Soundscapes, a viable artform?

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This is a definition of Soundscapes from (R. Murray Schaffer)
“A Soundscape is an acoustic environment or an environment created by sound. As such, it refers in the first place to the natural acoustic environment, consisting of the sounds of the forces of nature and animals, including humans. This is the domain of acoustic design”.
It’s perhaps useful to give some background on the subject to give it some context. The Idea of the Soundscape was developed in the 1970’s at Simon Fraser University in America. Originally designed as an educational and archival tool-used by B. Truax to promote awareness of sounds that can all to often be ignored. Shaped by early visionaries Truax and Shaffer it metamorphosed into electroacoustical music that Truax termed “Soundscape composition”.



B. Truax has identified four key principles to Soundscape composition.

1. The source materials need to be recognizable to the listener.
2. The listener’s emotions and memories are triggered.
3. The composer’s knowledge of the environment.
4. The work enhances our understanding of the world and it’s influence carries over into everyday perceptual habits.
The first point I believe is that these principles although identified in 1973, still hold true today and I have adhered to them in my work. My source material is recognisable as sounds associated with the sea-side, even the donkey hee-haw that in the second part has been processed with a pitch bend effect and morphs into something entirely different manages to retain its integrity.
On the second point, the subject matter of my piece focuses on something that is an integral part of growing up in our society. Sand castles, Sea gulls and swimming in the sea are all things experienced by people in their formative years on trips to the seaside. Like other art forms such as Music, Soundscapes use emotional connections as pegs on which to hang ideas from.
I have used the sound of children swimming on the beach to create that emotional connection. Later in the piece I have reversed the sound and chopped it into smaller pieces then applied some echo and reverb to simulate in an acoustic sense that dream like fuzziness that people tend to experience when recalling memories from childhood.
In relating to the third point the idea for my Soundscape came from my own knowledge and experiences from my daily life; which the beach is part of. It occurred to me that the seasides acoustic foot print changes dramatically throughout the year. From bustling and exiting in the summer season, to cold, grey and lonely in the winter months. It’s this juxtaposition that my Soundscape depicts.
Point number four states that a Soundscape must enhance understanding. I do believe that my piece, although an artistic representation does enrich the listeners ideas of the seaside. That being said I believe Listening is an individual experience. Soundscapes like Oil paintings for example are a subjective experience. Meaning that people experience it differently from one another.
Found sound is a term coined by R Shaffer and is real world source material from the environment, not usually processed or effected.
A good example of how found sounds can be used within a Soundscape can be found in “Summer Solstice” (B Truax 1973), where short pieces from each hourly recording over a 24 hour period were edited together seamlessly to form an hour long Soundscape. Like “Summer Solstice” my piece also uses found sound from the environment, in this case Weston beach. These sounds are layered together to form the basis of the composition.

Abstract sounds can be best described as sounds perhaps alien to the environment. Hildegard Westercamp’s seminal work “Camel Voice” (1981) is a great example of how abstract sounds, even though not recognisable as anything coherent, can be a useful tool in the composers sonic pallet to help portray mood or atmosphere.
I have employed the use of abstract sounds to great effect in my Soundscape. In the second half of the piece, which describes Weston in winter juxtaposed with memories of summer, I have used a granular technique known as time stretching on the sea gulls. This emphasised the resonant high frequencies and lent the piece an eerie quality not unlike a violin. The dissonance of the stretched sea gull adds to the desolation of winter in Weston super mare.



Another important factor to Soundscape composition is perspective. According to B Truax there are a range of approaches to perspective. These are, fixed, moving or variable.
1. Fixed. A static perspective based on techniques such as layering.
2. Moving. This perspective is defined by techniques such as cross fades and describes a journey through time.
3. Variable. Discontinuous space/time flow. Defined by techniques such as multi track editing.

Literature on the subject of Soundscapes is somewhat limited to papers written by American academics and although some of the information contained in them has been invaluable in writing this essay, many of them are somewhat dated.
It is not accurate to describe my piece as fixed, moving or variable in perspective but rather a hybrid of the three. The first part of “Beachscape” begins as moving perspective with the sound of a train arriving, which fades into the sound of surf cross faded slowly into sea gulls. This is layered with other sounds then looped, taking on a quad phonic fixed perspective.


The second part of the piece contains all three perspectives simultaneously, as it adds on the first part with abstract sounds such as a donkey sound reversed dogs barking and seagulls effected using a granular time stretching. These abstract techniques are often found in Soundscape composition using variable perspective. I have employed this technique to show how the non-linear quality of memories from the summer juxtaposed over the reality of winter at the seaside.
I have drawn various comparisons throughout this essay between Soundscape composition and other more traditional art forms like music and paint. What is interesting is that Soundscape composition is now moving into the mainstream. The boundaries between visual art and sound art are becoming blurred with artists who normally use mediums like paint or sculpture, now turning to electro-acoustic art. Artists such as John Cage and Bruce Neumann, who recently had an installation using Soundscape techniques at Tate modern, turning to this burgeoning art form for inspiration.