Sonic Environment Studies
It is time for the music profession as a whole to really understand that there is a sonic environment that has been in operation since the first transmissions from radio began in 1922. It opened the way for what is today a super sophisticated music chain where a huge industry has developed and transmissions are varied (radio, television, performances, recordings and today the internet) and moving lock-stock-and-barrel into the super sophisticated digital transmission mode that allows humans to listen to music from almost every corner of the world with ease and many options. The music profession (musicology, pedagogy and technology) has to make a giant effort to put itself on par with Medicine, Law, Engineering, Broadcasting, Digital Organology and more. Otherwise, the current academic mode that seems to be irrelevant to the music chain where listeners are the super majority and the industry trains then to buy the products that they manufacture and there is no higher trained body to really advise and measure performance that would matter.
Sonic Environment Studies begins where we study the needs of the music chain and the needs of its super majority - listeners, in each defined territory, and try and orientate the school music education curricula to solve this inability to reach into the music chain. The defined territory I am using is Singapore. And remember, this is a proposal and not a report of actual work. That is a long way away, because when this idea was ready more than 20 years ago, it was rejected out right - mostly because it was too new to sets of music educators who were awed by the copious music education literature emanating from Euro-America.
The literature shows that music, as a profession, took technology seriously in the heyday of radio. [QUOTE]
However, contention among the music disciplines (musicology, education, technology) became evident through splintering of these disciplines. Technology (with its own brand of creativity) redefined itself, within the orbit of industry, and not academia, and dominated the music chain (composers, performers, service providers and listeners). Sadly the music disciplines based in universities and international organisations, became a separate (limited) chain, while generic popular music took flight as an industry on its own.
These dual track-activities operated in what was an undefined sonic environment, which was and still is, an engineering terminology for sound management in cities. Music education, electronic and computer musical and others have also used this term, some successfully, like Murray Schafer and his work on clairaudience (the ability to draw/interpret information from sound). SES will cover the literature in these areas and more.
Sonic Environment Studies provides the needed bridges for much of the current divisions because the music chain has to become part of our work because the listeners, who form the super majority and who sustain this chain, must be skilled in listening. SES does not call for change in transmission content from sonic emitters, but to serve as professional bodies that serve the process of music education in the classrooms inculcating skilled listening. This is a mission on par with similar profession like Engineering, Science, Law, Medicine and more, all of who are engaged with the proper working of their various hinterland.
In the case of music the responsibility is huge because music chains have listeners as a super majority. If the music profession sees music chains in their defined territories as not relevant, while struggling to keep music education, music businesses in classical, indigenous and traditional musical systems alive, as it seems to be the continuous struggle currently, then deep analysis must be done immediately,
but before Music can work on of repertoire for listening but for understanding transmissions with each defined territory, so that through skill in listening, the sonic emissions (much like the problems in climate change) could be balanced out there first, and, through simultaneous cross-territorial study, begins the new process of music appreciation across the world in a trained manner.
The underlying objective of SES is to train the school student population, through their school lifecycle, with listening skills in an applied and measured manner, and in that process change the music emissions in music chains through spending resources. The objective is to sustain the musical character of music chains in their territories, first, and expand music education through collaborative SES applications. With current transmission technology and hints where it is going into the future, now is a good time think of a more balanced system of world sonic environments operations.
Most importantly, SES will improve general music education with a set of cross-disciplinary skills through a laboratory (applied) method. The academic stature of the discipline of music has to be enhanced to the level of other professions like Law, Engineering, Medicine, and more, and the way academic papers are written has to be disciplined. SES will help open that process in the near future after it has run through some application time.
The Sonic Environment as an object of study should unite the divided and vastly combative academic music sector into an unified action team for the sole purpose of creating balanced sonic emissions that could correct pitch and other elemental migration, according to the needs of defined territories, without taking away any personal choice or freedoms. SES see two important and significant hurdles that have to be bridged: 1. Listeners are the super majority of any Music chain and SES wants to provide real listening skills to them by gradual skill development through the school cycle; 2. Music Curricula must not be seen as moving in a pendular motion but in a swing circle of cycles. See the comparative graphic below:
THE CIRCULAR MUSIC CURRICULUM
1. DEFINITION OF THE SONIC ENVIRONMENT:
The Sonic Environment is a mass of musical systems that create music products based on variations in their musical elements (Pitch, Rhythm, Timbre, Form and Aesthetics). Audioscapes are the final products that are emitted from sonic emitters (Radio, Television, Recordings, Performances and the Internet) within each defined territory (continent, country, state, city, county, town, principality, village, home, etc.). Audio-scapes can be identified through measurable sonic orders and their in-loading or on-loading trajectories. In-loading means the musical elements are reacting to each other in ways that define that musical culture. On-loading means that one or more elements from other sonic orders are helping to define and propel the music forward".
