Beyond Pitch/Duration Scoring: Towards A System

Dynamics Model Of Electroacoustic Music

Ian Whalley
The University of Waikato
Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand
Ph. 64 7 8562889/Fax. 64 7 8562158
[email protected]
Based on a hierarchy of discrete pitches and metrically sub-divisible duration,
Western tonal art music is usually modelled through printed music scores. Scoring
acoustic musical events beyond this paradigm has resulted in non-standard graphs in
two dimensions. New digitally generated soundscape forms are often not conceived
or understandable within traditional musical paradigms or notation models, and often
explore attributes of music such as spatial processing that fall outside twodimensional graphic scoring. To date there is not a commonly accepted model that
approximates the structural dynamics of electroacoustic music; providing a
conceptual framework independent of the music to the degree of standard music
notation. Based on recent work in spectro-morphology as a way of explaining sound
shapes, a systems dynamics model is proposed through mapping a dynamic taxonomy
for structural listening as an aid to composition. This approach captures formal but
not semiotic discourse.

Given that non music specialists may bring a wide range of musical experiences to the
conference, a broad background and context for the idea is first provided.
Western art music, particularly since the Renaissance to 1900, was based on a
theoretical system of tonality and rhythmic symmetry. This language is now
commonly reproduced in unique patterns based on familiar language in contemporary
western popular music. As a tonally based art form, pitch and duration were the two
foremost quantitative attributes of this language. The associated notation system
focused mainly on recording these aspects of it. The conventional five line staff and
bar lines are a reflection and part of this.
Pitch/duration based music evolved dialectically with a set of compositional
techniques expressed through chords, scales and keys. The development of small
motives through augmentation, diminution, transposition and inversion in the context
of major and minor modes, and structural based key contrasts, was central.
Despite the change in theoretical base with the decay of tonality around the turn of the
century, discrete pitch and duration have remained a significant part of western art
music (Dallin 1957). Abandoning tonality did not undermine many established
compositional techniques, or the method of scoring. If anything, music became more
formalist, particularly in extreme serialist methods of composition, where all aspects

of music were attempted to be made subservient to notation (Cope 1993, Fink et. al.
1975).
Central to pitch/duration scoring is the notion of a score as a guide to performance
from a player and conductors perspective. A score is then a script but not music. This
script captures only some aspects of the music: the detail of individual parts, the
orchestration, dynamics, phrasing, and the sequence of events. There is much that
needs added by performers to make these parts sound musical, and by a conductor to
balance the sound and manipulate the temporal content.
The score then does not record many aspects of performance. It can also not
approximate the listeners experiences based on commonly shared musical metaphors,
or overtly the underlying structural dynamic intended by the composer.
The advent of electro-magnetically recorded sounds contributed to changes in music
conceptually as the result of the new method of storing music (Alec 1995, Borwick
1993, Worman 1982). Recording captured the performance rather than the script. The
result in popular music was to make particular performers central to a piece of music.
Recording made a performance the authentic music, making all aspects of the music
legitimate as text. The medium of authenticity then changed from visual to aural. Yet
aspects of the performance could however still be notated, as sales of sheet music
testify.
On the basis of this new technology a new music aesthetic developed through the use
of multi-tracking recording and analog synthesis. Scores could be constructed that
were unable to be performed live. This was music for reproduction rather than
performance.
A significant aspect of this shift, particularly in context of popular music, was that
although aspects of the music were still able to be recorded within pitch/duration
notation, and performance captured through recording, increasing aspects of
production were not notated independent of the score or recording. After the fact, an
interview with a producer may give insights into what had taken place, but this did not
often approximate the use of techniques in real-time or the dynamic interplay between
them.
New music/new scoring
The revolution in recording and production, in tandem with the development of
modernism in western art music, led to the development of the electroacoustic music
idiom based in analog technology (Chadarbe 1997, Dobson 1993, Emmerson 1986).
Central to this approach was the studio as instrument, the intention of reproduction
rather than performance, and the lessening of the focus on pitch/duration . What was
largely not an issue was the abandonment of tonality as the basis of musical language.
Although digitally based, the idiom continues today in editing based approaches to
music construction. Timbral transformation, the incorporation environmental sounds,
and micro-tonal textures still typify the idiom (Vaggione 1994 & 1996, Waters 1994).

