The Sonic Environment - An Introduction

The Sonic Environment is a "new" musical term which explains how we understand music as a mass of fundamentally differentiated  musical systems as our music listening options within any defined territory.that are fundamentally different from each other, and yet they use the same sonic routes to find listeners - Radio, Television, Recordings, Performances and (recently) the Internet. The term "sonic environment" was used by some musicians before, and those will be covered later, in a separate section when we look at previous work in this area. This blog will explain the Sonic Environment as a measurable entity on issues of relevance that relate to music within defined territories. Singapore is the basic model for studies in the initial articles. But generally the tools and theories could be applied to any defined territory. 

      The Sonic Environment is a mass of audio-scapes (music products associated with the intonational systems and musical elements that describe musical systems and their identifiable musical cultures. These audio-scapes are emitting from sonic emitters (radio, television, recordings, performances and internet sources). Each defined territory (continent, country, state, city, county, town, principality, village, home, etc.) can be identified through measurable sonic orders and their in-loading or on-loading trajectories. 

In this blog we ask questions: 

Do we have a way of understanding this complex interplay of musical systems within each sonic environment?

How does one trajectory dominate another, or how trajectories fuse to form new musical systems, or how trajectories stay independent? 

Can we follow such trajectories and understand them as musical systems through their repertoire? 

Is music listening a skill? And if it is, can we measure such skill in growth or as a consumer's index according to music chain behaviour?

Can we create and develop relevant and graded music curricula based on timescale measures of sonic emitters within any defined territory?

Specifically, this blog will also expand on the following:

1.  TMAL-P (Timeline Music Annotation Library/Laboratory - Pedagogy: A server-based one-stop music laboratory for doing music analysis/explanations that facilitates merging text, voice, graphics, and animations, directly to the sound timeline. 

2. HGMP (Heuristic Group Music Pedagogy): A special method for small group teaching and learning that integrates varying skills and learning speeds. It was and is being applied to TREMOLO STRINGS.

3. Random and Related Reports and Studies on Music Topics of general interest.