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Atoms and errors: towards a history and aesthetics of microsound

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2004

PHIL THOMSON
PHIL THOMSON
Affiliation:
School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6 E-mail: philthom@freeshell.org, pthomson@sfu.ca URL: http://www.sfu.ca/~pthomson/
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Abstract

Microsound is an emerging approach to music composition and analysis which places emphasis on extremely brief time-scales, usually a tenth of a second or less, as well as an integration of this micro-time level with the time-levels of sound gestures, sections, movements and whole pieces. This paper summarises some of the technical issues involved in microsonic analysis/composition, traces a history of microsonic techniques in contemporary music, and examines some of its aesthetic implications in a social context.

Type
Research Article
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , August 2004 , pp. 207 - 218
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2004

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Footnotes

I wish to acknowledge the careful supervision of Barry Truax in the writing of an earlier version of this paper, as well as the .microsound email list (www.microsound.org) for providing information and helping me to formulate some of the ideas advanced in this paper.