**Historical Context:**
– Coined by Michael Southworth and popularized by R. Murray Schafer.
– World Soundscape Project initiated by Schafer in the 1960s.
– Term used in publications before Southworth’s project.
– Schafer applied the concept in music education.
– Further research needed for a detailed historical background.
**Music and Soundscape:**
– Soundscape compositions often in electronic or electroacoustic music.
– Composers like Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Petri Kuljuntausta known for soundscapes.
– Irv Teibel’s Environments series featured environmental soundscapes.
– Automated software methods can generate music soundscapes.
– Tuvan throat singing mimics soundscape timbres.
**Environmental Soundscape:**
– Schafer identified hi-fi and lo-fi soundscapes.
– Rural areas have more hi-fi frequencies compared to cities.
– Elements of soundscape include keynote sounds, sound signals, and soundmarks.
– Acoustic environment perceived by humans includes natural and human-created sounds.
– Disruption leads to noise pollution.
**Positive Effects of Sound on Health:**
– Recent studies show positive effects of nature sounds and music on health.
– Nature sounds beneficial in urban planning and health treatments.
– Noise correlated with stress, reduced sleep, and cardiovascular disease.
– EU and WHO acknowledge negative effects of noise.
– Shift towards holistic soundscape approach in noise pollution research.
**National Park Service and Soundscapes:**
– NPS actively protects soundscapes in national parks.
– Acoustic resources in parks include natural and cultural sounds.
– Soundscape influences human perceptions and creates a sense of place.
– Cultural soundscapes preserve historic and cultural sounds in parks.
– Key terms related to soundscapes include acoustic resources, noise, and cultural soundscapes.
This article possibly contains original research. (July 2020) |
A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ranging from urban design to wildlife ecology to computer science. An important distinction is to separate soundscape from the broader acoustic environment. The acoustic environment is the combination of all the acoustic resources, natural and artificial, within a given area as modified by the environment. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standardized these definitions in 2014. (ISO 12913-1:2014)
A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology or soundscape ecology. The idea of soundscape refers to both the natural acoustic environment, consisting of natural sounds, including animal vocalizations, the collective habitat expression of which is now referred to as the biophony, and, for instance, the sounds of weather and other natural elements, now referred to as the geophony; and environmental sounds created by humans, the anthropophony through a sub-set called controlled sound, such as musical composition, sound design, and language, work, and sounds of mechanical origin resulting from use of industrial technology. Crucially, the term soundscape also includes the listener's perception of sounds heard as an environment: "how that environment is understood by those living within it" and therefore mediates their relations. The disruption of these acoustic environments results in noise pollution.
The term "soundscape" can also refer to an audio recording or performance of sounds that create the sensation of experiencing a particular acoustic environment, or compositions created using the found sounds of an acoustic environment, either exclusively or in conjunction with musical performances.
Pauline Oliveros, composer of post-World War II electronic art music, defined the term "soundscape" as "All of the waveforms faithfully transmitted to our audio cortex by the ear and its mechanisms".
