Connecting the Objects in Jonty Harrison’s Unsound

Objects
DAVID HIRST
Centre for Creative Arts, La Trobe University, Victoria, 3083, Australia
Email: d.hirst@latrobe.edu.au

The objective of this article is to provide a detailed analysis of Jonty Harrison’s piece Unsound Objects.
An analysis of the whole of Unsound Objects was carried out using a combination of the author’s
cognition-based SIAM framework for the analysis of electroacoustic music, a number of software
programs for signal analysis, representation and annotation, and careful listening. It begins by
analysing the acoustic surface to provide a detailed deconstruction of the first few sections of the work.
The analysis then moves beyond the acoustic surface to look for structures, functions and motion, and
the two halves of the work are compared. Mimetic archetypes, structural archetypes, and operations on
sounds are identified. Functional relations and sonic activity are also summarised. Part of our
discussion notes that the beauty of Harrison’s work is the fact that he is exploring and exploiting both
the mimetic/semantic implications of the sound world he is creating, and simultaneously weaving
musical structures and relations. This analysis of Unsound Objects has used spectral irregularity plots to
assist with the identification and isolation of periods of activity within different sections of the work.
Irregularity may be a useful tool in the analysis of other works.

1 INTRODUCTION

The objective of this article is to provide a detailed analysis of Jonty Harrison’s piece
Unsound Objects. The work exists in a number of forms, including a version on DAT tape
that I was given by the composer many years ago. However the version used in this analysis
appears on the Articles indéfinis CD (Harrison, 1996). The track notes from this CD provide
the background to this version:

Unsound Objects was composed at the composer’s studio and in the Electroacoustic
Music Studios of The University of Birmingham (UK) and was first performed at
the 1995 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC ’95) in Banff (Alberta,
Canada) on September 7, 1995. Unsound Objects was commissioned by the
International Computer Music Association (ICMA).

In a response to a question from John Palmer about the nearly 20 year time span of works
on the Articles indéfinis CD, Harrison sets out his progression from instrumental composer
to acousmatic composer over this period (Palmer, 2002). Earlier tape works, such as Klang,
‘are quite abstract – they concern themselves with a (fairly traditional) musical discourse,
albeit with a rather broader timbral palette than in instrumental music’. Harrison observes
that works from this period are ‘classic Schaefferian musique concrète’ making use of
‘what Schaeffer calls “reduced listening” (where the sound object is defined by its sounding
characteristics and not by reference to its source or cause)’ (Palmer, 2002). Harrison
contrasts these works with acousmatic works produced after his ‘abandonment of “paper”
composition’ around 1994 where ‘there is a much more evident (and much more conscious)
use of recognisable sound for its very recognisability — reference and recognition are now
an active part of my thinking. I call this “expanded listening” …’ (Palmer, 2002). Harrison
points out the dialog between composer and the sounds s/he has recorded:

For me, composition is a partnership between material and composer, each

interrogating and challenging the other to work out the next step in the process of

  1  
 musical creation. In my case at any rate, the “compositional mind” is not something
which imposes abstract “musical” speculation on inert sound material — sound
material is not inert!

When specifically asked about Unsound Objects, Harrison says:

… well I guess the materials I chose to use … were essentially referential and likely
to be recognisable by listeners. As it would therefore be impossible to expect
listeners to be able to exercise “reduced listening” in such a framework I chose
instead to exploit this very recognisability in working on the piece. This is an
implicit challenge to Schaefferian orthodoxy about the definition of the sound object
through reduced listening; it is dangerous and, hence, “unsound”. As for the actual
processes and so on in the studio — well, I guess you could say I followed my nose
(or, rather, my ears): there was no preconceived plan or structure; the material and I
evolved the specifics of the piece as we went along. It was an organic process.

The question for discussion in this current analysis is: How can we gain some insight into
how Harrison ‘followed his ears’ and what relationships between the sound objects, the
listener, and the composer, has Harrison attempted to establish as the piece unfolds?

2 METHOD

Analysis of the whole of Unsound Objects was carried out using a combination of the
author’s cognition-based SIAM framework for the analysis of electroacoustic music, a
number of software programs for signal analysis, representation and annotation, and
concentrated listening. The SIAM framework (Hirst, 2008) stands for Segregation,
Integration, Assimilation and Meaning. It can be briefly summarised as follows:

• Segregation: identification of sound events and the factors responsible for

identification.

• Integration – Horizontal: identify sequential streams and patterns of sonic objects;

determine causal linkages, relationships and possible syntaxes; consider organisation in
time and the horizontal integration of pitch (where appropriate).

• Integration – Vertical: consider vertical integration and segregation as a cause of

timbre and texture variance; consider psychoacoustic dissonance and musical dissonance;
consider emergent properties relating to pitch (horizontal overlap).

