SOUNDSCAPE COMPOSITION WEBINAR COURSE
prepared by Barry Truax
Professor Emeritus
Simon Fraser University
(truax@sfu.ca)


Overview
This document is intended to act as a video supplement to the Special Topics course in Soundscape Composition based on video recordings that were made during an online set of webinars where I was teaching the material via Zoom.

The multi-channel and stereo files can be downloaded here. Texts, References and weekly reading assignments are listed in the course outline, with the readings downloadable as a .zip file here.

Structure of the Course with links to the Video Commentary

(click on the number of the module to start the video, or option click to download)
TOPIC
Featured 8-channel works
 1. Soundscape as concept and terminology
  Introduction to soundscape composition, acoustic ecology, sustainability, niche hypothesis

 
Truax: Pendlerdrom

 2. Introduction to the World Soundscape Project
  Survey of historical documents and approaches to field recording, documentation

 
Truax: Pacific Fanfare, Basilica

 3. Approaches to soundscape composition (spatial perspectives)
  Found sound (phonography) and abstracted practices and techniques


 
Truax: Island, Aeolian Voices

 4. Historical precedents (radiophonic and electroacoustic)
 
Ruttmann, Koch, Schwartz, Ferrari, Braun, Orchard, WSP


 
Copeland: Memory


 5. Hildegard Westerkamp, soundscape works



 
Westerkamp: Talking Rain, Into the Labyrinth

 
  6. Barry Truax, soundscape works



 
Truax: Earth & Steel, Chalice Well, Garden of Sonic Delights, Rainforest Raven

 7. Soundscape and Acousmatic approaches mixed
 
Body, Wishart, Risset, McCartney, Tenney, Lansky, Andean, Raimondo
  corrections to the video ("pisang" in Indonesian means bananas; Paul Lansky worked at Princeton, not Stanford)

 
Risset: Sud (quadraphonic)

 8. Narrativity; Text and gender-based approaches
 
Derbyshire, Dyson, Body, Truax, Wilson
  Ben Wilson: Googolplex
  Truax: Androgyne, Mon Amour (Video)

 9. Voice and Text-based approaches, continued
 
Rubin, Young, Lane, Norman
 
  Truax: The Shaman Ascending

 10. Other artists
 
Monacchi, Wagstaff, Burtner, Leonard, Barclay, Proy, Polli, DeLaurenti
 
  Ronald Boersen: Silence is Immanent


 
11.
 Other artists
 
Peter Manning, Chris Rolfe, Jaime Reis, Kristian North, Claudio da Pina, Jacek Smolicki
  Manning: In Memoriam CPR
  Rolfe: Bronze Wound
  North: Remiges
 
Da Pina: Boriska Bells
 
Truax: What the Waters Told Me

 
Truax: When The Earth Mourned For Me

copyright Cambridge Street Publishing, 2025