Risset's Rhythm illusion

An analogy of the endless glissando is an ever increasing (or decreasing) tempo. The method is explained here. Dan Stowell  created a version with supercollider.

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.

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.

The Science of Music

four programs from BBC radio4 with Robert Winston and guests.

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:

Psychoacoustic & mixing

Some examples of common mixing practices and their psychoacoustic origins. And this article discusses methods for evaluating sound quality for human purposes. 

R. Murray Schaffer talks about soundscape

R. Murray Schafer - WFAE2011 from sonicstudies on Vimeo.

Genre and Style

Well crafted fun 

with useful compositional lessons.

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. 

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.

Better Writing

Some useful resources about good writing including topics such as planning and organisations, researching, defining topics, and constructing arguments:

• Roediger's Twelve Tips for Authors
• What is academic writing from Dartmouth 
• Advice about writing essays from UToronto.

One of the important skills to develop is the difference between description and analysis.