Courses in
Acoustic Communication
CMNS
359-4 :
ACOUSTIC DIMENSIONS OF COMMUNICATION II
Instructor: Barry Truax, K-9676,
778-782-4261, email: truax@sfu.ca
Website: http://www.sfu.ca/~truax & www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/
Texts: B.
Truax, Acoustic Communication, 2nd ed., Ablex 2001. (QC
225.15 T78)
Five Village Soundscapes, ARC Publications 1977. (QC 229 D38); reprinted in H. Jarviluoma et al., eds., Acoustic Environments in Change, Tampere, 2009. (QC 229 A26 2009)
B. Truax, ed., Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, CD-ROM edition, Cambridge
Street
Publishing, 1999.
CMNS 359 Readings (online pdf's: www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/AcousticCommunication;
see
Index
below)
References: WFAE website: www.wfae.net;
video collection related to acoustic ecology: soundexplorations.blogspot.com
P. Denes & E. Pinson, The Speech Chain. (QP 306 D45), W.H.Freeman, 2nd ed., 1993. (P95 D46 1993)
W. Ong, Orality and Literacy. Methuen, 1982. (P35 O54)
D. Tannen, ed. Spoken and
Written Language: Exploring Orality
and Literacy,
Ablex, 1982.
(P302 S6)
D. Tannen & M.
Saville-Troike, eds. Perspectives on Silence, Ablex, 1985. (P95.53, P47)
A. Wolvin & C. Coakley, Perspectives
on
Listening,
Ablex, 1993. (P95.46 P47 1993)
D. Ihde, Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of
Sound, SUNY Press, 2007 (B 829.5 I34 2007)
J. Attali, Noise (The
Political Economy of Music), The University of Minnesota
Press, 1985.
(ML 3795 A913)
E. Thompson, The
Soundscape
of
Modernity, MIT Press,
2002. (NA 2800 T48
2002)
J-F. Augoyard, & H. Torgue, eds. Sonic experience: A guide to everyday sounds (translated by A. McCartney & D. Paquette). McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005. (BF 353.5 N65 S6513 2005)
B. Smith, The
Acoustic World of Early Modern
England, University of Chicago Press, 1999. (PR 428 P65 S65 1999)
B. Blesser, Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture, MIT Press, 2007. (QP 443 B585 2007)
P. Kruth & H.Stobart, eds. Sound, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000.
(QC 225.6
S68 2000)
M. Bull & Les Back, eds. The
Auditory
Culture
Reader,
Oxford, 2003. (GN 275 A83
2003)
J. Drobnik, Aural Cultures, YYZ/Walter Phillips Gallery
Editions, 2004.
P. du Gay et al., Doing
Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony
Walkman, Sage
Publications,
1997. (TK 7881.6 D65 1997)
M. Bull, Sounding Out The
City: Personal Stereos and the
Management of Everyday Life,
Oxford, 2000. (T 14.5 B85 2000)
M. Bull, Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban
Experience, Routledge, 2007 (ML 3916 B85 2007)
J. Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, Duke University Press, 2003. (TK 7881.4 S733 2003)
J. Sterne, MP3: The Meaning of a Format, Duke
University Press, 2012 (ML 74.4 M6 S74 2012)
J. Sterne, ed. The Sound Studies Reader,
Routledge, 2012 (electronic resource)
M. Ayers, ed. Cybersounds: Essay on Virtual Music Culture,
Peter
Lang,
2006.
(ML
3916 P67 C93 2006)
P. Théberge, Any Sound
You
Can Imagine,
Wesleyan University Press, 1997. (ML
1092 T38 1997)
T. DeNora, Music in
Everyday Life,
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
(electronic resource)
V. Erlmann, ed., Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound,
Listening and Modernity, Oxford: Berg, 2004. (GN 307.5 H4)
V. Erlmann, Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern
Aurality, Zone Books, 2010. (BF 251 E75 2010)
F. Dyson, Sounding New Media: Immerson and
Embodiment in the Arts and Culture, University of California
Press, 2009 (BD 331 D97 2009)
K. Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century, MIT Press, 2008. (TD 892 B548 2008)
K. Bijsterveld & T. Pinch, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, Oxford, 2012 (QC 225.15 O93 2012)
K. Bijsterveld,
ed. Soundscapes of the Urban Past:
Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage, Transcript 2013 (HT
153 S68 2014)
D. Jones & A. Chapman,
eds.