Rather than being referenced to instrumental performance gestures, it often reflects

more slowly evolving environmental gestures (Smalley 1997). The dislocation of
sound source from performance results in context rather than absolute reference being
able to define the musicality and authenticity of sound.
Real-time processing of sonic space makes this idiom unique through the
manipulation of the horizontal plane of listening (pan) and presence/distance
(reverb/delay). Individual parts can then be processed separately to create the illusion
of a multi dimensional dynamic space. Space can then be used in composition as a
structural element (Smalley 1996).
Electroacoustic music then, rather than being referenced to an external theoretical
system of tonality expressed through pitch relationships and based in the syntax of
instrumental and vocal performance and gesture, is based on timbre. The detail of a
sound object, its context or location, are established within a piece. This shift from an
external absolute through tonality to an internal one is significant. The stage on which
the music is understood and played out is the imagination, rather than against an
external intellectual construct (Rudy 1999, Menezes 1997, Balaban 1996).
Since its inception, different composers have attempted to score electroacoustic
reproductions in visual equivalents. This has largely involved the use of drawings that
showed the pitch on the vertical axis and events on the horizontal axis. The microtonal nature of many scores meant that only broad gestures could be approximated.
Much of the time these scores were of little use except as a broad guide to the
structure of the work, and they served as a guide to frequency spectrum listening
(Cogan 1984). Similar attempts have been trialed using spectrum analysis and
graphing the output with software packages. Some new software based micro-tonal
synthesiser generators use a similar approach, but some also add colour to indicate left
and right spatialization, and brightness to indicate volume.
The problem and approaches
Non of these methods are able to fully approximate the music. Music is a dynamic art,
the method of representation is static. Besides, the only successful way to model a
piece of music in entirety is the actual music.
In electroacoustic music the composer generally works directly in sound, bypassing
the need for a score. An electroacoustic score generally is more likely to be a set of
sketches and notes for a piece that are largely inaccessible to all but the composer and
a few initiates. The listeners experience of the music is often quite different from
these sketches, and different from the composers techniques of arriving at particular
sounds and sections of a composition.
Compounding this is the seductive nature of digital technology in the composition
process (Roads 1996). The precision that the equipment now offers makes
concentrated listening to detail possible through repetition. This facilitates composing
at a micro level but often neglects the fleeting nature of material in context, and the
larger picture from the listeners perspective.