• Assimilation and Meaning: consider various types of discourse, e.g. discourse on the
source-cause dominant (semantic) to typological-relational dominant (syntactic) continuum;
consider global organisation in time and any hierarchical relationships; consider
expectation-interruption, arousal and meaning, semiotic relations, etc.

Using the SIAM process as a starting point, the analysis was then free to take on a life of its
own, depending on the direction dictated by the work itself. This adaptive approach seemed
to accord with Harrison’s approach to his compositional technique. The winding analytical
path is documented in the following text.

  2  
3 PERFORMING THE ANALYSIS

3.1 Analysing the acoustic surface

The first part of the SIAM process is segmentation. The work was first examined to see
whether it could be segmented into sections. It was found that the work consists of two
large segments. The first ‘half’ lasts from the beginning until about 6’53”, and the second
‘half’ from 6’55” until the end of the work at 12’59” (duration 6’04”). The work was
segmented further by choosing moments of silence or points of contrasting changes in
texture. We could think of this stage as being akin to identifying phrases in instrumental
music. This next level of segmentation yielded eleven sections in the first ‘half’ and nine
sections in the second ‘half’. The sections are of varying length. The longest being about
1’30” and the shortest about 12 seconds.

The next part of segmentation involves the identification of sound objects. To facilitate
sound object identification, two displays were created in the program Sonic Visualiser
(Cannam et al, 2010) – one above the other. The top display consisted of a spectrogram of
frequency versus time, with the audio signal superimposed, and the bottom display
contained a melodic range spectrogram, used to identify pitch-related elements. I initially
worked with 30 second time segments in order to identify as many sound objects as
possible. Once identified through a combination of listening and viewing the spectrogram,
labels were superimposed over the top spectrogram using words that were either an
onomatopoeic representation of a sound, or an estimation of the source-cause of the sound,
or an educated guess at the technical method of production of the sound, or a combination
of some or all of these methods. The type of representation this yields is shown in figure 1.
The labelling of sound objects was methodically worked through for every 30 second
segment of the piece, from beginning to end. In essence, this became the first pass through
the analysis of the work.

Figure 1. A spectrogram of Unsound Objects with sound objects shown as labels.

It was then decided to construct displays of 60 second time intervals of the work, in order to
create a compromise between examining short-term detail and longer term structures.
Screen shots of these 60 second segments were taken, assembled on to Microsoft
Powerpoint screens, two at a time, and then they were printed out in hard copy. It was also
possible to get a time-stamped listing of the annotation layer, which was then opened in
Microsoft Excel and printed as a listing of all the annotations (see Table 1). The printed

  3  
screens and time-stamped sound object listings became the data to facilitate the next part of
the analysis process.

Table 1. Extract of the time-stamped sound object listings.

A graphic display was also constructed in the program EAnalysis (Couprie, 2012). This
program was employed because of its easy inclusion of graphic symbols, particularly those
that depict a long, sustained sound. A display was constructed that contained three panes.
The bottom pane was a representation of the audio signal for the whole work, the middle
pane was a spectrogram showing one minute segments of the piece, and the top pane
showed a slightly zoomed out version of the spectrogram of about two minute intervals.
They were meant as short, medium and long term views. Graphic symbols representing
sound objects were placed in layers over the top of the spectrograms (see Figure 2). The
audio could be played back in synchronisation with the visual depictions.

  4  
Figure 2. A representation of the first section of Unsound Objects with sound objects
shown as graphic symbols, using the program EAnalysis.

I should say at the outset that the intricate manipulation of pitch is not a feature of Unsound
Objects, and so will not be discussed in any detail. However, the process of transposition of
a sound object, or groups of sound objects, is a characteristic of the work, and will be
highlighted where relevant. Initially I will give a detailed description and analysis of the
surface of the first two sections of Unsound Objects to provide the reader with a feel of the
work at this level. Then I will broaden and generalise more as the analysis proceeds.

3.1.1 Section 1 details

In analysing the surface of an electroacoustic work, segmentation and integration draws

heavily on Gestalt principles, as applied to the auditory realm. Some useful principles,
highlighted by Bregman (1999) are:

• Grouping by proximity in frequency and/or time

• Similarity

• Symmetry

• Continuation

  5  
• Spectral integration relationships, such as harmonicity.

• Common fate of frequency partials

• Separation via the “old plus new” heuristic where new frequency components are
introduced over continuing components, thereby signalling a new sound object has been
added.

Bregman also claims there is a certain hysteresis in the recognition of sound objects in that
the recognition persists for a number of seconds, unless either silence or a sudden change
resets this recognition.

