology
installation. The Aural_Sonology_Installer_Mac will install the
Aural Sonology plug-in, documentation, templates, and libraries
containing all the symbols needed to make an analysis into the
Acousmographe folder. This folder is normally found in the
Application folder. The computer must be rebooted after
installation. The libraries, containing predefined symbols for
notation, will be loaded automatically when you start the
Acousmographe. They will turn up in the Libraries window (press F5
to open or close this window) and can be displayed by selecting
them in the menu at the top of this window. The installation
process will also put the font Sonova UC, essential for the display
of Aural Sonology signs, into the Library/Fonts folder. Dont
confuse this Library folder (French: le dossier Bibliothque)1 with
the one installed by the Acousmographe, they are two separate
things. Keyboard Layouts, enabling the symbols to be entered with
the computer keyboard, are installed into Library/Keyboard Layouts.
However, you might need to activate them manually. On Mac OS X
10.5: Open System Preferences/International and select the Input
Menu tab. On Mac OS X 10.6 and later: Open System
Preferences/Language & Text and select the Input Sources tab.
Activating Keyboard Layouts: Check the four input methods beginning
with the name Sonova (and any other you want to appear in the
Finders menu-bar). Also make sure that the option Show Input menu
in menu bar is checked. 1 If, for some reason, you need to access
the library folder use the Go menu in the Finder. Select Go to
folder and enter ~/library. Since Mac OS X 10.7 Apple has chosen to
hide this folder.
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Getting Started Start the Acousmographe and chose Open from the
File menu. Open one of the Templates found in the Acousmogrape
folder. They are: Template Name Description 1 Spectromorph.aks A
single panel document with some spectromorphological symbols. 2
SpectroMorph+1.aks A spectrogram panel and a zoomed out overview
panel. 3 SpectroMorph+2.aks Spectrogram, Time-fields & Dynamic
Form, and overview. 4 SpectroMorph+3.aks Spectrogram, Layers,
Time-fields & Dynamic Form, and overview. 5
SpectromorphPrint.aks As no. 1, but with a white background. 6
SpectromorphRed+1.aks Spectrogram with red background and a panel
for further analyses. After opening a template the program will ask
you to locate a sound file to analyse. For this exercise you can
chose Cancel. The benefit of opening a template (instead of
creating a New Acousmography) is, among other things, that the
background is already set to a bright colour (symbols from the
library are in black), and that the spectrogram will be set to use
a logarithmic display (i.e. an octave is always the same amount of
pixels), instead of an equal frequency display (where the same
amount of pixels is used to describe 0-10,000 Hz as
10,000-20,000Hz). Now, select a library from the menu at the top of
the Libraries window.
Select two symbols (press shift while clicking to extend the
selection). Then drag them into the Acousmographe window.
Select one of the symbols (you have to click outside the symbols
first to deselect them, then click again on the symbol to select).
Drag it on top of the other symbol. As
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you drag the symbol, guides (red lines) will appear to help you
align the two symbols perfectly. Grouping symbols: Step 1. Select
both of the symbols (again, first click outside the symbols, then
click and drag the mouse so that the selection covers both the
symbols. Step 2. Click the Group button. This image shows the
result; a complete spectromorphological symbol. It can now be
dragged and placed in time and pitch as a unit. By dragging the
small white circles along the objects blue border, the symbol can
be extended in duration. Notice that the prolongation line extends
and contracts. If the box surrounding the symbol gets to small, the
line will automatically disappear and the symbol will shrink to fit
inside.
Step 2
Step 1
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Setting up the Acousmographe The first time you open a Template
or create a new document, you will be asked to select a sound file,
but you can also do it later by choosing Document Properties
In this dialog you can also change the background colour if you
prefer. Setting it to white colour is the best option if you want
to print the analysis to paper (there is in fact a template setup
for printing, located in the Acousmographe folder).
Uncheck Synchronized Panels if you want to work with multiple
view panels with different zoom factors.
Please, refer to the Acousmographe Documentation for
explanations of the other options2. 2 The manual is in French, but
you can try running it through a good online translation
service.
