2. REFLECTIONS ON SMALLEY’S THEORY

Smalley’s Reference Smalley1997 article on electroacoustic soundshapes was categorical and highly specialised. James O’Callaghan notes that spectromorphology ‘has codified a formal taxonomy of the genre’ and that it is a rigorous ‘acousmatic method for examining the formal properties of sound’ (O’Callaghan Reference O’Callaghan2011: 54, 56). The article presented seven major spectromorphological categories: sound-shape gesture function (onset–continuation–termination); motion and growth processes; motion character; texture behaviour; motion passage and coordination; spectra ontology (harmonicity–inharmonicity; granular versus saturate noise); and spectral density. Smalley (Reference Smalley1997) expressly stated that his taxonomy cannot deal adequately with electroacoustic music that is ‘strongly anecdotal or programmatic’ – there is no category for quotation, pastiche or other kinds of sonic reference (Smalley Reference Smalley1997: 109).

However, it has also been acknowledged that Smalley departed from the acousmatic tradition just as much as he built upon it (Norris Reference Norris1998; Tanzi Reference Tanzi2011), and spectromorphology can certainly be deployed eloquently in analyses of non-electroacoustic music. The concepts of source-bonding and intrinsic–extrinsic coupling reveal that Smalley has never subscribed to the Schaefferian orthodoxy of reduced listening, whereby the formal properties of sounds are divorced from their sources and causes (cf. Windsor Reference Windsor2000). In a recent keynote presentation, Smalley (Reference Smalley2016) argued that source-bonding is in fact an involuntary perceptual-mental process. Even though we might fight against it, we have an inherent tendency to perceive or attempt to perceive the source of a sound and what is going on in a given auditory situation. Smalley (Reference Smalley2016) also re-orientated spectromorphology towards programmatic instrumental music by dwelling on the feu d’artifice overture from Rameau’s opera Acante et Céphise. In this vein, Rameau’s rapid ascending string scales specify the fling and flight of fireworks, whereas the percussive attack-decay of an unpitched drum specifies their explosion.Footnote ¹ When used to describe musical motion and contrast in the service of specific interpretations, spectromorphology vocabulary can be a nuanced and lucid tool.

One of the most notable critical engagements with Smalley’s space-form paper from recent years can be found in Born (Reference Born2013). On the one hand, Born lauds the manner in which Smalley’s space-form terms are derived from an auto-ethnographic account of a specific acoustic ecology (an environmental soundscape in Fabrezan, France). She states that the acuity of Smalley’s taxonomy compares favourably to Don Ihde’s ‘a-historical, a-social phenomenology of sound’ since it acknowledges ‘the spatiality of both sound’s technological mediation and its social mediation in performance’ (Born Reference Born2013: 14). Yet for Born, Smalley does not develop these elements sufficiently, and she casts space-form as an important and imaginative but flawed attempt to form universal principles. The descriptors drawn from Smalley’s situated sonic experience in rural France include perspectival words such as distal, panoramic and nested, but for Born they become marked by objectivism when abstracted into categories. In this vein, the terminology is seen to lose touch with the contingent nature of sonic perception, which resists universalisation. Ultimately, Smalley’s space-form taxonomy is described as ‘an expanded, if rigorous and elegant, sonic formalism’ that both identifies and valorises the formalist qualities of electroacoustic art music (ibid.: 14).

Born’s critique is valuable, but it is important to consider other engagements with space-form that suggest alternative perspectives. Although space-form can certainly be understood as the ‘language’ or ‘tonality’ of electroacoustic composition, Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen have shown that it is also a pivotal aspect of commercial music production (Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen Reference Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen2013: 72). In the digital era, popular music producers generally and EDM producers in particular have often moved beyond Euclidean types of ‘mix space’ or ‘the sound-box’ (Dockwray and Moore Reference Dockwray and Moore2010) by creating spatial environments that defy normative boundaries, or by conjuring various types of spatial surrealism (Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen Reference Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen2013: 73). As in electroacoustic music, this spatial malleability is aesthetically salient and can be acutely affective. Indeed, it is possible to experience the sonic spatiality of certain studio productions as a kind of human-like subjectivity, or as the embodiment of ‘psychic space’ (Clarke Reference Clarke2013: 108). In this vein, space-form words such as levitation, gravitation, transcendence and containment might be understood in both perspectival and psychological terms at once. Notwithstanding the quasi-objectivism of Smalley’s space-form inventory and its provenance in the electroacoustic sphere, his terms can be said to highlight affective ways of knowing through sound that straddle art music and commercial productions. Moreover, it is possible to build upon and re-orientate Smalley’s theory by turning to a meta-field in which ways of knowing through sound are the primary concern.

