TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORK FOR ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC MUSIC ANALYSIS

Computers have become instrumental in creating electro-acoustic music. However, they have not yet significantly augmented our ability to gain insight into the music itself. This is not surprising as music analysis in general is greatly facilitated by the availability of a “score,” and the majority of electro-acoustic music pieces, many of which are timbre-centric, in fact have no score. In response to this situation we have been motivated to undertake research with the purpose of gaining a greater understanding of timbre in order to aid in the analysis of electro-acoustic music. We have taken a twofold approach—exploitation of computer-based music information retrieval (MIR) techniques and the development of a comprehensive methodology for analysis. The software portion consists of a “click-and-go” GUI called the EASY (Electro-Acoustic muSic analYsis) Toolbox. The methodological component is called SQEMA (Systematic and Quantitative Electroacoustic Music Analysis). In this paper we will focus on updates to EASY and SQEMA and discuss our goal of integrating the two. We will also present new research into a technique we call companded listening and a feature vector called sensory dissonance analysis. Finally, we will present new results of studies using SQEMA and EASY in analyzing classic electro-acoustic works.