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Spectromorphological Notation The following example, will
describe fairly typical steps in making a spectromorphological
description of a sound object. Opening a sound file to listen to is
of course the first step, but being an example we can skip this
step in this tutorial. From the SpectromorphologyLib we first
select the appropriate category for the sound we want to classify,
as it is described in the Typology (see Thoresen 2007b for details
about how sounds are classified). NOTE: If the Library window seems
to have disappeared press F5 to display it. Or, press the Library
button: The SpectromorphologyLib divides the Typology into 6
sections (the symbols in the other sections in the library belong
to what we call Morphology): Sections Description Balanced Sound
Objects Sounds with a high spectral fusion, perceived as a single
sound. Gliding Sound Objects Sounds changing in pitch or mass (e.g.
glissando). Composite Sound Objects Groups of sounds, fusing to a
unit (e.g. a cell, an ostinato). Accumulated Sound Objects
Internally made up of many sound-objects, but perceived as a unit.
Stratified Sound Objects Distinct partials are heard with some
independence. Vacillating Sound Objects Several partials in the
sound acting extremely independent. Each of these 6 sections
contains symbols for Pitched, Dystonic (uncertain pitch) and
Complex (noise) sound objects, and their counterparts the simpler
components (open symbols): sine tones, unvoiced sounds, and
noise-bands. Having determined the type and mass of the sound
object to be rendered (in this example we have chosen a complex
iterated sound found in the Balanced Sound Objects section), we
proceed by adding further details. From the library we take a sharp
onset from the Onsets section (scroll down in the library to see
more symbols). The first 6 symbols are the ones to use for balanced
and gliding sound objects. The 6 symbols below are larger, made to
fit with the Composite, Accumulated, Stratified, and Vacillating
sound objects, as seen below.3
3 This principle applies throughout the morphology sections, the
first set of symbols are intended for the smaller types, if symbols
seem to be duplicated the next ones are intended to fit with the
larger symbols.
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We will also add signs for the granularity of the sound (in this
case slow and coarse), and a sign for the pulse category of the
iteration (regular ripple time). Having chosen all the properties
we want to capture in the analysis, it is now time to assemble the
symbols. Drag the symbols so that they are completely aligned on
top of each other.
Select all the symbols again and press the Group Button: (or
press G). When the objects have been grouped, you can now extend
the symbol. The different objects contained in the group will then
realign automatically to make a nice uncluttered representation.
Before extension After extension
If you decide to add more details after having grouped and
extended the symbol, try to adjust the bounding box (the blue
rectangle) of the added symbol to be exactly the same size as the
one you are adding to. If they are not, and especially if their
left sides dont align, you will experience that they start to drift
apart when extending the symbol or zooming in or out. Exception to
this rule is of course the ending modes; they should be attached
after the symbol has been extended. Editing Symbols The Aural
Sonology symbols can be edited directly by using the keyboard. To
do this you must first have activated the Keyboard Layouts (see the
installation section). Double clicking an Aural Sonology symbol
takes you into the Edit Mode. At the same time the Libraries window
changes to display information about the object.
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Edit mode is a special state which blocks all access to the
normal functions of the Acousmographe, like menus for example. In
this mode only keyboard shortcuts (A:Select All, X:Cut, C:Copy,
V:Paste), arrow keys, and mouse actions can be used to interact
with the editing area. While in edit mode it is currently not
possible to use the undo function, however, after exiting edit mode
(by pressing the Return or esc key) the undo function will work
again. The plug-in automatically changes the Keyboard Layout to the
relevant analysis type. You can see that this is happening by
watching the flag symbol in the right corner of the menu bar. Your
keyboard now no longer inputs the characters seen on your keyboards
keys, but instead characters (or more correctly, glyphs) from the
Private Use range in the Unicode standard. This is where the Aural
Sonology symbols are located in the Sonova Font. The layout of the
symbols on the keyboard, for each of the four Sonova keyboard
layouts, can be seen in the document Sonova UC KeyMaps Mac.pdf.
This document is located in the Acousmographe/documents folder,
which in turn can be found by looking in the Applications folder.