3. TOWARDS A HYBRID ACOUSTEMOLOGY

The neologism ‘acoustemology’ was coined by the ethnomusicologist Steven Feld as a result of his fieldwork in the Bosavi rainforest region of Papua New Guinea (e.g. Feld Reference Feld1996). By conjoining ‘acoustics’ and ‘epistemology’, acoustemology ‘inquires into what is knowable, and how it comes to be known, through sounding and listening’ (Feld Reference Feld2015: 12). Acoustemology is a highly relevant counterpart to Smalley’s work since it constitutes a spatial and environmental conception of sound that emphasises situated listening and source-bonding. Moreover, it is possible to identify two central strands at the heart of Feld’s acoustemology that point the way towards a hybrid model.

In this reading, the first strand of acoustemology foregrounds recognition and relationality. Feld explains that Bosavi rainforest children are able to identify a bird by its sound in a matter of seconds, and that this act of recognition comes bundled with all manner of knowledge about the bird’s habits, its relationship with other species and its distinctive place in the rainforest as a whole. This way of knowing through sound is fuelled by perceptual learning and an awareness of conventional sonic patterns or attributes. It relies on the existence of a meaningful vocabulary of sounds, and in some ways the first strand of acoustemology posits that sounds function as signs since they point towards a familiar entity. Such a sentiment casts the first strand as a sort of semiotics, but one that is not fixed or essentialist. The Bosavi rainforest ecosystem might be considered as a ‘dynamic sign system subject to change’ (Tagg Reference Tagg2012: 159) or as a universe of sonic texts in which each one is characterised by an immanent intertextuality (Monelle Reference Monelle2000: 150). This intertextuality also holds true for the sounds used by music producers. Tagg (Reference Tagg2012) introduces the term ‘etymophony’ to show that specific musical elements gather genre associations over time, while his more cumbersome phrase ‘paramusical field of connotation’ (PMFC) describes how we might associate sounds with certain types of behaviour or places. In short, the first strand of acoustemology focuses on how sounds convey various associations: it concerns semantic ways of knowing through sound.

Notwithstanding this, Feld also stresses that ‘acoustemology asks how the physicality of sound is so instantly and forcefully present to experience and experiencers’ (Feld Reference Feld2015: 12). Within the field of music psychology, Juslin and Västfjäll (Reference Juslin and Västfjäll2008) have highlighted quick-and-dirty auditory processing by referring to a brain stem reflex mechanism. This response is quick, automatic and unlearned, producing an increased activation of the central nervous system. It is commonly prompted by sudden sonic contrast or by sounds that are loud, dissonant or the result of strong force. Brain stem reflexes are an especially important consideration in terms of percussive elements in electronic dance music, as is rhythmic entrainment, which occurs when ‘the rhythm in the music influences some bodily rhythm of the listener, such as heart rate’ (Juslin Reference Juslin2013: 241).

More broadly, it is clear that the semantic strand of acoustemology is thoroughly entangled with a second, somantic strand. Sound is somatically sense-making through embodied perception. Cumming (Reference Cumming1997) stresses that we do not usually listen in an isolated cocoon but are thoroughly involved in the sound-making process and thus play the music as a listener. This internalisation is probably facilitated by the mirror neuron system, which was first discovered in macaque monkeys (Di Pellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese and Rizzolatti Reference Di Pellegrino, Fadiga, Fogassi, Gallese and Rizzolatti1992). In the simplest terms, when we observe someone else performing an action, ‘mirror’ neurons can fire in motor areas of our brain that are usually required for carrying out the same action. In the case of recorded music, where there are no real-world visual cues, mirror neuron research supports Smalley’s idea that we are prone to perceive sounds in terms of their apparent gestural causation. It is unlikely that this processing is wholly intuitive, however. Individuals who repeatedly perform a certain type of action can show a higher level of neural activity when it is passively encountered than those unacquainted with it. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Bangert et al. (Reference Bangert, Peschel, Schlaug, Rotte, Drescher and Hinrichs2006) found that trained pianists demonstrated greater neural activity than non-pianists when both groups listened to recorded piano sounds through headphones.