Here is a graphical depiction of the musical behaviour of the Singapore Sonic Environment (non-quantised):
2. SONIC ORDERS LISTENING MODE INDEX (SOLMI)
In order to develop a quantised sonic environment a spread sheet is needed with the variables and indicators. Step 1 is to establish the fundamental similarities in the make up of music in general. Such a set of indicators prevail in all musical systems, similar in tag only, but fundamentally different in the elements - especially the element of pitch. (Refer to the Common Musical Elements below).
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From these elements we derive the collective term sonic orders that help us build the core evaluation units.
"Sonic Orders are the rules, stated or implied which govern the relationships among pitch hierarchies and intervals, musical forms, rhythmic rules and modes, timbral qualities and associations, aesthetics (cultural norms manifested in concepts like dynamics, embellishments, expressions, nuances and other identity agents) which make any genre of music identifiable as an individualised intonation".
The basic spreadsheet is called SOLMI (Sonic Orders Listening Mode Index) for use as a pedagogical tool that can help understand the content in any pieces of music on the basis of its elements. (Refer to the chart below):
This chart is customised for Singapore. Likewise, if it is used in other defined territories, it has to be customised. There are set of procedures for such a customisation. This will be discuss with such territories that would like SES.
SOLMI is used for the following: 1. Classroom Listening and Analysis followed by comparative findings through relevant projects; 2. SES Course- Listening Tests; 3. Tabulating emissions from Sonic Emitters (Radio, Television, Recordings and Performances). If a number of SES runs in different defined territories, then a work sonic environment index may be possible - much like other comparative indexes.
The study of emissions for the purpose of circular curricula planning could have something like the following charts reflecting in-dept research into a number of musical as well as non-musical sectors that are relevant to curricula models:Construct Model (targets to achieve), Emission Model (Actual emission tests) and Functional Model (targets to achieve in a curricula cycle. (See the three tabulations below in relation to a PhD thesis study antis subject).
Circula Curricula is important to achieving long term goals. In this case, the transformation in listener skills that may alter the health and wealth of music chains in defined territories.
The sonic environment is a mass of classifiable and measurable sonic emissions also known as audio-scapes: Western (Tertian/Modal/Just) Indian (Carnatic Melas/Hindustani Raga-Tala); Arabic Maquam, Chinese Modal Pentatonic; Indonesian Pelog/Slendro and more. Like all emissions there is a trajectory along which music (as sound) travels and where analysis can be done in the service of music audition using a method based on sonic orders from sonic environment studies: in-loading and on-loading trajectories that audio-scapes take. The statistical procedure lies in quantifying music listening which as we know from the literature is difficult and always questionable. At the same time, if we shy away from such quantification that would be shirking a professional responsibility. That is essentially what this study of the sonic environment wants to help solve.
The underlying logins for this study is that we have to create something that applies to all musical systems and not the dominant one that we tern as "western music". We have to accept that western music is just one of the other huge plethora of musical systems in the world that ar fundamentally different from Western music and also among all the other systems too. And if we put these systems together Western Music c will for only a small part of world musical systems.
possible through two measures: SOLMI (Sonic Orders Listening Mode Index), which tests listening equity to music across musical systems. An adapted version called MESI (Music Emissions Sustainability Index) is a comparative index of world sonic environments. The latter facilitates comparative studies by linking different classrooms in joint sonic environment studies. These statistics work in sync to facilitate curricula that has two inter-locking components - Timeline Music Annotation Library/Laboratory-Pedagogy TMAL-P, and could be useful for timeline music curricula development, arts engagement and development and more.
