The Ways We Listen

The ear i sthe digital musician's most precious, sophisticated and vital asset. Sound enters ours ears from the pinna, which is especially designed to gather sound waves and channel them into the ear drum. The vibrations that are craeted stimulate emalleus, incus and stapes which in turn, convert it into electro chemical input that's then carried to the brain, via the auditary nerve system, to be handled and digested.

Sound that is perceptible to the human hears ranges from the lowest frequency of 20 hz to the maximum of 20k Hz. In the air, at standard temperature and pressure, the corresponding wavelenght of sound waves ranges from 17 m to 17 mm.

In 1966, the French composer Pierre Schaeffer, published the first serious "aural awareness" study. He established that there are four main listening modes:

ECOUTER, otherwise known as casual listening. Its is "listening to someone, something and, through the intermediary of sound, aiming to identify the source, the event, the cause, thus treating the sound as a sign of this source, this event".

i.e. I can hear a car approaching so I won't cross the road now.

OUIR, is the simplest basic level of aural perception; we passively hear things that we are not trying to decode and understand. "Perceiving by the ear, being struck by sounds". i.e. The bustling of the street.

ENTENDRE, or aural discrimination. It is "showing an intention to listen [ecouter] and choosing what we hear [oui], what particularly interests us,thus determining what we hear". i.e. A sound texture changing in a special way.

COMPRENDRE, or understanding semantic listening). It is " grasping a meaning, a value by treating the sound like a sign, referriing to the meaning of a code".

i.e. I really appreciate this track.

Schaeffer summoned the four modes in a simple sentence:

I HEAR (OUIR) YOU DESPITE MYSELF, ALTHOUGH I DID NOT LISTEN (ECOUTER) AT THE DOOR, BUT I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND (COMPRENDRE)

WHAT I HEARD (ENTENDRE).

Pierre Schaeffer Interview: http://www.timhodgkinson.co.uk/schaeffer.pdf

The modes that are most commonly used by digital musicians ar eundoubtely those that discriminate and understand sounds.

"A more sophisticated listener turns away without ceasing to hear it, from a sound event and the circumstances which it reveals its source and uses it as a means to grasp a message, a meaning, a value" (Schaeffer, 1966).

Schaeffer's notion oa reduced listening mode shaped massively following endeavours on listening to electronically created music.

The most important aspect is that the sound element itself has subsequently become the centre of focus, with new digital technologies allowing for endless ways of approaching any sonic material.

Denis Smalley pointed out that perhaps this way of technological listening can go too far by the wat the listener absorbs the technological methods involved in a musical production, rather than appreciating the general aura of the concept itself.

It is therefore paramount for the modern digital musician to be able to switch between all of these modes to balance correctly the listening experience.

The ability to discriminate these listening purposes aids the musician in understanding the different compelling aspect of aural awareness.

John Cage, declared that there is "no such thing as silence" proving his theory in his famous silent piece which is over four minutes long, drawing our attention to the environment that surrounds us. He famously recounts how once, when alone in an aechoic chamber, he could hear his nervous system and blood pumping.

If we listen to loud music in a blacked out environment ( acousmatic situation), the attention immediately shifts to the music itself, since there are no visual clues to encourage our imagination in that particular moment. This sort of experience forces the listener into an enhanced state of aural awareness.

Conclusively, we can safely assume that it is extremely important for the modern digital musician to be able to discriminate between the different modes accordingly to the given situation.