Whilst mirror neurons are undoubtedly significant, music might also be considered in terms of plenisentience (Stuart Reference Stuart2011), since we often hear, see and feel it happening all at once. In this vein, the somantic strand of acoustemology develops the reference to transmodal perception in Smalley (Reference Smalley2007: 39) and responds to the research on crossmodal correspondences conducted by Spence (Reference Spence2011) and colleagues. There are several terms within the somantic strand that need to be carefully re-examined before they are used in an analysis: these are proprioception, kinaesthesia, synaesthesia, haptic and tactile. Following Smalley (Reference Smalley2007) and Acitores (Reference Acitores2011), the crucial word to use in conjunction with proprioception is ‘muscles’ – it is the inner perception of muscular effort and body weight. The term ‘kinaesthesia’, on the other hand, concerns spatial and dynamic perception. The word was coined by Henry Bastian in 1880 and refers to the sensing of movement and spatial positioning. Yet to complicate matters, kinaesthesia is often used to refer to sensations of muscle tension in place of proprioception: this reversal can be found in Sheets-Johnstone (Reference Sheets-Johnstone1999), in Gabrielsson and Wik (Reference Gabrielsson and Wik2003) and in The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance. There may be something to be gained from the slipperiness between the two terms, however, since proprioception and kinaesthesia are certainly entwined and often occur simultaneously. Synaesthesia is often used as a catchall term for crossmodal perception, since it literally connotes a ‘joining of the senses’ (Melara and O’Brien Reference Melara and O’Brien1987), but it is also used in a more restricted sense by musicians to refer to the perception of specific colours for different chords, keys or sonorities. I use the term to refer to sonic sensations of light and shade rather than particular sound-colours. Finally, it is preferable to identify another partial distinction between the words ‘haptic’ and ‘tactile’, both of which are often used in discussions how sound can engage our sense of touch (e.g. Garcia Reference Garcia2015). Strictly speaking, the term ‘haptic’ should only be used to refer to active touch (it commonly denotes the manual exploration of materials in crossmodal perception studies) whereas tactile may refer to either active or passive touch (Etzi, Spence, Zampini and Gallace Reference Etzi, Spence, Zampini and Gallace2016). In view of this, it is probably better to use the term ‘tactile’ when discussing the textural feel of sound, although haptic might be used too when discussing the manual production of sound by instrumentalists.

Crucially, Clarke (Reference Clarke2013) considers a further dimension of sonic tactility by arguing that it can afford pragmatic actions and psychological states. Focusing on the crossmodal perception of glassy sounds in the track Deer Stop by Goldfrapp (2000), Clarke refers to an ecological acoustemology in the form of ‘what’s going on?’ and ‘what to do/feel about it’. The glassy sounds that are ‘going on’ are taken to directly specify brittleness and the feeling of vulnerability. The feeling of vulnerability may arise instantaneously, but this is described in a very short-circuited way, and it is helpful to realise that ‘the key process in Clarke’s work is threefold’ rather than twofold (Moore Reference Moore2012: 243). Acknowledging ecological theory’s genealogical debt to Charles Sanders Peirce, as described by Reybrouck (Reference Reybrouck2012),Footnote ² it might be said that the glassy sounds specify a brittle felt quality via tactile perception and that this intermediary affords an ad hoc psychological state of vulnerability. Despite this moot point, it is more important to acknowledge the manner in which Clarke’s acoustemology is not unidirectional but is instead predicated on the bidirectional mutualism of the perceiving listener and the sonic environment. In order to identify the sounds as glassy, the listener must draw upon previous perceptual encounters with this material (perceptual learning). Crucially, the link between brittleness and vulnerability is a conceptual metaphor in which we make sense of one domain of experience (embodied, material, spatial experience) in terms of another domain of a different kind (psychic, emotional experience) (Johnson Reference Johnson1987: 15).

