Learn more about the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) virtual soundwalks program with these resources and references. Originally compiled for MSAE’s Virtual Soundwalks 2020 videos made for the Chicago Park District’s ”Your Night Out At Home“ series, the links below are categorized into seven fields of audio technology and sound-based practices.
Acoustic Ecology
The Handbook for Acoustic Ecology is a primary reference for soundscape studies. Published in 1978, edited by Barry Truax when he was with the World Soundscape Project, led by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University. Schafer’s The Tuning of the World, published 1977, brought global attention the WSP’s work and inspired deeper study into all aspects of the acoustic environment to this day.
Contact Barry Truax (truax@sfu.ca) to request a guest password to the complete WSP Database at Simon Fraser University.
Acoustic Communication, 2nd Edition by Barry Truax, published in 2000, is a highly recommended book that advances the World Soundscape Project’s research into the contemporary digital era. On this foundation it addresses the impact of electroacoustic technology upon listening and community, concluding how technologies that impact creative practices and market for production and consumption by audiences for music, new forms of sound-based art, and design of acoustic space. The first edition of Acoustic Communication is available as a free download [PDF] on Monoskop.
Deep Listening
Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice by Pauline Oliveros.
Sonic Meditations by Pauline Oliveros. Smith Publications, 1971.
Ecoacoustics
Field Recording
Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World, Revised Edition by Bernie Krause. Yale University Press, 2016. Sound examples at https://yalebooks.com/wildsoundscapes
In the Field: The Art of Field Recording, anthology edited by Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle. Uniformbooks, 2013.
Film Sound
Sound Theory/Sound Practice ed. by Rick Altman.
Audio-Vision: Sound On Screen by Michel Chion (1994 Columbia University Press, ISBN:0231078994 (pbk) 239 pages). Chion is a musique concrète composer, filmmaker, and French cinema scholar leading study of the soundtrack. He names and explains essential and revealing concepts that operating in relationships between sound and the moving image. Chion’s book begins to fulfill Rick Altman’s proposal for a new terminology of film sound, expanding the limitations of a music-based vocabulary. Chion studied with Pierre Schaeffer (1910 — 1995). Award-winning sound designer Walter Murch wrote its foreword. Monoskop archived copy [PDF].
Microphones
Microphone Choice and ”Coloring” of Recorded Sounds from the Songs of Insects site.
Shure’s page on Pickup Patterns and their Microphone Techniques for Recording [PDF] booklet discussing mics, mic placement, and recording techniques.
Singing Insects Monitoring Program
‘Into the Breaks’ blog of Norman W. Long
Sagawau Environmental Learning Center
SIMP: Singing Insects Monitoring Program
Sound composition
On Sonic Art book by Trevor Wishart (PDF version, also available.)
Audible Design : A Plain and Easy Introduction to Sound Composition book by Trevor Wishart.
“Soundscape Composition” is a genre of electroacoustic music defined by Barry Truax as…
“…as pioneered by the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University, [soundscape composition] has become a relatively well-defined genre, combining the artistic with the social, and often characterized as being intimately located to place. Although that may be true in many instances, it can also be understood as a range of approaches within an even broader concept, namely “context-based composition.”
Soundwalking
“A soundwalk is any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment. It is exposing our ears to every sound around us no matter where we are….” (from “Soundwalking” the 1974 essay by Hildegard Westerkamp, republished in 2001).
For anyone interested in field recording and located sound collecting, soundwalking is a method that facilitates the recordist’s understanding of the context, as listener, and the impact of their presence in the environment. This ecological and social awareness is especially important before walking in with microphones and recording devices.
“How do Soundwalks Engage Urban Communities in Soundscape Awareness” paper by Amanda Gutierrez, Eric Leonardson, and Norman W. Long
“Washington Park Sun Ra Sound Walks:An audio palimpsest of Washington Park“ situated audio by Norman W. Long
“Listening to Two Neighborhoods” 2018 article by Elizabeth Burke-Dain
“What is a soundwalk?” video by the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE)
A Sound Walk Is…from Hildegard Westerkamp
MSAE’s Virtual Soundwalks 2020 on YouTube
Soundwalking: Through Time, Space, and Technologies, book edited by Jacek Smolicki, Routledge/Taylor&Francis 2023
More Resources and References
Compiled by Eric Leonardson, this comprehensive list of online introductory references and resources, “Acoustically Fascinating and Often Free: The World of Acoustic Ecology, Field Recording, Soundscape, & Soundwalking” (PDF), helps Interpreters and Scientists Working On Our Parks (iSWOOP), students, and teachers. We include here the ever-expanding World Forum for Acoustic Ecology online library.
