acquired sounds

Musique concrete != field recording != found sounds. This may be obvious to some, wrong to others, and irrelevant to others still, but here I clarify what I mean. Consider what I write here to be pins in a map, at best approximating locations rather that precise, specific points; please feel free to correct me when/where necessary.

“Musique concrete” describes a lot of things, but a simple take-away is that it is the awareness/exploration of the musicality of actual (concrete) sounds, and extracting that musicality as the basis of a compositional practice. Working with this idea inevitably leads to recording sounds in the actual world, but the end purpose of this recording is different from that of field recording.

“Field recording” also describes a lot of things, but a take-away here is to think of it as the practice of preserving the acoustic characteristics of a given space, or “field”. This practice relates to the ideas of acoustic ecology and active listening; however there are many of examples of people using field recordings as compositional material.

“Found sounds” are simply that: Sounds that just happen to be lying around/happening somewhere. Of course one can easily make connections between the idea of found sound and  musique concrete/field recording; overlap between each of these is inevitable. A take-away from this idea is that there is no intentionality about the use of these sounds. They simply exist without any relationship between them.

As an attempt to bring all of these ideas together in a way I find manageable, I prefer the use of the term “acquired sounds”. This is a simple working title for the entire lot of ideas, as well as a title that implies an intentionality of use, meaning that one “acquires” these sounds for the express purpose of using them as compositional material. This leaves the compositional methodology/ies used out of the picture, which I find more practical at the moment.