Noise and Society, Wiley, 1984. (RA 772 N7 N65)
C. Plack, The Sense of Hearing, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005. (BF 251 P57 2005)
S. McAdams & E. Bigand, eds. Thinking in Sound: The cognitive psychology of human audition, Clarendon, 1993. (BF 323 L5 T55 1993)
A. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis, MIT Press,
1990. (QP 465 B74 1990)
S. Handel, Listening, MIT
Press, 1989. (BF 251 H27 1989/1993)
P. Cook, ed.
Music, Cognition, and Computerized
Sound, MIT Press, 1999. (ML 3805 M881 1999)
Soundscape, the Journal of
Acoustic Ecology,
WFAE.
Projects: Student
work will normally consist of an essay and a project on any topic in
the field
of acoustic communication. A verbal report on one of these topics is
expected
during the final seminar. The essay and project are expected to take
about six
weeks each and each is to be written up as a substantial report
(approx. 15
pages or 4000 words). The essay will discuss the course readings,
supplemented
by library or other research on a particular topic, and the project
will be
more applied or field oriented (it may involve studio work where the
student
already has studio experience). Each topic should ideally allow you to
apply a
communicational model, based on the course texts, to a specific problem
or
environmental/media context. Portable recorders and sound level
meters are
available for field work.
Grading
will be by letter grade average of the two projects (equally weighted
unless
otherwise requested) plus the final terminology quiz, as follows:
Essay, due Week 7, 40%
Project, due one week after
last class, 40%
Terminology Quiz, last lab, 20%
A 1-2 page outline of the essay
and project should also be
submitted as follows:
Essay outline (topic, section headings & summary, references) week 5
Project outline (goal,
methodology, analysis method) week 10
Seminar Topics and Readings:
Note: All Readings are to be
done for the date listed. AC refers
to Acoustic Communication, 2nd edition. FVS refers to Five
Village
Soundscapes.
Chapters from the books on
reserve
are useful supplements to these readings.
Date Topic & Readings
Week 1: Introduction: Acoustic & Electroacoustic Communication
Wrightson, “An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology”
Truax, "Electroacoustic music: The inner and outer world", part I
Sterne, "Sonic Imaginations," Ch. 1 from Sound Studies Reader
T. Ingold, “Against Soundscape”
(opt) Kelman, "Rethinking the Soundscape"
Week 2: Listening & The Listener as Consumer
Ballas & Howard, "Interpreting the language of environmental sounds"
Thompson, “Edison and the Tone Tests”
Mendelsohn, "Listening to radio"
Bull, “Investigating the Culture of Mobile Listening: From Walkman to iPod”
(opt) Bull, “Reconfiguring the Site and Horizon of Experience”
(opt) Blesser & Salter, “Auditory Spatial Awareness”
(opt) Metz, "Aural objects"
(opt) McAdams, "Recognition of sound sources and events"
(opt) Ballas, "Common factors in the identification of brief everyday sounds"
Week 3: Voice, Soundmaking & Orality
Ong, Orality and Literacy (ch. 3)
Franklin, "Silence and the notion of the commons"
Miller, “Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape”
(opt) Hockett, "The origin of speech"
(opt) Ostwald, "Sounds in human communication"
(opt) Lomax, "Song structure and social structure"
Week 4: The Acoustic Community
FVS: Intro. & chapters 1 - 5
Southworth, "The sonic environment of cities"
C. Smith, "The acoustic experience of place"
Feld, "From ethnomusicology to echo-muse-ecology"
(opt) Porteous, "Soundscape"
Week 5: The Acoustic & Electroacoustic Community
Week 6: Noise and Environment/Music and Environment
Bijsterveld, “The diabolical symphony of the mechanical age”
Westerkamp, "Listening and soundmaking: A study of music-as-environment"
Orwell, “Pleasure Spots”
(opt) Shepherd, "Music as cultural text"
(opt) Moisala, "Cognitive study of music as culture"
(opt) Cardinell, "Music in industry"
Week 7: Audio Media Analysis I
Huron, "Music in advertising"
Doane, “The voice in cinema: The articulation of body and space”
Mowitt, ad analysis (pp. 173-179) in "The sound of music in the era of its electronic reproducibility"
(opt) Barber, "Radio: Audio art's frightful parent"
(opt) Berland, "Radio space and industrial time"
(opt) Silverman, "Dis-embodying the female voice"
Week 8: Audio Media Analysis II
Thompson, chapter 6, “Electroacoustics and Modern Sound”
du Gay et al., chapter 5 “Consuming the Walkman”
Week 9: The Recorded Document & the Digital Era
(opt) Hecker, "Glenn Gould, the Vanishing Performer and the Ambivalence of the Studio"
Week 10: Audiology, Hearing Loss & the Effects of Noise
Bryan & Tempest, "Are our noise laws adequate?"