The first part of analysis not only consists of recognition of individual sound objects
through the grouping or integration of frequency partials, but it will also involve the
grouping of sound objects where that process seems relevant or important to the discussion.
Ultimately, we will also look at textural features, such as irregularities, in addition to
isolating the regularities we may find. A spatial analysis will not be attempted.

The beginning of an electrocacoustic work is always an important phase since the grammar
of electroacoustic music is not as firmly established as that of tonal music, for example.
Thus in the beginning of a work like Unsound Objects, the composer creates the embryo of
a sound world, so that some sort of relationship between the sound objects, the composer,
and the listener can begin to be established and the embryo develops into a more complex
being as the work unfolds. Unsound Objects begins with two seconds of what I will
describe a ‘sonic motive’, which is a collection of sound objects grouped through proximity
in time and may function a bit like a melodic motive or a rhythmic motive in tonal music,
and it may be reused later. The initial ‘sonic motive’ in Unsound Objects consists of some
water sounds combined with a ‘plop’ sound, which may have been produced using some
sort of plunger dipped into water.

So in the very first two seconds of the piece we can deduce that water sounds may be a
feature, there is a distinctive upward glissando of the ‘plop’ sound, and we have several
sounds grouped together to produce a single pattern or ‘sonic motive’ distinguished by the
sounds’ mimetic timbrel similarities and by the relationship between the sounds in time
(perhaps a rhythmic figure).

Bravely, Harrison follows the initial sonic motive with over three seconds of silence. The
initial ‘sonic motive’ is then repeated, but transposed upwardly and quickly followed by
several other sound objects I’ve called ‘boing’ and ‘chi’. The ‘chi’ element is a very short
broadband noise sound, which will become a feature to be varied through different means of
signal processing. Now, within the first eight seconds, we have the presentation of what I
will describe as ‘sonic archetypes’ – water sounds and noise sounds.

Coinciding with the ‘chi’ noise sound at 7.98” is the beginning of what I describe as a
‘continuant’ which is a sustained sound consisting, in this case, of some sort of filtered
noise, which is subjected to a type of modulation (perhaps frequency modulation) that gets
lower in frequency as it progresses, and lasts until about 30.90”. Here we observe another
type of ‘sonic archetype’ which I’ll call the attack-continuant archetype that, in Harrison’s
case, consists of an ‘attack’ that is actually a collection of sound objects expressed in the
form of what I’ve described as a ‘sonic motive’. It’s as though the sonic motive triggers or

  6  
provokes the sustained continuant. This kind of archetypal pattern is a characteristic used
throughout the work.

The first sustained continuant is terminated by a one second swell of broadband noise –
perhaps an elongated ‘chi’ sound. It also functions as the provocation of a new sustained
‘continuant’ at 30.82” that is the expression of a much more filtered sound, creating fewer
partials and therefore greater purity of sound which is lower in the frequency spectrum.
Lasting over 16 seconds, it is punctuated by a solitary ‘drip’ sound at 42.45” and, at its
conclusion, the first section is terminated by two events. The first event is like a time-
stretched and more quiet version of part of the sound first heard at time 6.91” and the
second event terminating this section is a ‘compound sound’ made up of a time stretched
rendition of the ‘chi’ sound first heard at 7.89”, combined with the ‘plop’ sound transposed
higher. These short sounds function as a full stop or cadence to this first phrase (Section 1).

3.1.2 Section 2 details

After a 1.5 second period of silence, Section 2 begins at 50.97”. Section 2 is slightly longer
than its predecessor, with a duration of about 1’08.5”. An examination of the annotated
spectrogram reveals firstly that some of the techniques and archetypes from Section 1 are
employed in Section 2, and secondly it becomes more active, with more sound objects, over
the course of its duration.

Against a background of spectrally filtered, higher, noise continuant, Section 2 begins with
a short ‘sonic motive’ of several upward glissando ‘plop’ sounds. At around 58.13”, this
motive of ‘plops’ is embellished through transposition and the lengthening of the motive
with additional ‘plops’. At 1’11.30”, there is a further multiplication of the ‘plop’ motive,
leading to new sound objects at 1’18.15”, which I’ve called a ‘jigger trill’ (sounding like
some form of rattle or percussive trill) and a ‘doink’ or plucked-type of sound. Repeated
jigger trills lead to a short ‘klok’ (wood block?) sound that announces a more fragmented
filtered noise continuant, which is itself a seemingly more active background. Another
‘klok’ sound at 1’25.64” announces a new continuant consisting of a sequence of low water
glissandos with active plop motives. Superimposed on this background is a shorter
continuant of pitched, sparse frequency components.