) through sonic emitters (radio, television, recordings, performances and relevant internet modes). These emissions occur within defined territories (villages, towns, cities, states, nations, continents and the world at large) which this study provides a measurable terminology - audio-scapes e.g. These emissions occur through The audio-scapes depend on character, content and behaviour of the sonic orders that are the operational elements that shape and drive any audio-scape. To put it plainly, sonic orders are the common music elements of music across audio-scapes (pitch, rhythm, form, timbre and aesthetics). They are common as far as identification generalities but differ fundamentally in way they interact as elements to give that individual character to the musical systems of the world (Western Tempered, Chinese Modal, Indonesian Pelog-Slendro, Indian Raga-Tala, and an immense number of other distinct musical systems around the world.
There is an in-built flexibility in sonic orders when used in terms of the individual listening experience. Music Listening is a skill much like learning to plan a musical instrument - but much harder. Pop music is generally a format that is considered easy to listen to and that is because the sound timeline is dominated by sounded text (song) and the accompaniment including interludes keeps to the simple chord movements that has become a default for what is considered a successful much industry. Sonic environment measures contain in a major quantities pop music. Much analysis is possible cross-disciplines to show much about content in the sonic environment.
Musicology (which has branched out into numerous sub-variants) studies music in academic terms with any need to place it in the context of the listener. That is fine because it relates to professionals in the wide discipline. However, when music curricula grows from sources like that without the issue of relevance to defined territories, then major thought has to go into curricula development that is based on relevance and measurement.
It is the growing trend that was un-studied and thus untapped by music education and musicology practice this far. All these different satellites in this complex phenomenon called music, have to be merged to serve flexibly differences that need to be maintained and enhanced but with capability for universal understanding. What prospers is how music chains and the business of music advances with some new major guidelines coming and studies on sonic environment emissions. The creation of timeline music curricula with timeline-based sound studies over the school years are needed to see gradually balancing out of emissions based on informed understanding (followed by the ability to appreciate) cross-musical languages. Unfortunately, this may prove difficult. We live in difficult times. listeners who form the super majority of any Music Chain (composers, performers, serve providers and listeners). Such a preliminary tool exists: SOLMI (Sonic Orders Listening Mode Index) and MESI (Music Emissions Sustainability Index). SOLMI is for music listeners and can be used today to revolutionise classroom music education. MESI is when defined territories form links and begin comparing their sonic emissions studies according to a similar methodology.
the scope of the individual preferences) which can support various needs of society (education, entertainment, the music chain composers, performers, service providers and performances) and a way to apply to important define the health and wealth of the Music Chain (composers, performers, performances, and recordings). Audio-scape emissions contain measurable sonic orders (the common music elements:pitch, rhythm, form, timbre and aesthetics), common by classification but fundamentally different in many ways when it comes to identifying musical systems: e.g. Western Tertian (with many sub-variants). Indonesian Pelog-Slendro, Chinese Modal Pentatonic, Indian Raga-Tala and many more around the world. Audio-scapes are all related to defined territories and evolve on two trajectories in emissions from sonic emitters:1. on-loading (where the one/or more elements emit, by riding on the power of one or two other systems, usually in a selective way using some of the foreign elements);2. in-loading (where musical elements work within their own musical system), which is easier to understand, but it also establishes the needs for more knowledge spread into all the relevant defined territories.
These terminologies attempt to provide skilled ways for listeners to music emissions - a skill that all defined residents in all territories need, to ensure their music chains are viable and sustainable without regulation, laws that exclude or abolish emitters and emissions.
Sonic Orders provide a method and a route to make music analysis easy for all. It is skill development for all, but in a tired manner: music educators and other professionals in the music industry need professional education, while classroom music education, has a curricula based on Timeline Music Annotation skill-development which can grow in a creative and applied manner through the 12 or so years of a school education cycle.
serve various needs of cultural policy, music policy, national identity indicators, issues in sustainability and the health and wealth of any music chain.
This study was aimed at assisting music education to create test and update music curricula through macro and micro measures, to keep it relevant to each defined territory without resorting to edict, bans, and under-study of the complex musical cultures tha are usually found in defined territories. Such musical cultures are relevant to the music chain, which has sadly become dichotomised between popular (usually Western and abridged forms) and every things else.
Sonic Environment Studies covers the following topics within a graded one semester course:
1. The basic literature and current tools that are used for semi-similar objectives - to preserve and enhance the traditional and indigenous musical cultures;
2. The sonic orders approach to music listening and the tools that are used: SOLMI (Sonic Orders Listening Mode Index) and MESI (Music Emissions Sustainability Index).