Campbell, "Ambient stressors"
Hétu, "The hearing conservation paradigm"
Rosen, "Presbycusis study of a relatively noise-free population in the Sudan"
Royster & Clark, "Amplified music and its effect on hearing"
(opt) Thiessen, "The effects of noise on sleep"
(opt) Suter, "Noise sources and effects - A new look"
Truax, "Genres and Techniques of Soundscape Composition as Developed at SFU"
Drever, "Soundscape Composition: The Convergence of Ethnography and Acousmatic Music"
Westerkamp, "Linking Soundscape Composition and Acoustic Ecology"
Week 12: Acoustic & Electroacoustic Design
Truax, "Electroacoustic music: The inner and outer world", part II
Wagstaff, "What is acoustic ecology's 'ecology'"
Truax, “Models and Strategies for Acoustic Design”
(opt) Wershler, “Sonic Signage”
(opt) Swedish "Manifesto for a Better Environment of Sound"
Week 13 Student Presentations
Lab Schedule:
In preparation for each lab you are asked to consult the Handbook terms listed in the Thematic Search Engine of the CD-ROM under the given heading. Terms and concepts that you have trouble with should be noted and brought up in class. Following each lab topic you will be given a take-home quiz (multiple choice type) to do during the next week. These will be discussed at the beginning of the next lab by way of review. A quiz covering all of the lab material for the semester (and based on the weekly take-homes) will be held during the last lab and will count 20% of the grade.
|
Date |
Topic |
|
Week
1 |
Introduction(s)
in Handbook CD-ROM |
|
Week
2 |
Sound-Medium
Interface (plus AC, 2nd ed., pp. 145-152) |
|
Week 3 |
Vibration, Pitch and Spectrum
(A, C) |
| Week 4 |
Vibration and
Timbre (B, D,
E) (plus AC, 2nd ed., pp. 137-142)
|
| Week 5 |
Magnitude (plus
AC, 2nd ed., pp. 142-145)
|
| Week 6 |
Sound-Environment
Interaction (A, B, C)
|
| Week 7 |
Sound-Environment
Interaction and Acoustic Space (D, E, F, G, H)
|
| Week 8 |
Sound-Sound
Interaction
|
| Week 9 |
Speech Acoustics:
consult "Vowel," "Consonant," "Formant," in Handbook
plus seminar readings (Denes
& Pinson,
Sundberg)
|
| Week 10 |
Audiology,
Hearing Loss & Risk Criteria (Audiology diagrams, week 10 pdf)
|
| Week 11 |
Noise Measurement
Systems & Risk Criteria
|
| Week 12 |
Review
|
| Week 13 |
Final
Quiz
|
INDEX TO READINGS
ACOUSTIC &
ELECTROACOUSTIC COMMUNICATION
B. Truax, "Electroacoustic Music: The Inner and Outer World", in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, vol. 1, Routledge, 1992, part I (pp. 374-385).
J. Sterne, "Sonic Imaginations," chapter 1, The Sound Studies Reader, Routledge, 2012.
A. Kelman, "Rethinking the Soundscape: A Critical Genealogy of a Key Term in Sound Studies," Senses and Society, 5(2), 213-34, 2010.