Such an increase in sonic activity functions to heighten excitement and create an

anticipation that the sound world is building towards some kind of significant event.
Beginning at 1’39.10”, the short sounds ‘tap tap’, ‘bonk bonk’, and ‘doink’ introduce yet
another ‘sonic motive’ that is then varied and followed by an upward transposition of the
‘plop’ motive. This leads to a much more thinned out background continuant of sparse
frequency components built on a frequency of 584 Hertz. As this continuant fades, the
‘plop’ motive is transposed even higher and the final full stop for this phrase is a short drip
sound.

We can observe that the trend of Section 2 is that it becomes more active, as time proceeds,
with an increasing number of sound objects combined into groups as ‘sonic motives’. These
are set against a backdrop of longer ‘continuant’ textures, which are varied much more in
Section 2 than in the previous section. The ‘sonic motives’ are varied more than in Section
1 too. With this increasing activity, anticipation builds for a while, but then the section
quickly fades, or ‘thins out’, and its conclusion is marked by the full stop in the form of a
water drip.

  7  
3.2 Moving beyond the acoustic surface – structures, functions and motion

Up until now, I have described and discussed very fine details of the work for the first two
sections. Now we must move beyond the acoustic surface to examine the relationship
between sound objects in the work, and to zoom out in order to compare different segments
of the piece. Through ‘time-span reduction’, we can move from viewing 30 second to 60
second to two minute segments, in order to observe the changing sonic patterns over the
course of the work. Ultimately, extending this process this would lead to an analysis of the
form of the whole work.

Zooming out one’s attention on Unsound Objects, one does get the sense that there is some
sort of foreground, middle-ground, background perspective operating within the work. Here
I am not talking about the depth of field often associated with spatialisation aspects of a
work, but rather the relationships between musical elements within the work. Others often
use the term ‘layering’, but I find that a little restricting. Let me use a different metaphor to
describe the relationships emerging from the work. The long continuant textures certainly
form a back-drop for sections of the work that we could liken to a scene within a film or
play. The foreground sonic motives then take on the role of actors, establishing
relationships with one another, through proximity in time, frequency, and/or similarity in
timbre. Their ‘dialog’ can be varied, at different time points in the work, against the
backdrop of changing or evolving scenes (continuants). The middle-ground is provided by
secondary sonic motives, which perform a contrapuntal counter-pattern (rather than
counter-melody) to the foreground material.

Unsound Objects can be divided into two approximate halves. In Figure 3, the first half of
the work consists of sections 1 to 11 (up to 6’54”), and the second half sections 12 to 20
(6’55” until the end). We can see from this plot that the first half is characterised by sections
that are much more similar in length and vary from about 20” to around 1’08” duration. The
second half (beginning section 12) consists of much longer sections, especially section 12
itself, interspersed with quite short transition periods. The variation is from 12” (section 13)
up to 1’33” (section 12).

  8  
Figure 3. Section length (mm:ss) versus section number for Unsound Objects.

The relationship between sound objects in Unsound Objects is beginning to emerge and we
have some idea of the overall sections and their duration, but an important question
remains: What propels the work along from moment to moment, section to section, scene to
scene? To help answer this question, I have already observed that an increase in sonic
activity seems to elicit expectation in the listener that an important event is about to occur.
But how can we measure and, even better, display activity within a work? Well the Sonic
Visualiser program provides access to a suite of plugins of signal analysis, and the type of
analysis that seems to correlate best with sound object activity is a plot of ‘irregularity’
versus time. It could be argued that we could simply use a plot of overall amplitude, or one
of its variants, but let me contend that simply using amplitude tends to average out
‘activity’, whereas spectral irregularity provides a much more fine-grained representation of
activity from instant to instant through time.

There are several different methods for calculating the irregularity present within a
spectrum (Jensen, 1999; Krimphoff et al, 1994), but essentially they both give a measure of
the degree of variation of the successive peaks of the spectrum. Jensen, for example,
calculates the sum of the square of the difference in amplitude between adjoining partials.
What I am postulating here is that where there is a large variation across the spectrum,
partial to partial, then this can provide us with a depiction of a high degree of activity.
Figure 4 depicts an irregularity plot for the first four sections of Unsound Objects.

  9  
Figure 4. An irregularity plot for the first four sections of Unsound Objects.

If we take a look at the irregularity for Section 1, we can observe that the irregularity is up
and down quite a bit until we see a very large peak at about 30”, and then the irregularity
dies away. The peak corresponds to the swell of broadband noise that we described in 4.1.1
above. Let’s look at the next section and see whether our hypothesis that irregularity gives
some measure of activity does hold water. In Section 2, the irregularity plot shows an
increase in irregularity from about 1’25” until around 1’32”, and above (4.1.2) we noted
that at about 1’25”: “an increase in sonic activity functions to heighten excitement and
create an anticipation that the sound world is building towards some kind of significant
event”. However, our expectations are not fulfilled, and the activity subsides to finish with a
single drip sound. Although it is hard to read in the graph shown in Figure 4 within this text,
an irregularity plot can actually depict individual events (such as a drip sound) to quite a
high resolution.