Holistically, the somantic strand of acoustemology can be visualised through a kind of three-in-two Venn figure (see Figure 1). ‘What’s going on’ gives rise to an intermediary ‘How it feels/ sounds/ appears’ stage by way of specification. This may afford a pragmatic action or psychological state by way of a further stage, labelled ‘What to do/feel about it’. Smalley’s spectromorphology and space-form can be integrated into this three-in-two formulation to create the foundation of a hybrid acoustemology. Spectromorphological processes such as cyclic rotation, agglomeration and streaming often constitute ‘What’s going on’ in recorded music, although it would be more precise to say that they span ‘What’s going on’ and ‘How it feels/sounds/appears’.Footnote ³ Moreover, the seven categories of spectromorphology specify the felt qualities of space-form: prolonged continuant morphologies, for instance, can sound like a kind of ‘aeriform presence’ specifying the ‘periphery’ of panoramic space (Smalley Reference Smalley2007: 47). The intermediary of space-form may then afford pragmatic actions and psychological states, although in some cases space-form might actually seem to constitute ‘psychic space’ per se (Clarke Reference Clarke2013: 108). The permeability between space-form and psychological experience is perhaps best demonstrated by the term ‘transcendence’, which can also be found in the descriptive system for strong experiences with music (SEM) compiled by Gabrielsson and Wik (Reference Gabrielsson and Wik2003). In this context, transcendence is used as a descriptor for musical encounters that somehow surpass common experience and are variously heavenly, extra-terrestrial, out-of-body, all-encompassing, cosmic or other worldly (Gabrielssson and Wik Reference Gabrielsson and Wik2003: 181–2). With this in mind, space-form is a key site of acoustemological enquiry, in terms of both crossmodal felt qualities and more holistic experiential states or behaviours.

Figure 1 Integrating Smalley (Reference Smalley1997, Reference Smalley2007) into the somantic strand of acoustemology.

Notwithstanding this theoretical formulation, the model should be trialled and assessed through an empirical case study. In order to get a sense of acoustemology in action, it is productive to choose an example whereby space-form permeates participatory cyberspaces. The Internet generally and YouTube in particular are rich sources of qualitative data relating to music, and comments on EDM uploads often report powerful ways of knowing through sound. The trance/breakbeat track Finished Symphony by Hybrid (1999) has been chosen as a case study in order to explore how classic EDM generates acoustemologies anew via the social web. In the analysis that follows, user comments are selected from two YouTube uploads comprising two different versions of Hybrid’s track (distinctiverecords 2011; IndependenceHD 2011). They are coded deductively (‘top-down’) using an abbreviated version of Gabrielsson and Wik’s SEM inventory, which is reproduced in Table 1 and uses numerical markers in the form [1.1]. Following the main analysis section,Footnote ⁴ a wider array of comments on Finished Symphony uploads are collected for inductive content analysis. This ‘bottom-up’ work with a richer dataset highlights some larger issues relating to the words we use for music and sound.

Table 1 Abbreviated SEM descriptive system (from Gabrielsson and Wik Reference Gabrielsson and Wik2003).

Copyright © 2003 by ESCOM European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Ltd.

4. A HYBRID ACOUSTEMOLOGY OF FINISHED SYMPHONY

4.1. The first 29 seconds

Finished Symphony begins with a muffled bass-guitar-like loop: it seems to be contained within a distal space that is nested and occluded from view. The loop seems to emerge from below the threshold of hearing and then it gradually approaches us, since high-pass EQ filtering attenuates higher frequencies. Conversely, the onset of delicate, tinnitus-like tingling at 0.09 seems to be almost above the threshold of hearing in the canopy of the spectral frame, like some kind of ethereal aeriform presence watching over us. This high-pitched tingling is followed by swooping parabolic sound-effects (from 0.12 to 0.14) that catalyse dilation, a multidirectional growth process. Immediately after the sound-effects we become aware of an undulating keyboard loop at 0.15 together with a high-frequency bleeping signal (heard on the second beat of each bar). The regular periodicity of the layered loops may well encourage slight rhythmic entrainment, while at 0.17 and 0.20 we feel – rather than hear, perhaps – the subliminal presence of a saxophone. A YouTube user comments as follows:

That loop of bells (or keyboard) that starts from the beginning and really shines at 1:10 is an incredibly feel good tone [1.1]. That shit makes me want to leave my body and exit through my eyes [3.7, 6.2]. Into a world made of warm and soft lighting [3.6], free emotions [5.4], and the essence of chill [4.2].

