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Introduction |
9.
Listening Spaces Sounds and Auditory Space Many pieces of music, like photography, are designed to make the listener focus on specific events. Some pieces of music may be designed so that all the heard sounds are equally in focus, while others will be hierarchical in which some sounds are more obviously heard than others. A compact disk producer will be primarily concerned with these issues when mixing a recording. The producer constantly has to decided which sound or sounds are to be heard above other sounds. Furthermore, when listening to a piece of music or sound, we apply limits to what we wish to include and exclude either blocking out or being annoyed by the sounds we do not want to hear. The sounds we wish to hear can be said to form a special type of listening space called a musical space. Musical spaces are not absolute but rather are defined by perception. We decide what we want to include into our listening arena. A sound one person may hear as prominent may be completely unnoticed by another person. A musical space is like a photograph. The edges of the photo place a limit on what is seen within. In music, a musical space can be defined by such things as loudness, register or tone quality. There are no hard and fast rules as it fundamentally depends on how the listener wants to hear sounds. The following example demonstrates this: I am in my kitchen. I am washing up the dishes before I go to a concert to hear Mozart's Piano Concerto in B flat. I decide to listen to a recording of the concerto while washing up. The sound of the piano, orchestra, my spontaneous singing, cutlery, crockery and water playfully merge into a rich and complex texture. The Mozart concerto sounds terrific. I then go to the concert. The concerto is scheduled after interval and is being played at the local town hall. Being a community event, interval was marked by tea and biscuits. After interval I sit in my seat and eagerly await the concerto. It starts, but to my dismay the sound of stacking cups and saucers from the interval can be heard from the town hall canteen. I am annoyed. In this example, the sounds of the dishes (i.e. their tone colour or quality) at home belonged to the musical space whereas the same type of sounds at the concert were not part of the musical space. The sounds and music from my kitchen converge into one large space while the concert hall is clearly demarcated into wanted and unwanted sounds. Musical Space Defined by Distance The sounds you hear in the room you are in define one space, however, the sounds you hear outside the room define a larger or separate space. The room size defines the limits as to what we hear within or without. As a listener you may wish to hear the room sounds as a subset of the total sounds heard or place the room sounds within a larger space which includes the outside sounds. We can even decide that all the sounds heard within one metre of our ears belong to a small musical space. Summary The musical space is a perceived sonic event or events which is defined by limits. These limits can be based on distance, register, loudness, foreground middle ground or background or similarity of sounds. Within any musical space, the listener will detect sounds moving forward, recede, stay constant, go higher or lower. etc. There is no definitive approach as the musical space is dependent upon the way we hear sounds and the limits constructed. |