Let us now shift our focus from details within a section to a comparison between sections.
In doing so, it is useful to tabulate the activities and the sound types for each section (a
selection of this data is tabulated in the Appendix below), and view the table in conjunction
with the graphs of irregularity.

3.2.1 Section to section comparison

Figure 4 shows us that there are roughly two types of activity when we compare sections 1
to 4. The first three section shows a rise and fall in activity, while section 4 displays lots of
peaks in activity. Our table of activity lists sound types that are dominated by water sounds,
noise sounds, and filtered noise continuants. Running water is introduced in section 3 and
section 4 is very active with lots of the sounds and gestures we’ve heard previously.

Figure 5. An irregularity plot for sections 5 to 9 of Unsound Objects.

Figure 5 shows the activity for sections 5 to 9. Sections 5 to 7 are very active, with lots of
peaks. Section 8 has a less active beginning and it slowly builds over time, and section 9 is

  10  
similar in that it begins with less activity and slowly builds to a granulated crescendo,
subsiding to individual events. Section 5 (begins 3’3.03”), which is about half way through
the first half, introduces lots of new mimetic elements: the first ‘dry’ sounds (crunching
paper or leaves), door gestures, footsteps, crunching and crackling. These dry sounds
provide a dramatic contrast to the water sounds that opened the work. Section 6 (starts at
3’32.8”) mixes up a return of the frequency modulated filtered noise with a long sequence
of dry mixed sounds, footsteps, and a collection of many sounds heard so far. Section 7
(beginning 4’01.1”) has klunks, water plops, dry sounds, chiffs, which then have some
modulation treatment, with more plop/gliss sounds. The short section 8 (starting at 4’24.1”)
has a continuant of filtered noise, differentiated across the channels, and when a long
granular treatment enters, it provides an introduction for the thunder sound at the start of
section 9 (at 4’44.2”). Then rain, lightning strikes and granulated noise leads to footsteps in
gravel or leaves, a door opens. Here we might speculate that the footstep sounds not only
have a sonic archetype ‘dry’ sound, but also function to move the work onwards. The door
sounds can have a functional aspect too: they signify a change of some sort – usually a
beginning of something different, or an ending.

Figure 6. An irregularity plot for sections 8 to 11 of Unsound Objects.

Figure 6 shows the activity for sections 8 to 11, but we’ll concentrate on section 10 and 11.
Section 10 (at 5’35”) is quite short (about 25”) and has much less activity, with a quiet
continuant of modulated noise, filtered footsteps, dry sounds, a squeaky door that is opened
the closed. Section 11 (at 6’00.4”) begins with a bird call, a door opens and this seems to
‘trigger’ a long, quiet continuant of filtered noise, punctuated by individual sounds events
(sequence of clicks, fast iterative sounds). The continuant thins out, the activity subsides
and it fades to a door closing sound. The decrease in activity combined with a softer, longer
soundscape, and a seemingly conclusive ‘closing the door’ creates an expectation of some
sort of conclusion: “Closing the door on the first half of the piece.”

Figure 7. An irregularity plot for sections 12 to 15 of Unsound Objects.

  11  
Figure 7 represents the activity for sections 12 to 15 of Unsound Objects. We have seen
from Figure 3 that section 12 (starting at 6’55.1”) is the longest section of the work
(duration 1’33.3”). It represents the start of the second half of the piece, and it announces
itself in a very dramatic manner: A loud ‘smack-like’ sound, very percussive. A sequence of
these smack sounds is followed by smeared noise sounds. In terms of activity, the smeared
noise sounds swell, subside, swell, subside, fade, and we are left with the sharp, impulsive
crack sounds. In terms of events and mimetic references, there is a lot going on in section
12. In addition to the sounds mentioned so far, we hear a hard bouncing ball iterative sound,
dry crackling continuants, high-pass filtered smeared noise, hints of previous frequency
modulated filtered noise, crackling transposed higher, footsteps, varied crackling, an
iterated bouncing marble connected to a deep plunge that leads to section 13. Overall the
impression is of a dry soundscape with broad spectral characteristics. There are short, sharp,
and sometimes repeating or iterative sounds. Functional connections, where one sound
seems to lead on to another sound, are used to create connections to future events –
expectation creation. Section 12 establishes a strong contrast with the first section: it is
longer, it is dramatic in its use of sounds, it makes extensive use of the dry sound world that
dramatically differentiates itself from the watery first half, but it does contain some
references to certain sounds used in the first half. We are left wondering: How will this
progress?

Section 13 (starting at 8’28.5”) is a short transition with short impulse events and lots of
attacks. It contains filtered noise sliced up in time, bouncing ball sliced up in time too, a
high pass filtered crack sound and a chopped up bouncing ball. The sound shredding
technique is something that will be used again within the work.