T. Ingold, “Against Soundscape”, in A. Carlyle, ed., Autumn Leaves, Double Entendre, Paris 2007.
W. Leiss, “On the Vitality of our Discipline: New Applications of Communication Theory,” Canadian Journal of Communication, 16(2), 1991, 291-305.
O.E. Laske, "Composition Theory: An Enrichment of Music Theory," Interface, vol. 18, 1989, pp. 45-69.
LISTENING & THE
LISTENER AS CONSUMER
J. Ballas & J. Howard, "Interpreting the Language of Environmental Sounds," Environment & Behavior, Jan. 1987.
E. Thompson, “Edison and the Tone Tests”, The Soundscape of Modernity, MIT Press, 2002, pp. 235-247.
H. Mendelsohn, "Listening to Radio," in Dexter & White, eds. People, Society and Mass Communication, 1964.
M. Bull, Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Oxford, 2000. Ch. 3 “Reconfiguring the Site and Horizon of Experience”
M. Bull, “Investigating the Culture of Mobile Listening: From Walkman to iPod,” in K. O’Hara & B. Brown, eds. Consuming Music Together, Spring 2006.
B. Blesser & L. Salter, “Auditory Spatial Awareness”, in Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?. MIT Press, 2007, pp. 11-46.
C. Metz, "Aural Objects," in E. Weis & J. Belton, eds. Film Sound, Columbia University Press, 1985.
S. McAdams, "Recognition of Sound Sources and Events," Thinking in Sound: The cognitive Psychology of Human Audition, Clarendon, 1993, 174-179.
J. Ballas, "Common Factors in the Identification of an Assortment of Brief Everyday Sounds," Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19(2), 1993, 250-267.
VOICE, SOUNDMAKING &
ORALITY
D. De Kerckhove, "Oral Versus Literate Listening," chapter 9, The Skin of Culture, Somerville House Publishing, 1995.
W. Bruneau, "Communicative Silences: Forms and Functions," Journal of Communication, 23, 1973, 17-46.
U. Franklin, "Silence and the Notion of the Commons," Soundscape, The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, 1(2), 2000, pp. 14-17.
W. Miller, “Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape,” Soundscape, The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, 1(2), 2000, pp. 18-19.
C. Hockett, "The Origin of Speech," Scientific American, Sept. 1960.
P. Ostwald, "Sounds in Human Communication," in Communication and Social Interaction, Grune & Stratton.
A. Lomax, "Song Structure and Social Structure," Ethnology, vol. 1, 1962.
C. Smith, "The Acoustic Experience of Place," Proceedings, The Tuning of the World Conference, Banff, vol. 2, 1993.
S. Feld, "From Ethnomusicology to Echo-muse-ecology," The Soundscape Newsletter, no. 8, 1994.
J.D. Porteous, "Soundscape," chapter 3, Landscapes of the Mind, University of Toronto Press, 1990.
E. Herman & R. McChesney, excerpts from "The Global Media in the Late 1990s," The Global Media, Cassell, 1997.
NOISE AND ENVIRONMENT/MUSIC AND ENVIRONMENT
K. Bijsterveld, “The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age,” Social Studies of Science, 31(1), February 2001, 37-70.
H. Westerkamp, "Listening and Soundmaking: A Study of Music-as-Environment," in D. Lander & M. Lexier, eds. Sound by Artists, Art Metropole & Walter Phillips Gallery, 1990.
G. Orwell, “Pleasure Spots,” The Collected Essays, vol. 4, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968 pp. 78-81.
J. Shepherd, "Music as cultural text," in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, vol. 1, Routledge, 1992.
P. Moisala, "Cognitive Study of Music as Culture - Basic Premises for Cognitive Musicology," Journal of New Music Research, 24, 1995, 8-20.
R.L. Cardinell, "Music in Industry," in Schullian & Schoen, eds., Music and Medicine, 1948.
AUDIO MEDIA ANALYSIS
D. Huron, "Music in Advertising: An Analytic Paradigm," The Musical Quarterly, 73, 1989, 557-574.
M.A. Doane, “The Voice in Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space,” in E.Weis & J.Belton, eds. Film Sound, Columbia University Press, 1985.
J. Mowitt, "The Sound of Music in the Era of its Electronic Reproducibility," in R. Leppert & S. McClary, eds. Music and Society, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 173-197.
