The idea of a sound landscape encompasses more than just the concept or shape of the sound. It holds the qualities of a sound environment that the human mind can parse together as sensible and correct. Musical composition has trended toward the manipulation of this concept, allowing listeners to experience outlandish aural stimuli or convincing representations of real life. The theory behind the seemingly intuitive concept exhibits many complex nuances. There are three dimensions of measure to a sound landscape: the ability for a person to recognize the sound, the context of the sound, and the positional characteristic of the sound in its environment. The creative alteration of these values can create surreal sound images, paralleling abstract visual art. The three measures, when perfectly applied, can likely replicate any sound environment or context. However, the recreation cannot be complete without other demarcating indicators from other senses such as sight and touch. These signals work together with the aural in order to synthesize the complete surrounding environment humans experience, according to Wishart. This powerful concept is a driving force in the production of electronic music with the continuing innovations in the advent of musical technology.
Questions:
Why do we find the accurate representation of life to be so appealing in media, sonic and beyond? Do we find comfort in listening/observing our surroundings through a controlled medium?
How do we perceive sound landscapes of sounds completely disjoint from reality, such as severely heavy basses with high-pitched stabs and tones?
Music 26 Blog: Ryan Hyun 