I think this is reaching. Music started to be in one
place in front because people wanted to look at it.
I think it had sod all(in deference to the British origin
of Ambisonics0 to do with
perspective drawing.
People have always looked at what interested them.
When they got really interested in music, music per se,
not music to accompany other activities(no one stares
at a dance band while they are dancing), they
wanted to look and so they put the music in one
spot and everyone looked at it.
All this recylced McLuhanism tends to be a little off the mark.
It is as bad as than "evolutionary biology".
It is too easy to make this stuff up but
there is no evidence that anything that is presented is true.
The ancient Greeks all looked one way at their theater, sitting
in a semicircle and looking at the stage. It is a
natural thing to do with a performance where the performance
is the center of attention and where there is a natural direction for the
performers to face(the Roman gladiators performed in the round so to
speak because they did not always face the same way--the event itself had
no preferred direction). But the ancient Greeks had no interest
in and damned little knowledge of perspective drawing(though the Romans
did know about it-- the idea that it was invented in the Renaissance is
wrong. Rediscovered, yes, invented for the first time, no).
Robert
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, newme...@aol.com wrote:
Peter:
So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a specialized musical
presentation.
Correct! This is the "presentation" that comes along with "perspective"
in Renaissance painting and the "linearity" of printed books, etc.
It is a product, if you will, of the Gutenberg Galaxy -- which, in turn,
started to unravel in the 19th century, yielding "electric" music and ending
the "classical" period in composition.
This is, perhaps, why the Bell Labs experiments that yielded the 3-channel
stereo (which they determined was the "minimum" needed to actually produce
a "solid" musical image, especially for an audience) was discussed in the
1934 "Symposium on Auditory Perspective."
_http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf_
(http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/bell.labs/auditoryperspective.pdf)
So, on this account, you might expect that some music that "preceded" the
imposition of this EYE-based conformity would exhibit more respect for the
"surround," just as you would expect that some music that "followed" the
relaxing of this *environmental* constraint might also begin to explicitly
investigate the *spherical* nature of sound.
That is, of course, exactly what seems to have happened!
None of which, however, changes the fact that in the electric era -- the
first and only media environment which created MASS audiences -- music
continued to be largely an expression of the "unconscious" orientation for
"perspective" (i.e. linear, eye-based, frontal performances), which then
became a
very "conscious" part of the commercialization of "performances" -- in our
own living-rooms.
It would have to wait for the further shift from *electric* to *digital*
media environment for all of this -- both the linearity of Gutenberg and the
"chaos" of "modernity" -- to begin to appear as arbitrary and merely
historical "accidents."
Now, we are ready for Ambisonics (but not as a mass-market phenomenon) . .
. as we all become MEDIEVAL (or, if you prefer, post-modern) once again!!
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY
In a message dated 4/3/2012 10:44:35 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
p.len...@derby.ac.uk writes:
I've always assumed that frontal, proscenium arch -type presentations came
out of the logistics of clocking large numbers of musicians together -
generally using a visual cue in the form of a conductor (also, individual
musicians might feel a bit lonely if they can't hang out with their mates) -
and this in turn helped reify the distinction between the music makers and
the music listeners.
In other musical forms (music to have your dinner by, Telemann, lounge
music, ambient, scallywags employed to amuse the medieval court , up there in
the minstrels gallery, modern club music, wedding party celebration music,
religious music [various cultures] etc etc) 'front' would have less, if
any, relevance.
So, if that's right, stereo is predicated on quite a specialised musical
presentation.
So, then, saying 'stereo is all you need' is a bit like saying 'you don't
need 4 wheel drive' - true, but in circumscribed circumstances.
Dr Peter Lennox
School of Technology
University of Derby, UK
tel: 01332 593155
e: p.len...@derby.ac.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu [mailto:sursound-boun...@music.vt.edu]
On Behalf Of Dave Malham
Sent: 03 April 2012 09:49
To: Surround Sound discussion group
Subject: Re: [Sursound] OT: Spatial music
Hi Robert,
Umm - I was making exactly the opposite point - invented in the
16th century makes it, as far as music is concerned, a very new
concept. On the other hand,when talking about "acoustic _concert_
music", it's almost tautologous that they are frontally presented,
because the whole concept of a musical concert was invented at the
same time, probably as a way of making money (I haven't researched
that, it's just a guess) - it's much more difficult to make money from
an audience who can just walk away without embarrassing themselves -
and if you don't believe that (the fear of) embarrassment is not a
strong driver, just watch an inexperienced western audience at the end
of a Gamelan concert trying to get up the courage to actually leave
the concert _during_ the ending piece :-) . Actually, talking about
Gamelan, that's a case in point - in the West (and probably
increasingly in it's home countries) Gamelan is usually presented
frontally (even we usually do that) but this is _not_ correct
traditionally.
Dave
On 2 April 2012 16:34, Robert Greene <gre...@math.ucla.edu> wrote:
It may be old but it is still all but universal
in acoustic concert music.
I think it is disingenuous to say that it is not.
How many symphony concerts have you been to
recently where the orchestra surrounded the audience.
The other way around, sure.
But I think this is just not true, that music
with the musicians around the audience is common.
Not in the statistical sense of percentage of
concerts where it happens.
Robert
On Mon, 2 Apr 2012, Dave Malham wrote:
Right on - as I've said before, frontal music is largely a development
of
16th century Western civilisation and is not universal, even now.
By the way, be careful about the Gabrielli's in St. Marks - there is at
least some evidence that separate choirs singing antiphonally were _not
_used at St Mark's (see Bryant, D. "The Cori Spezzati of St. Mark's:
Myth
and Reality" in Early Music History, Cambridge 1981, p169).
Dave
On 01/04/2012 10:20, Paul Hodges wrote:
--On 31 March 2012 18:34 -0700 Robert Greene <gre...@math.ucla.edu>
wrote:
Of course music exists that is not in front. But the vast bulk of
concert music is not like that.
Sure; but what proportion of music are we happy to be unable to
reproduce
properly? My organ music (admittedly as much as 20% of my listening)
was a
trivial example - and it's only in combination with other things that
it
becomes spatially interesting, generally. You mentioned Gabrieli and
Berlioz in a slightly dismissive manner; I would add to them people
like
Stockhausen and Earle Brown, a folk group moving among their audience,
a
hall full of schoolchildren bouncing their sounds off each other from
different parts of the hall. Not all within the restricted form of
"concert
music", but music in the real world where we turn our heads and enjoy
our
whole environment.
Paul
--
These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
/*********************************************************************/
/* Dave Malham http://music.york.ac.uk/staff/research/dave-malham/ */
/* Music Research Centre */
/* Department of Music "http://music.york.ac.uk/"; */
/* The University of York Phone 01904 322448 */
/* Heslington Fax 01904 322450 */
/* York YO10 5DD */
/* UK 'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio' */
/* "http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/mustech/3d_audio/"; */
/*********************************************************************/
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These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
Dave Malham
Music Research Centre
Department of Music
The University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK
Phone 01904 322448
Fax 01904 322450
'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'
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