Section 14 (starting at 8’40.5”) begins with a crack and continues with lots of iterative
activity which is softer and more subtle than the previous section. It consists of two types of
iterative sounds interleaved with each other over time. The first type is a high pass filtered
bouncing ball (a marble?), and the second iterative type has varied repeated attacks and
sounds like a stick being bounced on a string. As they are interleaved, variation is provided
through transposition, slowing down, and other types of variation.

Section 15 (starting at 9’30.4”) is a soft, short transition passage, with minimal activity.
After some soft iterative sounds, we hear very soft walking and then the unlocking of a
door.

Figure 8. An irregularity plot for sections 16 to 20 of Unsound Objects.

Figure 8 represents the activity for sections 16 to 20 of Unsound Objects. With the
unlocking of a door, the thunderstorm makes another entrance with cracks of thunder
followed by footstep activity. The thunder seems to ‘trigger’ an increase in activity of sliced
noise events. The thunderstorm and rain continue with crunching and crackling mixed in. A

  12  
lightning crack announces a return of the frequency modulated filtered noise continuant, but
has it been sliced up too? More crunching footsteps and the frequency modulated noise
fades while a flanging thunder-type noise is used as a continuant and segues into section 17,
functioning as another short, quiet transition period. It begins with minimal activity and is
punctuated by short, crisp events like the sound of footsteps on gravel. Broadband noise
moves from channel to channel.

Section 18 (from 11’33.0”) begins with a lightning strike and flanging of the thunder as its
continuant moves between the channels. It is punctuated by a sequence of three or four
clicks. There is additional broadband noise in motion between the channels and lapping
water heightens the return of water sounds. Section 19 continues the waves washing on the
shoreline. The wave sounds increase in loudness and they are coupled with voices and the
shouts associated with play on a distant beach somewhere. The wind and the waves are
sliced up, there are crunching steps and more voices.

Section 20 (from 12’40.8”) begins with a breaking wave that ushers in a final reprise of the
multi-band filtered noise. There is a klomp, the voices fade, and the filtered noise fades to
the end of the piece.

3.2.2 Comparing the two halves

Zooming out even further, how can we characterise the two halves of Unsound Objects?

The first half consists of sections 1 to 11, and lasts until about 6’54”. The sections within
the first half are much more similar in length compared with the second half. Activity
within the sections of the first half seems to follow two or three different models. There is
the ‘rise and fall’ model of activity (e.g. sections 3, 8, & 9), there are the sections with lots
of activity (sections 4 to 7), then there are sections with sparse activity that are longer and
quieter (sections 10 & 11).

Mimetically, the first half begins with a water theme and noise variants, and then ‘dry’
sounds are first introduced in section 5, about half way through the first half. Water sounds
return in section 7 and then we have a mixture of water and dry sounds with thunder and
footsteps added in section 9. So its mimetic scheme is WATER-DRY-WATER-MIXTURE.

Structurally we’ve observed that sonic motives are set against long continuant sounds of
filtered noise. Sonic events seem to trigger other events, especially the continuant events.
Footsteps serve two purposes: mimetic and functional. They are both dry sounds and imply
a forward motion in time. The function of door sounds is to initiate or terminate sections or
processes.

The second half consists of sections 12 to 20, according to my segmentation of the work. It
begins at 6’55.1” and lasts for about 6’04”. It contrasts greatly with the first half in that its
main sections are much longer than those from the first half, interspersed with short
transition sections. Each of the long sections begins with a very dramatic gesture (e.g.
section 12, a loud crack; section 14, another loud crack; section 16, a thunderstorm).

Mimetically, the second half begins with dry sounds. Whereas the first half used a
combination of sounds collected into sonic motives and set against a continuant, the second
half makes extensive use of iterated sounds such as bouncing marbles, sticks bouncing on
strings, noise sources radically ‘shredded’ or chopped up using rapid amplitude modulation

  13  
techniques. Suddenly, the opening of a squeaky door signals something new in section 16
(9’48.1”). A thunderstorm breaks and there is a return to the water theme, then crunching
footsteps, and noise in motion. Section 18 begins with the lightning/thunder sound and it is
flanged along with other familiar sounds. Finally there are wave sounds, water lapping and
a coda of the multiband filtered noise sound. So the mimetic scheme of the second half is a
kind of reverse of the first half: DRY-WATER-DRY-MIXTURE-WATER.