The learning curve for the technology also adds to composer/listener distance, at times
allowing the impression that something is musically significant because of the
complexity of the process of arriving at it. Additionally, the technique of producing
music does not often have a direct correspondence to psycho-acoustic response:
increasing the volume is often not interpreted linearly by listeners for example.
At a macro level, a composer may graphically draw the overall structure of a piece as
a guide for listening. Yet while identifying sections and form, this often fails to
identify the temporal dynamic of a work. Besides, mapping form as score backs one
into the formalist proposition of meaning being the score itself, and negates listening
experience as a valid basis for interpretation: the continuing dilemma of musicology.
To fully capture the listen experience is a daunting task. Music is a metaphorical art
form and individual responses to a work may vary widely. The gambit of response is
narrowed in idioms like film music where through mutual implication with a visual
image there is a guide to interpretation based on cinematic and cultural musical
coding, or in popular music where the words act as a guide to interpretation (Gorbman
1974). Without a parallel guide, the music is the main focus of attention, and
responses are likely to vary widely.
Why then model this new art form? As a composer and lecturer in this idiom one
recognises the increasing gap between the experience of composing and the listening
experience of a non initiated audience. Although not a unique problem, compositional
intention and the results from a listening perspective often differ far more significantly
here than in traditional pitch/duration idioms. A model that approximates any aspect
of reception may then aid in bridging this gap and aid composition. Of course, this is
based unashamedly on the notion that a worthwhile aim of composition is to establish
a knowledgable dialectic with an audience, not a fashionable notion in some quarters.
What can be modelled? As stated, the metaphors of reception are problematic because
of non-specificity, unless the composer has built the piece on a narrative that can be
related, or a poem that lays out the intention (Landy 1994, Norman 1994). Besides,
metaphorical diversity is the province of musical communication. Yet the dynamic
flow of events that underpins and is an integral part of the structure of the work is
something with a common referent: time.
Modelling the dialectic between structure and event within a temporal framework
would give the composer one indication of the way a work may be received by an
audience. By concentrating on relationships rather than objects this partly avoids the
formalist proposition by making listening as interpretation an essential part of the
composition process.
The approach is by no means foolproof, but a step towards overcoming the problems
outlined. For this new art form it is of further significance. Works, being largely self referencing, enact their dynamic individually through first establishing a base level of
activity and material against which events are played off. In these terms, modelling
the dynamic of conventional music differs because it is played out against a theoretical
musical model that is commonly accepted and understood.

In arriving at this position, systems dynamics software seemed a suitable vehicle to

illustrate the proposition. A cursory search for literature on systems dynamics and
music revealed little, and local systems dynamics experts could see little connection.
On a recent discussion list when answering an enquiry on systems dynamics and piano
pedagogy, the only respondent remarked that As a serious musician and system
dynamicist, both for more than 25 years, I believe they have nothing to do with each
other (Richardson 1999).
I believe that the link is profound. Music is a time based art form grounded in the
experiential flow of events and relationship. In this sense it is similar to other
narratives. In television dramas we repeatedly witness the formulistic narrative pattern
of introduction, complication, climax and resolution, yet we still revel in the detail of
specific characters, relationships and inter-relationships. Abstract music as narrative
deals with a similar dialectic, except it is played out not through verbal/visual
discourse, but through aural/physical discourse. Although both are kinetic art forms,
the difference is that stories deal with the explicit; music is the province of the
implicit. A sensual rather than conceptual art form, its province is persuasion and
seduction rather than opinion and reason.
Music is then both history and speculation without words, and dance without dancers.
It provides in the dynamic opposition of unity (repetition) and variety (novelty), the
vicarious experience of pleasure and disorientation. As pattern seeking creatures,
people delight in the significance of music as a sequence orientated cure for
bewilderment because it provides meaning and certainty at an implicit level.
The mapping of narrative structures incorporating feedback loops is a main feature of
systems dynamics. Software packages such as Stella have already been applied to
understanding the structure of plays and novels to provide insight into a work. The
mapping of Hamlets dilemma as the structural basis of the play provides a fitting
example. (Hopkin 1992). Similarly, the psychology of perception is also fertile ground
for this tool.
Towards a systems dynamic model of electroacoustic music
In working with student composers in the electroacoustic idiom, a common fault is
their not being able to grasp how the many aspects of a work will integrate and interrelate in real-time from a structural dynamic perspective. A consequence is often
becoming bogged down in detail and losing the larger picture on one hand, and in
attempting to regain it with older graphic scoring methods, complication being added
through further detail. In addition, breaking down music to its fundamental elements
(frequency, tempo etc.) often lays bear what music is made up of, but not what
elements do in the context of themes in real time. The lack of facility to play what if
interactivity with structural problems is then a major stumbling block.
The control of the structural dynamic of a work based on the manipulation of the unity
and variety of thematic material is the cornerstone of the development of
compositional technique in music generally. Without a systematic and explicit way of
illustrating this in real-time, acquiring this skill in electroacoustic music is usually by