3. The laboratory technology TMAL-P (Timeline Music Annotation Library/Laboratory-Pedagogy), a first of its kind as a reformed digital class-room that has the following features:
a. An Open Source software called Audio Timeliner that enables teaching and learning to be done directly at the sound timeline
Sonic Orders are the common music elements (Pitch, Rhythm, Form, Timbre and Aesthetics) in the audio-scapes, which are products of musical systems that differ fundamentally from each other, despite the common elements. The world of music has only focused on the Western system as a product of brand within music chains. The greatest cleavage occurs in the discipline of music education which have the young captive in classroom. The curricula is benched-marked on Western audio-scapes. Thus, wholesale imports of curricula is practiced on the proviso that there will be adoption and adaptation.
Like climate change, music too has to look at the un-protected erosion of the sonic orders of pristine musical cultures in defined territories.
of a robust and productive music industry outside the Western orbit is not really possible, except if some of the elements from local sonic orders use the on-loading trajectory (riding on a Western musical base). It is the ability to create that in-loading trajectory in music that will be the first base we have to reach, meaning, when music chains begin to earn from products of the latter trajectory. It is a tough job to achieve and the combined forces of the music industry professionals are required to achieve this in a planned and methodic manner over many curricula timescales.
Sonic Environment Studies (Refer to Blog page) seeks to develop new generations of music listeners who would seek a right balance between their musical systems and emissions in their sonic environments without putting barriers to the free flow of audio scapes around the world.
The first stage of this hard job is recommended to also read the objectives and methods of the Sonic Environment Studies and the TMAL-P configuration. develop a credible way to prevent the erosion of traditional and indigenous musical cultures, incorporating them within their local Music Chains (Composers, Performers, Services and Listeners). Listeners form the absolute majority in any music chain and music education has to become one of music listen skill- training.
Sonic environment studies (the music course) concentrates on the listeners, the super-majority in any music chain. The other parts of the music chain have their own professional assessment and quality controls, and relevance to business analysis.
Sonic environment emissions should have a major role in music education services, designing music technology that could enhance and protect talents and artefacts, as well as musicology, to ensure that pedagogy includes ways to understand audio-scapes that are relevant to the us in defined territories. It is for this purpose that TMAL-P (Timeline Music Annotation Lib/Lab-Pedagogy) was created to enhance sonic environment studies. It is a fully protected digital platform. The end goal of this approach is to ensure that Listeners who form the super majority of any music chain, in any defined territory, are skilled to make good purchasing choices so that relevance is achieved, one that gives identity to sonic environments around the world.
the variety and types of audio-scapes within defined territories and the systematic timescale analysis of the content and behaviours in music chains could be understood through two measures: SOLMI (Sonic Orders Listening Mode Index) and MESI (Music Emissions Sustainability Index). These measures are based on the same fundamentals but with different applications: SOLMI for music education training and MESI for comparative studies of sonic environment emissions. Together, they have direct relevance to defined territories in creating balance within each listening skills and deeper understanding of sound-scapes among these defined territories. This type of statistical information would help music education curricula stay relevant to world musical cultures, if we move from adopting and adapting music teaching methods to applying measured timescale data to curricula.
Musicology (is all its forms) have contributed immensely to the knowledge pool of some of the pristine traditional and indigenous musical systems that are struggling to survive in the various music chains. What is normally (and casually) referred to as main-stream music - a default term for the dominance of the Western Tertian musical system in the world today cannot be banned nor ignored. If traditional and indigenous musics are to survive first, before being part of sonic environments, the work must be done by experts within each defined territories, not in academic terms according to current formats of lectures, publications and field or bool-based research. That is too easy. The copious information "about" things, must be appended and explained directly at the sound timeline.
Singapore is used for illustrations in this current and initial introduction on the sonic environment. Much of the early ideas and research information lie in my Masters and PhD theses, where I made the case for integrated music education so that listening and understanding the sound-timeline of any music, would become the focus to address erosion of the non-western musical assets.