Predominantly the sound world of the second half consists of extended periods of
interspersed iterative sounds, triggered by the dramatic gestures of thunderstorms and waves
breaking. Footsteps are signifiers of progress and door sounds are signifiers for new sound
worlds. In contrast to the first half, the second half diminishes the distance or depth of field
between the foreground, middle-ground, and background sounds. The structure is much
more tightly integrated and our actor within a scene metaphor begins to break down.
Instead, dramatic sound events propel a kaleidoscope of sounds mixed together in a tightly
woven fabric.

4 SONIC ARCHETYPES

To begin to round off our discussion, we can summarise what I shall call ‘sonic archetypes’
present in Unsound Objects. Sonic archetypes can be mimetic, or they can be functional or
structural models.

Mimetic archetypes:

• Water sounds: plop, plunger with upward glissando, drip sounds, running water,
thunderstorms, lapping water, breaking waves

• Broadband noises with their variants

• Modulated and filtered continuant sounds

• Dry sounds: e.g. crunching footsteps, rustling paper

• Iterative sounds: bouncing marble on hard surface, sticks bouncing on strings,

chopped up noise sounds

• Door sounds

• Sounds of utterance: birds calls, people’s voices

Structural archetypes:

Structural characteristics arising from the various combinations of sonic objects:

• Sonic motives – a group of short sounds, grouped together by virtue of their

proximity in time and similarity in timbre, almost forming a rhythmic motive.

• Attack-continuant model of a sonic motive followed by a sustained sound lasting a

long duration.

  14  
• Sonic Collection – a term used to describe a grouping of sounds that aren’t related in
timbre, but function as a textural unit. Some literature refers to this aspect as simply texture.

• Sonic Sequence or Stream – a horizontal pattern of sounds related in some manner

through proximity in frequency and/or time. Some literature refers to this aspect as simply
gesture, however the term gesture is imprecise and can be interpreted in many ways. The
term ‘gesture’ is probably best reserved for describing the changing spectromorphology
within a sound object and perhaps the connection between individual sound objects.

• Compound sound – a sound produced by combining several different timbres at the

same time point, usually short impulsive-type sounds.

Operations on sounds:

• Time stretching

• Transposition

• Filtering

• Modulation – frequency and amplitude

• Shredding or rapidly chopping up sounds

• Flanging

Functional relations:

• Proximity in time of short sounds, and/or timbral similarity, produces grouping into
‘sonic motives’

• Foreground-background: Sustained, continuous textures, which I have labelled

‘continuants’, often function as the background to a foreground of ‘sonic motives’. The
continuants mark out periods of time we could describe as ‘scenes’ during which, the sound
object ‘actors’ conduct their sonic motive dialogs.

• Implication-realisation effects: eg. Increasing sonic activity can lead to an

implication or anticipation that the piece is building to something significant

• A short impulse or percussive sound is often used to mark the end of a section, and it
serves as a punctuation mark to end a sonic ‘phrase’ or ‘sentence’

• Trigger sounds – loud impulse sounds that seem to trigger the following sequence of
sound objects

• Tight integration – foreground and background distance is reduced by tight

integration of the mixture of similar types of sound, e.g. iterative sound sections in the
second half in particular.

Sonic activity:

  15  
• Spectral irregularity has been used as a marker for sonic activity.

5 DISCUSSION

In a keynote address to the SoundAsArt Conference in Aberdeen in 2006, Harrison begins

by defining various terms used throughout the history of electroacoustic music, but in doing
so, he clarifies some of his own position within this art form. In relation to musique
concrète, Harrison (2007) notes:

Musique concrète, then, is so called because it starts from ‘concrete’ (i.e. observable)
qualities in sound material itself, from which structural implications are extrapolated
and links to other sound materials made. What finally emerges, as Dhomont has
pointed out, is an ‘abstract’ musical discourse … which has been ‘abstracted’ from the
concrete starting points.

What we have observed in the above analysis is the deconstruction of Harrison’s concrete to
abstract processes in the reverse. In his Aberdeen keynote, Harrison (2007) emphasises the
interplay between composer and sound using aural feedback as a compositional method:

… what is ‘concrete’ about musique concrète is the method of working: it is ‘hands-

on’, with immediate aural feedback. Its composition is a partnership between composer
and material, with each interrogating the other, posing problems and offering possible
solutions.

We have found the sonic archetypes identified within the work and noted them above. What
is interesting is that these archetypes (or models) can be mimetic/semantic, structural,
operational, or functional. In other words, the beauty of Harrison’s work is the fact that he is
exploring and exploiting both the mimetic/semantic implications of the sound world he is
creating, and simultaneously weaving musical structures and relations.

