Mimetic Instrumental Resynthesis

Abstract

This article provides a brief survey of composition in which field recordings or other referential sounds are transcribed for acoustic instruments. Through a discussion of how electroacoustic music and scholarship have conceptualised the notion of mimesis, and how various forms of contemporary acoustic music have adopted electroacoustic techniques, it identifies a recent musical practice in which these concerns are brought together. The article proposes the term mimetic instrumental resynthesis as a way of describing the common threads behind works that employ electronic-assisted or computer-assisted techniques towards instrumental imitations of environmental and extra-musical sounds. The article also highlights some of the conceptual and aesthetic questions emerging from such a practice, including the idea of transformation, issues of referentiality, listening, the influence of different technologies and their aesthetic implications, and the tension between abstract and concrete conceptions of the works discussed. Finally, the article raises concerns surrounding the language of discussing what is necessarily an interdisciplinary venture.

Spectral Music and the Appeal to Nature

“…114 I have argued that the juxtaposition of the source sounds with their instrumental imitations serves to strengthen the mimetic aspect, suggesting that 'the presence of recorded environmental sounds dramatically increases the likelihood that a listener will draw a relationship between these sounds and their instrumental imitations' . 115 With Mâche's pioneering efforts as an exception, it may also be worth mentioning that the early focus on instrumental sound-sources as models in instrumental resynthesis could have been partly the result of the technological limitations of the time. Donin has suggested that '[t]he increasing use of this kind of technique by composers in the two last decades reveals the gradual transition of musical material from analogic to digital reproducibility: the more powerful and user-friendly computer-assisted composition tools become, the more variable in length and nature samples become' .…”

“…116 Indeed, a new generation of composers appear to share some aspects of Mâche's approach. Composers such as Peter Ablinger, 117 Aaron Einbond, 118 Alec Hall, 119 Chaz Underriner, 120 Charles-Antoine Fréchette, 121 and myself 122 have each developed bodies of work employing the spectral instrumental resynthesis technique while situating their aesthetic specifically around mimetic concerns. In that sense, their work and their understanding of 'nature' departs from the focus of the spectral school but owes much to its methods and perspectives.…”

The Sound-Poetry of the Instability of Reality: The audio reality effect and mimesis

“…Until the advent of high-definition recording, music was largely concerned with non-representational constructions using conventions of pitches and rhythms (Wishart 1996: 130). From antiquity until the twentieth century, the so-called ‘lattice structure’ of pitches and rhythms dominated musical thought over using the continuum of real-world sounds (Wishart 1996: 130) despite the rich history of art music that explored the imitation of natural sounds (O’Callaghan 2015: 232). In the twentieth century, ‘the advent of recorded sound as a compositional medium … significantly expanded the possibilities of mimetic discourse in music’ (O’Callaghan 2015: 232), particularly in the works of Pierre Schaeffer and John Cage in the middle of the century.…”