SSMN
Emile Ellberger / Germán Toro-Pérez / Giorgio Zoia / Kaspar Mösinger / Johannes Schütt / Linda Cavaliero
in collaboration with:
• Vincent. Gillioz 3D audio producer & composer
Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation, snf
Abstract
The aim of SSMN is to open new ways of substantial integration of spatial relationships and processes in musical thinking as well as in composition, rehearsal and performance practice. For this purpose SSMN will define a typology of spatial movements and design a library of symbols to represent them, able to be used in creative processes.
In order to validate its impact in the practice, an open source software tool that integrates this library within a common western musical notation context will be developed, allowing editing and acoustic feedback through a rendering engine. Composers will be able to use and edit symbols describing spatialization in a notation program and immediately hear the results. Performers will have full information of spatialization in the score and be able to hear the results from the beginning of the learning process. Since SSMN aims to meet the demands of the practice, composers and performers will be involved in the project, writing and performing pieces using the SSMN tools. Their experience will be the basis for the assessment of the project.
The basic research questions related to SSMN can be summarized as follows:
- What could be the real impact (positive / negative) of a symbolic music notation of spatialization in composition, performance and analysis?
- Is there a set of basic types of spatial movement?
- What are the difficulties and the limits of representation of spatial movements and virtual spatial qualities in a, 2-dimensional graphic manner, and what kind of representation is more suitable?
SSMN argues that a deeper understanding of the nature and kinds of spatial movement would help composers to integrate spatialization into musical thinking in a substantial way especially if they have a proper tool, and that an adequate notation of spatial information may have a positive impact in the way performers prepare for and act in a musical situation where spatialization plays an important role. If evidence of performance remains in notated form, it can become a subject of study and tradition. This may therefore influence also the sound diffusion practice, the interpretation research and the analysis of electroacoustic music.
The SSMN software tools may become also a model for successful interoperability between applications with different functions such as symbolic representation, music notation and audio rendering. In order to focus on spatialization, SSMN will concentrate on instrumental sound notated using CWMN and being spatialized by means of electroacoustics. This can be extended to other user cases in a further stage of research.
Keywords
Notation of spatialization, Symbolic music representation, Graphic score editing, Spatiomorphology, Audio rendering of musical scores, Live electronics composition.