In his Aberdeen address, Harrison (2007) also emphasises the temporal aspect of
composition in this medium:

Time is what makes music out of sound. … ‘Music’ happens when sounds establish …
relationships in time between each other which make some kind of sense – i.e. they
‘communicate’ … ‘meaning’ …

From the text in the previous section we can observe that time is referenced in many ways
in order to structure, create connections, and to imply progression through time. Terms like:
proximity in time creating sonic motives; continuants sounds being used to provide a
durational backdrop for foreground activity; a sonic collection of simultaneous sounds, or a
sonic stream of horizontally connected sounds; sounds that act as punctuation points in
time, e.g. the drip sound or closing doors; trigger sounds (like breaking waves) that seem to
promulgate other sounds; mimetic ways of depicting the passage of time, like a sequence of
footsteps; or syntactic ways of depicting passage of time, such as the increase in activity
that starts to stimulate our implication-realisation juices.

As Rudy has pointed out: ‘Incongruous juxtaposition of source is evident in Jonty

Harrison’s Unsound Objects’ Rudy (2007: 12). Rudy reminds us that: ‘the composer has

  16  
carefully led the listener from source attention (cinematic listening for a sound source or
Schaeffer’s Mode I) to listening to how the sounds interact (reduced listening).’ (Rudy,
2007:12).

It is hoped that the above analytical work further illustrates what both Rudy and Harrison
contend in their respective quotations.

Finally, we have used spectral irregularity plots to assist with the identification and isolation
of periods of activity within different sections of the work. It seems as though it may be a
useful measure for the analysis of other works – a hypothesis remaining to be tested.

REFERENCES

Bregman, A. S. 1999. Auditory scene analysis : the perceptual organization of sound.

Second MIT Press Paperback edition, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

Cannam, C. Landone, C. & Sandler, M. 2010 Sonic Visualiser: An Open Source

Application for Viewing, Analysing, and Annotating Music Audio Files, in Proceedings of
the ACM Multimedia 2010 International Conference.

Couprie, P. 2012. The development of EAnalysis is part of the research project entitled
‘New multimedia tools for electroacoustic music analysis’ at the MTI Research Centre of
De Montfort University (Leicester, UK). The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC). [Note from the developer’s website. For the link to EAnalysis,
see http://www.orema.dmu.ac.uk ]

Harrison, J. 1996. Unsound Objects. On Articles indéfinis. IMED 9627. emprintes

DIGITALes, Audio CD.

Harrison, J. 2007. ‘Dilemmas, Dichotomies and Definitions: acousmatic music and its
precarious situation in the arts’ (Keynote, SoundAsArt Conference, Aberdeen, 2006). [
http://soundasart.urbannovember.org/ ]

Hirst, D. 2008. A Cognitive Framework for the Analysis of Acousmatic Music: Analysing
Wind Chimes by Denis Smalley VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG.
Saarbrücken.

Jensen, K. 1999. Timbre Models of Musical Sounds, Ph.D. dissertation, University of

Copenhagen, Rapport Nr. 99/7.

Krimphoff, J. McAdams, S. & Winsberg, S. 1994. Caracterisation du timbre des sons

complexes. II Analyses acoustiques et quantification psychophysique. Journal de Physique
IV, Colloque C5, Vol. 4. 1994.

Palmer, J. 2002. In Conversation with Jonty Harrison. 21st Century Music, Vol. 9/1 (USA,
January 2002). Republished in eContact! 10.2 — Entrevues / Interviews (1). Montréal:
Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / Canadian Electroacoustic Community, August

  17  
2008.

Rudy, P. 2007. Timbral praxis: when a tree falls in the forest is it music? Organised Sound.
12 (1): 5-13.

APPENDIX

Table of activity and sound object types for selected sections of Unsound Objects.

Section Start Duration Activity – amount Selected Sound Object

Time and type Types

1 00:00.2 00:50.6 Activity is up and Water, plops, boing, chi,

down quite a bit until continuant - filtered
we see a very large noise –modulated, broad
peak at about 30”, and noise, drip smear, high
then the activity dies plop, chik
away

2 00:50.8 01:08.5 Sonic activity low, Spectrally filtered noise

then increases about continuant (higher),
mid point, then dies plops, jigger trill, doink,
away klok, Sequence of low
water glissandos - active
motive, Low plop
sequence continues,
sparse freq components,
drip

3 01:59.3 00:26.5 Slow rise and fall in Drip, running water

activity continuant, resonant
acoustic ambience
continuant, blok, chi,
running water continues
& fades

4 02:25.8 00:37.5 Lots of peaks in Continuant of bandpass-

activity plot filtered noise, motion
between channels, chiff,
transposed lower, jiggle
trill, more active version
of previous gestures

. .

. .

. .

  18  
Section Start Duration Activity – amount Selected Sound Object
Time and type Types

20 12:40.8 00:11.4 Breaking wave ushers Breaking wave swells,

in a final reprise of Multiband filtered noise
the multiband, filtered enters as very pure
noise and fades continuant, Klomp,
Voices fade, Multiband
filtered noise fades to
end

  19