Camilleri, Lelio, ‘Shaping Sounds, Shaping Spaces’, Popular Music, 29.2 (2010), 199-211

A relatively new article referenced in pop and rock music literature, Camilleri portrays how ‘sonic space’ can only be fully explored through the techniques of acousmatic music. With diagrams and references of popular music, this article provides an understandable explanation of ‘sonic space’ being a multidimensional world comprising the interaction of, what Camilleri terms, ‘localised space’, spectral space’, and ‘ morphological space’. The distinction between time-dependent and time-independent ‘sonic space’, a pertinent perspective within the scope of this bibliography’s topic, is made when Camilleri explains that ‘localised space’ focuses on a sound’s situation and movement; ‘spectral space’ focuses on timbre, providing a sense of density and volume to the sound; ‘morphological space’ focuses on the unfolding of a sound shape over time. However, by restricting his style of musical references to the genres of rock in this article, [1] the reader is forced to ask questions about his point that, in order to explore ‘sonic space’ fully, an original awareness of recorded space’s capabilities is required. Of course, as Camilleri himself states (see comments below), restricting his style of musical references to genres of rock takes place only in this article and for the purposes of the points expressed in this article. In his book  Il Peso del Suono (The weight of sound), Camilleri extends his description of sonic space to acousmatic music in general (in his words ‘all the music which uses the recorded format’).

 

[1] As Camilleri acknowledges, this is restricted to rock of the 1960s and 1970s, and progressive rock.

One thought on “Camilleri, Lelio, ‘Shaping Sounds, Shaping Spaces’, Popular Music, 29.2 (2010), 199-211

  1. […] I stressed that the notion of sonic space was restricted to the progressive rock music, but just for this article.On the contrary, my definition of sonic space is mainly related to acousmatic music as stated in my book (in Italian) Il Peso del Suono (The weight of sound) […] the notion of sonic space can be, with slightly different parametric descriptions, applied to all the music which uses the recorded format.

    Best regards,
    Lelio Camilleri

    Like

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