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The Sound Evaluation Process and the Listening Experience
The only resource the listener has to assist in the evaluation of sound is their knowledge and experience. The listener will rely on his/her immediate and past listening experiences to analyze recorded/reproduced sound. Relating what they hear to their knowledge and experience, the listener is able to make observations about, and to define the sound material.
The evaluation process will follow the sequence of activities: (1) perception of the element of sound, or the activity of material, to be analyzed, at a defined focus or perspective, (2) recognizing the material, (3) defining material, and (4) observing the states or treatments present in the material or its activity, or between the element and the musical context.
The evaluation of sound begins with the perception of the sound event or sound object. A sound event can be any sound, aspect of sound, or sequence(s) of sounds that can be recognized as forming a single unit. The event may be at any hierarchical level of musical context or of sound quality analysis: from a distant perspective (such as the shape of the overall piece of music) to a close perspective of a focus on some nuance (such as a small change of the spectral content of timbre), but the sound event must have a defined perspective. Each sound analysis will have its own focus on perspective that must be well defined in the listener's mind.
Next, the listener must recognize and, in some way, identify the sound event. This act is necessary to differentiate the event from the material that precedes it, follows it, or is occurring simultaneously with the sound event. The sound event will have parameters within which it exists, and through which it is defined. It will have points in time where it begins and ends. It will be perceived within the musical/communications context, or in isolation. The sound event will be defined by the unique states and activities of the components of sound.
Whatever the content of the sound event, the listener must perceive the sound event as a single unit, that is in need of definition, and is capable of being evaluated. This will be accomplished through identifying and recognizing the boundaries within which the sound event exists.
Third, the sound event is defined by the listener through scanning their perception of the sound event, in their immediate and short-term memories. The definition process seeks to compile information on the sound event. The sound event is defined by the activities or unique qualities of the materials that caused the sound event to be recognized as being separate and distinct from the materials that preceded it, succeeded it, and/or that occurred simultaneously with the sound event. The definition of this activity is often the most difficult task of analyzing a sound event.
Any number of repeated listenings to the sound event will be needed to extract all of the information pertinent to defining the sound event. The skills required to define the sound event will need to be developed. As the listener acquires greater evaluation and listening skills, the number of listenings required to define a sound event are reduced significantly.
The final step is to seek to make sense of the information that was accumulated through defining the sound event. Meaningful observations are made by comparing the information that defined the sound event, to sound events the listener has previously experienced. The listener will use both long- and short-term memory to compare sound events recently experienced, and events that are well-known to the listener. These other sound events are evaluated for their relationship to the defined sound event. The listener will be looking for same, similar and dissimilar states of activity and other attributes in the other known sound sources, as those that defined the sound source, to assist in making meaningful observations about the sound event. The process of evaluating the sound event will be completed when the listener has compiled enough detailed information to make all meaningful observations required of the event and its context.
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