Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale.
A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth was popularized by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ranging from urban design to wildlife ecology to computer science. An important distinction is to separate soundscape from the broader acoustic environment. The acoustic environment is the combination of all the acoustic resources, natural and artificial, within a given area as modified by the environment. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standardized these definitions in 2014.
Chris Brown is an American composer, pianist and electronic musician, who creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. He was active early in his career as an inventor and builder of electroacoustic instruments; he has also performed widely as an improviser and pianist with groups as "Room" and the "Glenn Spearman Double Trio." In 1986 he co-founded the pioneering computer network music ensemble "The Hub". He is also known for his recorded performances of music by Henry Cowell, Luc Ferrari, and John Zorn. He has received commissions from the Berkeley Symphony, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio, the Gerbode Foundation, the Phonos Foundation and the Creative Work Fund. His recent music includes the poly-rhythm installation "Talking Drum", the "Inventions" series for computers and interactive performers, and the radio performance "Transmissions" series, with composer Guillermo Galindo.
Acoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is a discipline studying the relationship, mediated through sound, between human beings and their environment. Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer a musician, composer and former professor of communication studies at Simon Fraser University with the help of his team there as part of the World Soundscape Project. The original WSP team included Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp, Bruce Davies and Peter Huse, among others. The first study produced by the WSP was titled The Vancouver Soundscape. This innovative study raised the interest of researchers and artists worldwide, creating enormous growth in the field of acoustic ecology. In 1993, the members of the by now large and active international acoustic ecology community formed the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.
La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne is Canada's national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from "pure" acousmatic and computer music to soundscape and sonic art to hardware hacking and beyond.
Hildegard Westerkamp is a Canadian composer, radio artist, teacher, and sound ecologist. She is known for her contributions to and development of acoustic ecology, soundscape composition, and soundwalks, particularly through her work on the World Soundscape Project in the 1970s-'80s. She has written extensively on these topics for journals and conferences, including Organised Sound.
Maggi Payne is an American composer, flutist, video artist, recording engineer/editor, and historical remastering engineer who creates electroacoustic, instrumental, vocal works, and works involving visuals.
Darren Copeland is an electroacoustic music composer born June 18, 1968, in Bramalea, Ontario, Canada, and currently living in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.
Manuel Rocha Iturbide is a Mexican composer and sound artist.
Michael Vincent is a music journalist, media executive, and composer, who splits his time between Toronto, Ontario and Moncton, New Brunswick.
Scott Wilson is a Canadian composer. He studied music and composition in Canada, the U.S., and Germany, and his teachers include Barry Truax, Wolfgang Rihm, Christos Hatzis, Gary Kulesha, Ron Kuivila, Alvin Lucier, Owen Underhill, Neely Bruce and David Gordon Duke. Since 2004 he has lived in Birmingham, UK, where he is Reader in Electronic Music and Director of Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre and the Electroacoustic Studios at the University of Birmingham.
The Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT) is a faculty at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia, Canada. It comprises five schools and programs, over three SFU campuses: Burnaby, Vancouver, and Surrey.
The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was an international research project founded by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer in the late 1960s at Simon Fraser University. The project initiated the modern study of acoustic ecology. Its ultimate goal is "to find solutions for an ecologically balanced soundscape where the relationship between the human community and its sonic environment is in harmony." The practical manifestations of this goal include education about the soundscape and noise pollution, in addition to the recording and cataloguing of international soundscapes with a focus on preservation of soundmarks and dying sounds and sound environments. Publications which emerged from the project include The Book of Noise (1968) and The Tuning of the World (1977), both by Schafer, as well as the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology (1978) by Barry Truax. The project has thus far resulted in two major tours, in Canada and Europe, the results of which comprise the World Soundscape Library. Notable members included John Oswald, Howard Broomfield, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse, Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp.
Gareth Loy is an American author, composer, musician and mathematician. Loy is the author of the two volume series about the intersection of music and mathematics titled Musimathics. Loy was an early practitioner of music synthesis at Stanford, and wrote the first software compiler for the Systems Concepts Digital Synthesizer. More recently, Loy has published the freeware music programming language Musimat, designed specifically for subjects covered in Musimathics, available as a free download. Although Musimathics was first published in 2006 and 2007, the series continues to evolve with updates by the author and publishers. The texts are being used in numerous mathematics and music classes at both the graduate and undergraduate level, with more current reviews noting that the originally targeted academic distribution is now reaching a much wider audience. Music synthesis pioneer Max Mathews stated that Loy's books are a "guided tour-de-force of the mathematics of physics and music... Loy has always been a brilliantly clear writer. In Musimathics, he is also an encyclopedic writer. He covers everything needed to understand existing music and musical instruments, or to create new music or new instruments. Loy's book and John R. Pierce's famous The Science of Musical Sound belong on everyone's bookshelf, and the rest of the shelf can be empty." John Chowning states, in regard to Nekyia and the Samson Box, "After completing the software, Loy composed Nekyia, a beautiful and powerful composition in four channels that fully exploited the capabilities of the Samson Box. As an integral part of the community, Loy has paid back many times over all that he learned, by conceiving the (Samson) system with maximal generality such that it could be used for research projects in psychoacoustics as well as for hundreds of compositions by a host of composers having diverse compositional strategies."
Bob Pritchard is a composer and teacher. His creative work includes experimental concert music, interactive music and video pieces, sound installations, direct synthesis, video/film, radiophonic works, and software development. His music is represented by AMP.
Susan Frykberg was a New Zealand electroacoustic composer and a sound artist. She also composed acoustic music in a variety of genres.
Sound maps are digital geographical maps that put emphasis on the sonic representation of a specific location. Sound maps are created by associating landmarks and soundscapes.
David Monacchi is an Italian sound artist, researcher and eco-acoustic composer, best known for his multidisciplinary project Fragments of Extinction, patented periphonic device, the Eco-Acoustic Theatre, and award-winning music and sound-art installations.
"Dreamsong" is a 1978 recording created by American computer music musician and composer Michael McNabb at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in Stanford University. The composition has been discussed by numerous composers and book authors, one of them including Adrian Moore who labeled it a "pioneering work" of electroacoustic music. It is significant for being one of the earliest examples of works that combine natural and non-natural "new" sounds in a sophisticated manner with digital processing. MUS10, a compiler developed from Max Mathews' Music IV synthesis software that had a huge amount of flexibility in designing and synthesizing sounds, was used for the instrument design and synthesis of "Dreamsong", a project primarily intended to create an unlimited amount of obtainable new sounds.
Helmi Järviluoma-Mäkelä is a Finnish sound, music, and cultural scholar and writer. She is a professor of cultural studies at the University of Eastern Finland. As sensory and soundscape ethnographer, Järviluoma has developed the mobile method of sensobiographic walking. Her research and art span the fields of sensory remembering, qualitative methodology, environmental cultural studies, sound art and fiction writing. Helmi Järviluoma was married to Finnish writer Matti Mäkelä (1951–2019).[in Finnish]