It might well be the non-rooted, floating motion character of the keyboard loop that contributes to this weightless, disembodied acoustemology. The ‘essence of chill’ and ‘feel good tone’ described by the YouTube user are perhaps achieved via the semantic strand as well as the somantic strand, however. The keyboard loop has an etymophony that hearkens to soulful, easy-going smooth jazz. On the forum Whosampled.com, it has even been cited (perhaps falsely) as a direct sample of the opening keyboard hook from Touchdown by Bob James (1978). The jazzy heritage of the subliminal saxophone could also be understood to contribute to this acoustemology. Lastly, the synaesthesic perception of ‘warm and soft lighting’ is perhaps also experienced due to the translucency of spectral density. A sonogram shows a relative lack of low-mid frequencies in the 350–600Hz range.

Notwithstanding this chilled-out, out-of-body, feel-good acoustemology, the opening of Finished Symphony might also warrant a more overtly galactic interpretation. YouTube comments such as ‘I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE [4.6]’ and ‘I CAN SEE THE EARTH ROTATING [4.6]’ suggest that the various sound-shapes of the opening passage specify an elevated space or even a circumspace that revolves around. Additionally, the listener might be virtually teleported into space if they perceive the parabolic sound-effects in semantic terms as a sci-fi trope alongside the conventionalised satellite connotations of the bleeping signal (cf. Windsor Reference Windsor2000). At 0.25, a compressed high-pass EQ sweep specifies levitation and this might be perceived as a kind of zero-gravity lift-off conceit before the grounding entry of the lower strings at 0.29.

Alternatively, despite the vivid imagery considered thus far, the opening of Finished Symphony might actually create a rewarding yet intangible acoustemology that rather evades description in words. One YouTube comment reads ‘i love the first 40 seconds…[5.2] oh god how subtle [3.7, 1.2]’. A précis of the track’s opening is provided in Table 2.

Table 2 Précis of 0.00–0.29

4.3. Cathartic breakdown

Following the breakbeats, there is a breakdown passage beginning at 4.49, whereupon the planar motion of prolonged string chords specifies a wide-reaching panoramic space. The chords unfold with voluntary rather than pressured motion passage, and having been previously entrained to a vigorous pulse, there is now ‘this marvellous sense of suddenly staying still’ as well as ‘the feeling of something extraordinary having occurred earlier’ (Goehr Reference Goehr2008: 36–7). The panoramic space might afford a psychological state of catharsis – not as in a gushy purgation but rather in the original Aristotelian sense of clarification and completion (Pappas Reference Pappas2005: 18). All is laid bare, as it were. In the Clubber’s Guide version of Finished Symphony, the breakdown also sounds like the track’s definitive concluding remark, since the sub-bass groove (5.44 ff.) is not allowed to run its full course when the next track starts to mix in at 6.25. The following comment, posted in both Italian and English, would seem to convey a strong experience of cathartic self-actualisation:

THANK YOU VERY MUCH HYBRID, this Music is my dream, my life, my finished symphony. Always in my ear and in my heart [7.3].

Although Feld (Reference Feld2015: 12) is at pains to stress that acoustemology only ever invokes epistemology with a small ‘e’ and is not concerned with truth content, this comment suggests that its scope might be tentatively augmented. On the other hand, the commenter’s powerful experience with the track may well belie a highly significant SEM code that has haunted the entire discussion: associations, memories and thoughts [4.5]. Similarly, my analysis has so far omitted consideration of two pivotal mechanisms identified by Juslin and Västfjäll: evaluative conditioning, which refers to ‘a process whereby an emotion is induced by a piece of music simply because it has been paired repeatedly with other positive or negative stimuli’; and episodic memory, which induces emotion because ‘the music evokes a memory of a particular event in the listener’s life’ (Juslin and Västfjäll Reference Juslin and Västfjäll2008: 564, 567). In the following account, it seems that a powerful feedback loop affects the parasympathetic nervous system of the commenter:

Makes me cry everytime [2.1]. This song is so damn beautiful [1.2]. Very nostalgic too, I remember playing SSX Tricky Untracked at my old house just for this song [4.5] [5.1].

