from notation to music

The internet is a wonderful thing:

Too often we talk about the score when we mean the music. 

The conductor's work

Minimal music

But a totally different kind of minimal:

(Thanks to EnsembleXY for introducing me to this piece)

Graphic Score

This set displays a variety of approaches to graphic representation of sound. This group effort results in a full 'score' for a fairly extensive composition:

Threnody - Penderecki

An animated score of a seminal work of the 20th century:

Monteverdi

Lamento della ninfa from the 8th book of madrigals (performed by La Venexiana):

The text with English translation.

implicit knowledge of pentatonic scale

Psychoacoustics in the recording studio

Producer Bruce Swedien considers understanding the nature of sound and hearing as an essential element in developing your studio skills:

Determining the abilities and limitations of human hearing is invaluable to us involved in the production of music recordings. Any resource that produces sound for the purpose of human listening should take into account what the listener’s ears are going to do with that sound, if we are going to take that resource to its utmost potential.

He also mentions the importance of listening - especially to live instruments - and the acoustic environment. Read the full article.

Why so loud?

Perhaps a truism of composition is that most (all?) effects can be overused. Including compression:

Hearing explained

A good resource covering the basics acoustics and psychoacoustics, as well as the ear, the auditory brain, and to hearing loss and current research.

Unwanted Sounds

Christian Marclay:

And on a much lighter note:

Maryanne Amacher

Interesting talk about her sound art and how technology and listening shaped her work:

R. Murray Schaffer talks about soundscape

R. Murray Schafer - WFAE2011 from sonicstudies on Vimeo.

Analysing electroacoustic music

New sounds, new techniques, new approaches to understanding(?):

• Several Analysis articles from eContact.
• The orema project is a growing resource with analysis examples, discussion of approaches, and other useful resources.
• Rajmil Fischman's graphic score for Point-virgule.
• graphic score of Schaeffer's Etude aux Objects. 
• And a temporal analysis of another Schaeffer study. 

Soundscape Composition

Listen:


Organised Sound 7:1 is an issue dedicated to soundscape composition with papers by some prominent practitioners including Hilegard Westerkamp and Barry Truax. 
Issue 14:1, on the topic of sound art, also has good, relevant articles. While issue 16:3 (listening) is also highly relevant.
Andra McCartney on Soundscape composition and electroacoustic music. 

Phenomenology of Sound

An introduction to Schaeffer's idea of the sound object, and a more detailed article explaining the idea of phenomenology in general and Schaeffer's development of it to sound.  

Denis Smalley built on scheffer's idea to talk about the spectromorphology of sound. Here is an overview with list of additional sources.

Francis Dhomont's Acousmatic update gives his view as a composer influenced by Schaeffer and spectromorphology.