K. Silverman, "Dis-Embodying the Female Voice," in Re-Vision: Essays on Feminist Film Criticism, The American Film Institute Monograph Series, vol. 3, 1984.
J. Berland, "Radio Space and Industrial Time," in Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity, B. Diamond and R. Witmer, eds., Canadian Scholars Press, 1993.
J. Attali, Noise (The Political Economy of Music), The Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1985. Ch. 4 “Repeating”, p. 87-120 (“The Emplacement of Recording” and “Double Repetition”)
E. Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity, ch. 6, “Electroacoustics and Modern Sound”, MIT Press, 2002.
P. du Gay et al., Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Sage Publications, 1997. Ch. 5 “Consuming the Walkman”
P. Théberge, “Musicians as Market, Consumers of Technology,” OneTwoThreeFour, 9, 1990, 53-90.
J. O'Connell, "The Fine Tuning of a Golden Ear: High-end Audio and the Evolutionary Model of Technology," Technology and Culture, vol. 33, no. 1, 1992, pp. 1-37.
M. Perlman, “Golden ears and meter readers: The Contest for Epistemic Authority in Audiophilia,” Social Studies of Science, 35(5), 2004, 783-807.
AUDIOLOGY, HEARING LOSS AND
THE EFFECTS OF NOISE
J. Campbell, "Ambient Stressors," Environment & Behavior, 15(3), May 1983.M. Bryan & W. Tempest, "Are Our Noise Laws Adequate," Applied Acoustics, 6, 1973, 219-232.
R. Hétu, "The Hearing Conservation Paradigm and the Experienced Effects of Occupational Noise Exposure, Canadian Acoustics, 22(1), 1994, pp. 3-19.
S. Rosen, "Presbycusis Study of a Relatively Noise-Free Population in the Sudan, Transactions, American Otological Society, vol. 50, 1962.
J. & L. Royster & W. Clark, "Amplified Music (from stereo headsets) and its Effect on Hearing," Hearing Instruments, vol. 41, no. 10, 1990, pp. 28-30.
G. Thiessen, "Effects of Noise on Sleep," in Effects of Noise on Man, National Research Council Document 15383, 1976.
A. Suter, "Noise Sources and Effects - A New Look," Sound and Vibration, Jan. 1992, 18-38.
J. Sterne, “The mp3 as Cultural Artifact,” New Media and Society, 8(5), 2006, 825-842.
T. Taylor, Strange Sounds: Music, Technology, and Culture, Routledge, 2001. Ch. 2 “Music, Technology, Agency, and Practice”
M. Katz, Capturing Sound : How Technology Has Changed Music, University of California Press, 2004. Ch. 1 “Causes” & Ch. 8 “Listening in Cyberspace”
G. Gould, "The Prospects of Recording," Hi Fidelity, 16(46), 1966.
T. Hecker, "Glenn Gould, the Vanishing Performer and the Ambivalence of the Studio, Leonardo Music Journal, 18, 77-83. 2008.
ACOUSTIC & ELECTROACOUSTIC DESIGN (and Soundscape Composition)
B. Truax, "Soundscape, Acoustic Communication and Environmental Sound Composition," Contemporary Music Review, 15(1), 49-65, 1996.
B. Truax, "Genres and Techniques of Soundscape Composition as Developed at Simon Fraser University," Organised Sound, 7(1), 5-14, 2002.
B. Truax, "Soundscape Composition as Global Music: Electroacoustic Music as Soundscape,"Organised Sound, 13(2), 103-109, 2008.
B. Truax, “Models and Strategies for Acoustic Design”, 1998 (www.sfu.ca/~truax/models.html)
J. Drever, "Soundscape Composition: The Convergence of Ethnography and Acousmatic Music," Organised Sound, 7(1), 21-27, 2002.
H. Westerkamp, "Linking Soundscape Composition and Acoustic Ecology," Organised Sound, 7(1), 51-56, 2002.
G. Wagstaff, "What is Acoustic Ecology's 'Ecology'," Soundscape Newsletter, no. 9, 1999.
D. Wershler, “Sonic Signage: [murmur], the Refrain, and Territoriality,” Canadian Journal of Communication, 33, 405-418, 2008.