trial and error; or through the use of tunes, importing aspects of dynamic control from
the external referent of tonality, where this control is more widely documented and
understood.
An alternative is the critics dilemma of describing structure through verbal/logical
modelling, or poetic metaphor: The brooding and sparse beginning builds quickly to
climax built on the yearning opening motive for example. The idea is seductive
superficially, yet mixes semiotic response with dynamic control. A map of dynamic
real-time control then isolates one aspect.
Basing the systems dynamics model on listening may seem an ultimate solution
initially. Yet this begs the question of which listener and listening to what. The
quality of listening can depend on the level of attentiveness and the knowledge of
music brought to the situation. What people listen too can vary widely regardless of
attention. It may also be difficult for many people to separate different aspects of
music into specific parts.
The systems dynamics model proposed here is then based on three assumptions: that
music as structure is a representation of the existentialist experience of time (Imberty
1993, Kramar 1988); that this experience is only knowable through the perception of
sound events; and that the mapping of these events inter-actively in real-time will
approximate the experience. By mapping statement, uniqueness, repetition and
variation in the context of the dynamic interplay between unity any variety, climax
and resolution, how the structural dynamic of the piece was arrived at can be revealed.
A limitation here is the assumption that all listeners will be as fully cognisant and
musically attentive and informed as the composer. They must also have perfect
musical memory: the ultimate audience! This is the assumption historically most
western art music composers have made. This perfect state in relationship to the piece
may be arrived at through a number of hearings, and the process may be a long one.
For example, one can still find new insights into Beethovans work after fifty or more
renditions.
One model of electroacoustic music is given below. The overt structure is similar to
psychological models of happiness (McHugo 1992). The detail and internal dynamic
established in the relationship between parts is unique to music. The dynamic shape of
interest is the end point, and the assumption is a perfect correlation between this and
the contour of tension and relaxation in the piece. The model therefore incorporates
the perfect listener.

Figure 1

Momentary interest

fade

Increase

Unity Experience

Expectation
Dynamic shape of interest
Contrast interest

Attribute or rearranment repetition

Timbre

Theme 1

Direction

Tempo

Comparative interest
Theme 2
Perceived change

~
Balance

Theme 3

Pitch Space

Variety experience

~
~
Volume

Attribute change or rearrangement change

Texture

Rhythm

~
Distance

~
Pan

~
Silence

Graph 1

The two main drivers in any music are the tension between unity and variety. They are
based on two main types of change, or statis if they are continued or repeated:
Rearrangment change where time is expressed though motion or changes of position
in unchanging sound objects. For example, through notes or recurring sound
complexes; and attribute change in which time is expressed through change in the
attributes of sound objects, such as parametric alterations in the qualities of a sound
object (Pressing 1993, 113).
The elements of music that may contribute to this change, variation, repetition or
continuation are included at the left-hand side of the diagram. Each event and element
is mapped graphically as contributing to unity or variety throughout the piece. The
graphs are drawn so that each time frame is decide based on what information has
already been presented. A negative movement indicates a contribution to unity, and a
positive to variety. Zero means there is no contribution either way (see Figure 2).
The model relies on composers being able to auralize individual elements in the first
instance, or map them in after the fact. The subjective nature of this decision as to the
contribution of parts is the essense of structural control as composition.

Figure 2

No contribution

Not all musical elements and themes will be present at the same time, and different
clusters of elements are likely to be more present at some stages than others. Some
may not be manipulated at all.
Through this method one can quickly grasp how themes contribute to unity/variety
relative to each other, rather than the overall dynamic. Combinations such as depth
verses pan are difficult to map by other means, or their contribution illustrated in the
context of the whole.
The diagram allows for three main thematic elements, the weight of each being
mapped to unity and variety. Any number could be added here. The approach allows
for the introduction of the piece to establish the frame of reference against which later
elements will be played off.
The right hand side of the diagram maps the adaption dynamic or the way change or
rearrangement provides interest but also partly undermines interest. Some of the
assumptions made here on the quality of the underlying relationship may have to be
altered depending on the piece being modelled.
An ideal dynamic shape of interest in a classic sense would be an undulating variation
of the graph below. This is the shape of most classical and popular drama, large scale
western art music, and popular song.

