The soundscape composition is the journey that circumscribes the relationship, the conversation between composer and sound sources. (Hildegard Westerkamp)

Environmental sounds hold an unusual place in our imaginations. On the one hand, hey make up the often unnoticed ambiences of our daily lives: they are so much with us and surrounding us that it takes a special effort to bring them into the foreground, and pay attention to them. On the other hand, environmental sounds form a powerful conduit to memory. Hearing a particular sound or ambience can launch a chain of related memories, whether experienced consciously or working subconsciously, that reconnects us with particular places and times in our lives. It is precisely these confluences of memory, time and place that interest those who compose with soundscapes.

The soundscape composition, as pioneered at Simon Fraser University since the early 1970s, has evolved rapidly to explore a full range of approaches from the ‘found sound’ representation of acoustic environments through to the incorporation of highly abstracted sonic transformations. The structural approaches similarly range from being analogues of real-world experience, such as listening from a fixed spatial perspective or moving through a connected series of acoustic spaces, to those that mirror both nonlinear mental experiences of memory recall, dreams, and free association, as well as artificial sonic constructs made familiar and possible by modern ‘schizophonic’ audio techniques of sonic layering and embedding. The octophonic surround-sound playback format as used in contemporary soundscape presentations has achieved a remarkable sense of immersion in a recreated or imaginary sonic environment. Specific works realised at SFU are analysed that illustrate each of these approaches.

In discussing different sound environments - sound in the field of art as well as sound in the context of our daily sonic environment - this article makes reference to semiotic theories.

Sound without source. Electroacoustic media shape our perceptive realities. There are multiple tools available to record and reproduce sound, but is it possible to handle the fleeting nature of sound, the escape of sound? Certainly there are tools to manipulate sound, to create new soundscapes in this way. We can generate virtual sound-projecting soundscapes via speakers, via headphones in a new context - but what are we listening to?

Every sound evokes images. The concept of ‘musique acousmatique’, according to François Bayle, amplifies Pierre Schaeffer's notion of the ‘objet sonore’. ‘Musique acousmatique’ refers to sound projection, and thus to our imagination while concentrating on listening. In listening to acousmatic music, we can find three tonal levels, and this tripartite concept of listening refers to the tripartite semiotic concept introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Finally, sound affects us emotionally. In contradiction to the term ‘objet sonore’, the term ‘sound event’ coined by R. Murray Schafer stresses the necessity to analyse sound in its context. It is the sonic environment which determines the meaning of the ‘sound event’. Thus, from my point of view, the concept of soundscape can be compared with Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotic theory about the arbitrary meaning of signs. Signs are determined by their systems.

Semiotic concepts offer an interesting approach to sound perception. Let's listen to soundscapes before sound escapes.

Despite roots in acoustic ecology and soundscape studies, the practice and study of soundscape composition is often grouped with, or has grown out of the acousmatic music tradition. This can be observed in the positioning of soundscape compositions juxtaposed with acousmatic music compositions in concert programmes, CD compilations and university syllabuses. Not only does this positioning inform how soundscape composition is listened to, but also how it is produced, sonically and philosophically. If the making and presenting of representations of environmental sound is of fundamental concern to the soundscape artist, then it must be addressed. As this methodological issue is outside of previous musical concerns, to this degree, we must look to other disciplines that are primarily engaged with the making of representation, and that have thoroughly questioned what it is to make and present representations in the world today. One such discipline is ethnography. After briefly charting the genesis of soundscape composition and its underlying principles and motivations, the rest of the paper will present and develop one perspective, that of considering soundscape composition as ethnography.

Composing has been slighted at all levels of education. Following an analysis of the history and failure of compositional pedagogy for developing musicianship, a new rationale for such pedagogy is presented. This pedagogy is argued to be essential for preparing contemporary musicians and audiences to understand most properly what music ‘is’ and ‘is good for’, and for promoting ever-new conceptions of ‘music’ and of its evolving values. In addition to advancing general musicianship in relation to the standard repertory, the special contribution of pedagogy rooted in composing organised sound pieces is outlined in relation to a new praxial philosophy of music that is challenging the limited and limiting theory of music and its value provided by traditional aesthetic theory. The latter is seen to be a major impediment to new compositional modes that expand musical frontiers, while the praxial theory supports, as well as gains support from, various new attempts to organise sound for expressive and other purposes.

Hildegard Westerkamp's Kits Beach Soundwalk challenges us as listeners to re-evaluate our acoustic soundscape. Juxtaposing the sounds of barnacles with the noise of the city, Westerkamp reveals an unbalanced world in which individual voices are silenced. Kits Beach Soundwalk allows Westerkamp to help rectify that imbalance. It provides her with the opportunity to create a place in which a listener can take pleasure in simply being. She reveals the metaphors, the hidden entrances, within sounds that take us into other spaces. A listener travels with Westerkamp into worlds of tiny sounds and tiny voices, dreams, and places of fantasy and the imagination. She challenges us as listeners to re-establish our place within the world around us. By designing the piece to reach the audience on a number of levels - intellectual, physiological, metaphorical - Westerkamp effectively promotes the changing of listening habits; the distancing of individuals from oppressive sonic environments; and the regaining of an individual's inner voice.

