Synchronous sound : strategies for collective sound generation and dispersion
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Synchronization plays a critical role in the way in which we perceive sound in the natural world. In many scenarios, the auditory environment is constructed from an aggregation of coordinative and interactive behaviors that give rise to emergent sonic phenomena such as the self-organizing stridulations from a field of crickets, the urban noise surrounding a city metro stop, or the dense sonic timbres from crowd applause at the concert hall. Different models of synchronization can be utilized to analyze, recreate, and perceptually evaluate the collective dynamics of these types of phenomena. I first provide an overview of novel generative and perceptual approaches for synthesis and design applications using "coupled-oscillator" models and then propose methods for applying them to sound generation techniques more broadly. I discuss several mathematical models that simulate dynamics associated with self-synchronizing phenomena and examine different analysis techniques from relevant literature. The second part of my work concerns the "Collective Rhythms Toolbox", an open-source software toolkit for sound generation that allows users to interact with these synchronous systems. Different sonification paradigms and real-time parameterization encourage flexibility, experimentation, and cross-platform accessibility. The third part of the dissertation is a series of behavioral studies that attempt to characterize how humans extract beat when listening to swarms of sounds containing various levels of synchrony. More specifically these sensorimotor synchronization studies (SMS) concern how entrainment arises when subjects are asked to tap to stimuli synthesized from an ensemble of coupled metronome sounds with different coupling strengths. While participants were better able to extract beat when tapping to sounds containing more coupling, results also suggested that they depart from more regular beat extraction routines to accommodate stimuli with less coupling; when stimuli coupling was decreased, more participants began to tap at a faster rate and subjects were categorized into one of three tap strategy groups accordingly. In a second SMS study, I consider the effects of timbre by allowing individual metronomes to take on slight timbral variation. In this "metronome cocktail party", fewer participants resorted to frequent tapping during tap trials which suggests that differences in metronome timbres facilitated more regular beat extraction. Given that coupled systems model both musical interaction in a group setting and the production of sound in the environment, these studies provide a first glimpse into how beat is extracted in rhythmic swarms comprised of phase-locked sound onsets. Lastly, I detail the ways one can design for collective synchrony as a compositional paradigm to create immersive soundscapes. My own artistic work employing such approaches to sound design is presented alongside this research as a form of applied practice.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Lem, Nolan Vincent |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Chafe, Chris |
| Thesis advisor | Chafe, Chris |
| Thesis advisor | DeMarinis, Paul, 1949- |
| Thesis advisor | Fujioka, Takako |
| Degree committee member | DeMarinis, Paul, 1949- |
| Degree committee member | Fujioka, Takako |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Music |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Nolan Lem. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Music. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/df594cr6184 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Nolan Vincent Lem
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