Graph 1

Tension

Relaxation

Time

The tension line is developed so that the climax is about two-thirds to three quarters
the way through within the framework of introduction, complication, climax and
resolution; or musically, introduction, variation, contrast or development, and
recapitulation.
Of course, not all works follow this dictum and once the control of structural dynamic
is gained, composers and authors often delight in playing with structural expectations.
Electroacoustic music composers are no exception, and the nature of some pieces
actively set out to undermine the conventional dynamic (Chadarbe 1996). But this is
usually undertaken being fully cognisant of the tension between the expectation of
events and the reality of a piece.
Example
The simulation based on Figure 1 will be run at the conference. The musical
demonstration presents one interpretation of this (Whalley 1998). There are three
clearly contrasting themes: natural, electronic and melodic. Spatial processing (pan
/depth) is central to the piece, used mainly to vary the limited thematic material. The
model has an unconventional dynamic shape in that the second climatic point
undermines the first, giving a reversed dynamic in which structural interest dwindles.
This is a typical compositional problem students face. The relationship between the
thematic material is mapped below. The internal relationships in Figure 1 have been
adjusted to reflect the intention of a classic dynamic.

Graph 2

1: Theme 1
1:
2:
3:

2: Theme 2

3: Theme 3

1.00

3
1:
2:
3:

0.00

1
3

2
1
1
1
1:
2:
3:

-1.00
0.00

37.00
Graph 1: p1 (Themes )

74.00

111.00
sec

148.00

185.00

10:26 AM Fri, 21 May 1999

Conclusion
The relationship between systems dynamics thinking and music is then, far from being
obtuse, integral and significant. The model proposed outlines one aspect of this.
There is a danger in thinking that this approach to music can be all encompassing.
However, as stated, it works by negating a semiotic response to music, a response that
is an essential part of appreciating music on a poetic level. In electroacoustic music,
the manipulation of sound objects often have a real world referent that composers use
as a basis for metaphorical and symbolic discourse. It is this aspect of the music that
often engages non initiates at an emotional and subconscious level. In contrast, a work
may have an interesting structural dynamic, but if the composer has no control of
semiotic discourse, be a maze of metaphorical confusion.
A further limitation of the model given here from a compositional perspective is
technical. One may have an idea of how something may need to change on the
diagram, but not have the production skill or musical sense to translate this into sound.
Similarly, one may have good structural ideas but no sense of detail. There are many
literary critics with a good understanding of structure who are unable to write an
engaging novel. Musical craft is one thing; original ideas at sometimes another.
In this sense, the model is proposed as a tool, not an end. It is a way of visualising an
aspect of music that is difficult to see by other means, and affords experimentation
with different approaches as an aid to structural expression once one has some basic

ideas. Its limitation is the assumption that a systematic approach to musical structural
dynamic is worthwhile: not a universal notion (Chadabe 1996).
It is seductive to think that further work might include the mapping of music directly
into the model, but the approach is fraught with problems in separating parts aurally,
and in translating the sound material into psycho-acoustic response. The question
remains here if the effort is going to yield a result that is anything beyond entering the
input graphically by hand, or be any faster.
Others have argued that the ideal reception of music is neither structural or
metaphorical, but lies in the dialectic between the two (Milicevic 1998). The model
here then presents a glimpse of the story. The metaphorical mapping of the semiotic
discourse is something I have begun to attempt based on current broad taxonomies of
emotion. Whether the linking of structural and metaphorical models reveals any new
insights remains to be seen.
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