The Character Viewer (or Character Palette on Mac OS 10.5) NOTE:
Skip this section if your operating system is Mac OS X 10.7 or
10.8. Most of the symbols in the Sonova font can be entered by
using the keyboard as described above, but there are some that
needs to be accessed using a different method. On previous systems
Apple offered a way to see all characters contained in a specified
font, but since system 10.7 there is no way to indicate what
specific font to view. There are third party solutions that will do
this, e.g. PopChar, but they cost money. Apart from accessing
special characters, the Character Viewer will display all the
symbols as they are ordered in the font, giving an alternative way
of finding a particular symbol. The Character Viewer is activated
in the System Preferences Language & Text under Input sources
(on Mac OS X 10.5, these are called International settings and
Input Menu). Compare the process with the one described for
Keyboard Layouts in the Installation section above.
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Open the Character Viewer by using the flag menu. To access
Unicode characters, the View should be set to Code Tables. Scroll
down to the Private Use Area and it should look like this: If what
you see differs from the image on the right, try the following.
Click on the square right next to E000, then select the Font
Variation arrow and click on Sonova UC Regular.
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The desired symbol can now be selected by double clicking and it
should be entered into your document (if you are in Edit Mode of
course). The Inspector The Aural Sonology plug-in has a few
parameters that can be edited with the Inspector. To display the
Inspector press function key F3. Or, press the Inspector button:
The Keyboards menu controls which Key Layout will be active when
entering Edit Mode. Selecting current disables the automatic
Keyboard Layout switch, keeping your selected language as input
method. Font Size, will change the size of the symbols. But be
aware that the bounding box they are contained in also influences
their size. Prolongation can be set to sustained (a solid line) or
iterated (a dashed line). It can be removed altogether from the
symbol by choosing none. To make a glissando set the End menu to up
or down. Changing the prolongation lines Beginning is only used in
conjunction with the Formal Function symbols.4
4 That said the lines might in fact be used without any symbol
present. They can then be used creatively e.g. to build complicated
pitch contours.
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References Trait des objets musicaux. Paris. ditions du Seuil
(2nd edition, 1977). Schaeffer, P. 1966. Paris. ditions du Seuil
(2nd edition, 1977).
Thoresen, L. 1985 Un model danalyse auditive. Analyse Musicale
1: 4459.
Thoresen, L. 1987 An Auditive Analysis of Schuberts Piano Sonata
Op. 42. Semiotica, 66(13): 21137.
Thoresen, L. 1988 Auditive Analysis of Musical Structures. A
summary of analytical terms, graphical signs and definitions.
Proceedings from ICEM Conference on Electroacoustic Music
Stockholm, Sweden, 25 27 September 1985.
Thoresen, L. 2007a Form-building Transformations. Journal of
Music and Meaning n. 4, spring 2007
http://www.musicandmeaning.net/issues/showArticle.php?artID=4.3
Thoresen, L. 2007b Spectromorphological Analysis of Sound
Objects: An adaptation of Pierre Schaeffers Typomorphology.
Organised Sound, 12(2): 129-141. Cambridge University Press.
Thoresen, L. 2009 Sound-objects, Values, and Characters in ke
Parmeruds Les Objets Obscurs. With the assistance of Andreas
Hedman. Organised Sound, 14(3) ): 31020. Cambridge University
Press.
Thoresen, L. 2010 Form-building gestalts and metaphorical
meaning. With the assistance of Andreas Hedman. Organised Sound,
15(2): 8295. Cambridge University Press.
Credits Concept and Coordination Andreas Hedman Senior
Applications Developer Adrien Lefvre Additional Programming Lydie
Gustafson. Documentation Andreas Hedman Supervision Lasse Thoresen,
Daniel Teruggi The development of the Aural Sonology plug-in has
been sponsored by ina/GRM, Lindemans Legat and the Norwegian
Academy of Music. The Acousmographe is a registered trademark of
L'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel. Aural Sonology is a
registered trademark of Lasse Thoresen. Aural Sonology plug-in 2013
Andreas Hedman, Lasse Thoresen. Sonova UC 2012 Karl Andreas
Hedman/SpectroMusic.com.