However, some decades ago, this idea, and the proposals that went with them did not go down well with the majority, mainly because academia is protective of the default that grew earlier in the music disciplines. Music at the professional academic level, never felt they were part of the music industry - the crux of the issue and the problem. The copious publishing that has filled academic libraries was a separate, almost sacrosanct and privileged entity that the music industry may not comprehend. Thus, I went on a spree of reading, studying and conceptualising the sonic environment as a place to study, enjoy, and participate in its myriad human-made musical arts, and trying to understand why so many want to be heard, understood and fighting to for a place in their own respective sonic environments, before even being part of world emissions.
The doctoral thesis I wrote on the sonic environment as a measurable entity, was done at the University of Western Australia. In its assessment, the head of the examine board, Sir Anthony E Kemp, the legendary author of the all time hot book Musical Temperament said:
Enclose that document.
I was lucky to have a dual career (music and technology) within one university in Singapore where there was money to stock the library with the books and audio assets for such a study. Unfortunately, there was not academic (degree based) then, to credit the study not to enhance it with others. My life experience in music education has been a self-education process. And I see much of that as an issue of relevance to the music chain. In this specific area of the sonic environment, there has been much work even before I ventured into it. I will write another article as a follow-up. My work was (and still is) a long drawn out (meaning slow) development, particularly in the difficult timeline music annotation pedagogy, and the technology that I foresee for it, which is not really there as yet. But then, I have noticed in technology itself, that its educational use is not tempered/dovetailed with pedagogy. Where is was/is claimed, it is mechanical technology and not the application technology - specifically, where music education could use the timeline management of sound for the purposes of education. There was this gap to bridge. I took it. That long road is still long! But, by merging of available technology with clear ideas of application, is shedding light on the way forward. The Sonic Environment can be quantised for purposes of music analysis. Simply understood, the listener in the music chain just wants to understand the music. There are only two ways of doing this and to shows in the popular music industry: music written for simple understand or educating the listener (as K-Pop) has shown, to understand and fall for the product with money!
I have pursued the line of action that we can write the copious text in books and journals about music education (pedagogy, musicolog etc.) now, directly to the sound timeline, and have server technology crafted to incorporate the academic aspects. Unfortunately, the bulk of the music community in academic do wonky when technology is talked about!
Over the last few decades I have been using the Sonic Orders Listening Mode Index (SOLMI) as a way of engaging students at the sound timeline.
Music curricula planning and implementation on a timescale scale plan (not done before) could follow once skill in timeline descriptions are mastered. The reason for this stress on timeline is to rectify imbalances in emissions of audio-scapes into the sonic environment of defined territories. This is caused by imbalances in the music chain - a place where the music professionals must look closely now. Comparative work on world sonic environments can be done (at a much later date) using Music Emissions Sustainability Index (MESI) which is a variant of SOLMI.
I will explain these two main issues in this blog and then describe the current development - a major fully online facility to centralise training, implementation digital lab method and monitoring of sonic environments studies TMAL-P (Timeline Music Annotation Library/Laboratory-Pedagogy). The Covid lockdowns gave me a chance to apply such digital diligence with PhD and Masters students on this technology and music method. But it has yet to be the foci for theses. The explanation of TMAL-P will be in another blog article.
My fundamental work through my Masters and Doctorate theses, and my subsequent work in various institutions in Singapore, the Straits of Malacca and Mekong regions (which is still ongoing) will be reflected in this blog in separate trajectories: Sonic Environment Studies here, and Tremolo Strings in a separate private Facebook chapter. Both of these studies involved group music instruction in vastly different ways, but still dealing with a heuristic approach to active sound timeline based activity.
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The sonic environment poses very deep issues and challenges to our listening skills - the main skill that is needed by all and which underpins the survival of the huge majority of fundamentally differentiated musical systems - all fundamentally different from what we generally know as Western music. However, that term Western Music is also as divisive in the West and around the world. It is too convenient to label musical systems unless there is listening skill in the music chain (performers, creators, educators and listeners) - listeners being the super majority.
Despite the reach of technology today, there is still a perineal worry that traditional and indigenous musical systems will disappear, or conveniently change, as we dress-up the all-powering vehicle of Western music. An integrated for of music education must be explored where teaching and learning has to be based on sound; text and all collateral can be moved to that sound timeline so that listening can be empowered with information that grows at the sound timeline.
This blog will bring together relevant projects and publications on how this problem is being addressed in small quarters - some with varying degrees of success and others in a sustainable mode of enthusiasm.