This paper discusses listener responses to a contemporary soundscape composition based on the sound of a cricket. Soundscape composers make works based on everyday sounds and sound environments, usually recorded by themselves (Truax 1984, 1996). While the composer of this piece aims to bring listeners closer to the sounds around them by creating audio pieces based on these sounds (Westerkamp 1988), some listeners feel fear and anxiety rather than the heightened closeness and understanding that she wishes listeners to experience. I compare the sound structure of Cricket Voice with close listening to excerpts of the film soundtrack of Ridley Scott's Alien as well as a short excerpt from the soundtrack of the X Files, discussing how science fiction film and television soundtracks index sonic intimacy with different intent from that of Westerkamp, and raising questions about how such approaches to intimacy might simultaneously reflect and intensify urban anxieties about the sounds of ‘alien’ species that are associated with wilderness environments.

1. EXPLORING THE CONNECTION

The term soundscape composition did not exist when I started composing with environmental sounds in the mid-1970s. Through a variety of fortunate circumstances and because of what the 1970s were in Vancouver and Canada - artistically inspiring and moneys were available for adventurous and culturally, socially, politically progressive projects - I had discovered that environmental sounds were the perfect compositional ‘language’ for me. I had learnt much while working with the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University, about listening, about the properties of sound, about noise, the issues we face regarding the quality of the sound environment and much more. This in combination with learning to record and to work with analog technology in the sonic studio allowed me to speak with sound in a way I found irresistible. In addition, the start-up of Vancouver Co-operative Radio gave us the - at that time rare - opportunity to broadcast our work. It was a place where cultural exploration and political activism could meet. It was from within this exciting context of ecological concern for the soundscape and the availability of an alternate media outlet that my compositional work - now often called soundscape composition - emerged. And it came as a surprise to me, as I had never thought of composing nor of broadcasting as a professional choice in my life.

Zagreb Everywhere (2001), a video portrayal of the city of Zagreb, Croatia, is the result of an international collaboration between writer Gordana Crnković (Croatia), video artist Victor Ingrassia (US), and composer David Hahn (US), who collected sounds from Zagreb and together with some of his own music created the soundscape for the piece. Opposing stereotypes about the ‘barbaric Balkans’ often reinforced by Western media during the recent war in that region, Zagreb Everywhere provides a unique view of Zagreb and its inimitable features, while at the same time showing the experiences of that city and its people as having a broad human appeal and resonance. The piece exists in two formats: (i) a stand-alone video work, and (ii) a multimedia performance piece with projected visual images, sound, and live narration. After a brief recounting of the genesis of the idea for Zagreb Everywhere and the main aesthetic aspects of the project, this paper discusses the methods in which the sounds were collected in the field and compiled, how these sounds were edited in the studio, and how the entire piece was assembled. Zagreb Everywhere premiered in May 2001 at the University of Washington in Seattle.

This article traces the audio production and soundscape composition for a multimedia work for any solo instrument, colour video, and digital sound. There is an account of earlier soundscape recordings of the Brooklyn Bridge. A description of the visual images of Jones Street is followed by a portrayal of the street life and consequent soundscape. There is a report on stereo recording techniques, the sounds that were gathered, and the sounds that were selected as source material. A discussion of philosophical and aesthetic considerations precedes a detailed explanation of the digital processing and composing methods.

Schizophonic soundscapes in Murray Schafer's critical acoustic ecology mean a split between listening and seeing, between space and place, between audience and communicator. His idea of a gap between senses is based on electronic media like radio and telephone, but it gains new actuality in modern (multimedia) times. The new technology and its users have too experimented with the creative inversion of schizophony in sound and vision. Film sound design and film music combine sound in and out of context, composition works with contrapunctual audiovisions; video art and sound art, as in the work of Robert Cahen, combine and mix genres of all kinds and senses. MetaSon #5 Skruv Stockholm is an audiovisual soundwalk, based on soundscape recordings in Sweden in the 1970s and 1990s, combined with associative pictures and designs, each in its own rhythms and times. It consists less of the common meaning both share, being more dependent on the fluidity and dynamic of the relationship between the elements. Sound and image create an intermedium, intermodal space neither of which could project alone. From moment to moment, schizophonic montage and idea invert into a fresh, maybe evocative look at the way we perceive, where the audio flow transforms stable pictures into liquid forms, where image follows sound and is treated like sound.