The interesting aspect of this comment is the manner in which Finished Symphony evokes a specific time and place as well as an interactive virtual environment. The YouTube user’s acoustemological experience is conditioned both by happy domestic memories and by Finished Symphony’s prominent role in the Sony PlayStation 2 games SSX (2000) and SSX Tricky (2001). Both of these popular snowboarding games featured a free-ride level called ‘Untracked’ which was unlocked once the main stages of the game were completed. In SSX Tricky, a voiceover heard during the introduction to the level variously announced ‘this is the cherry on top – chew it slowly’ (see Ninsegalover 2012: 0.51) and ‘enjoy it – you’ve earned it’ (see zedk8 2014: 1.17). Significantly, Finished Symphony was the soundtrack for the Untracked gameplay and as such may well have been associated with reward. Yet the use of Hybrid’s music in this level of the game is arguably more than a matter of positive valence. Before the gameplay commenced, the level’s introductory cut scene featured sweeping aerial shots of the snowy mountain course synchronised with the first orchestral passage. As such, the visuals attenuated lofty, sublime facets of the orchestral sound as well as the floating motion character of the violin refrain and the sense of an elevated circumspace. The breakbeats, on the other hand, kicked in abruptly when the player jumped out of a helicopter at the end of the cut scene and boarded down the mountain during the gameplay proper. With this audiovisual sync, the groove’s affordance of riding (Butler Reference Butler2014) was made explicit. Moreover, whenever the player jumped skywards to perform tricks, the volume of the breaks decreased significantly and the player’s flight through the air was matched with high-pass wind effects. When each trick was landed, the sudden return of the groove constituted earthbound rootedness: it was quite literally grounding. Summers (Reference Summers2016: 191) explains that in playing SSX Tricky, the gamer was ‘also somehow simultaneously “playing” the music’. This interactive acoustemology proved to be both empowering and memorable. The last YouTube comment certainly seems to speak of playing the game in order to play Finished Symphony.

Holistically, it is important to remember that a range of associations may significantly condition acousmatic experiences of music if it has been previously encountered in non-acousmatic contexts.Footnote ⁵ Rewinding slightly, it may well be the case that the YouTube comment referring to a ‘punch him in the face type feeling’ is partially conditioned by another soundtrack usage, since in 2003 Finished Symphony featured as montage music for BBC Grandstand’s boxing coverage. Moreover, the comments ‘I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE’ and ‘I CAN SEE THE EARTH ROTATING’ cannot really be pigeonholed into a galactic interpretation, as previously suggested, since they are actually exclamations uttered by SSX characters during particularly high jumps. My own hearing of the initial space-form as a zero-gravity outer-space topic is in fact probably conditioned by vague memories of playing with toy spacecraft whilst listening to Finished Symphony in my childhood bedroom.

In order to further examine the significance of episodic memory and evaluative conditioning, a greater array of YouTube comments were collected and investigated through inductive content analysis. For the sampling procedure, modelled on Gal, Shifman and Kampf (Reference Gal, Shifman and Kampf2016), the string ‘Hybrid Finished Symphony’ was entered into YouTube’s search engine. This returned over 15,000 results, which were then filtered to exclude uploads of remixes by other producers, those without ‘Finished Symphony’ in the video title and those with less than 1,000 views. The subsequent sample comprised 35 YouTube uploads, with view counts ranging from 1,019 views to 338,064 views (at 11:31 on 5 January 2017). There were a total of 876 user comments on the sampled uploads: replies to initial comments were included in this count. The comment count was carried out manually in order to avoid including deleted comments (the YouTube counter does not always change when comments are deleted). Three uploads did not have any comments and so were excluded from the sample, reducing its size to 32 uploads. The majority of the comments (54%, n = 472) were from the upload published by Hybrid’s label distinctiverecords (2011), which also had the greatest number of views.

I identified the following themes through the content analysis: the aesthetic value of Finished Symphony and its status as a classic or masterpiece; affective responses and references to emotions; anime animations and characters; album artwork and upload artwork; BBC Grandstand’s boxing coverage; BBC Top Gear and driving; comments in other languages; deadmau5’s (2008) remix; different versions of Finished Symphony or the provenance of the best version; disagreement, trolling and abuse; drugs; genre or style references; live shows; memories, nostalgia and references to specific years or the passing of time; other music or artists; other soundtrack usages; physiological responses [SEM 2.1]; positive exclamations and expletives; pragmatic actions and aerobic activity; self-actualisation [SEM 4.5]; social togetherness through Finished Symphony; sonic elements or attributes and references to the track’s time-code; speechless or no words sufficient [SEM 1.2]; video games; vinyl.

Strikingly, over a quarter of the comments (27%, n = 239) referred to video games. This was just over double the size of the next biggest theme: comments referencing memories, nostalgia, specific years or the passing of time (13%, n = 114). Although the number of comments referring to sonic elements or the track’s time-code was by no means negligible (6%, n = 54), this was surpassed by references to different versions of Finished Symphony (7%, n = 63) and by comments that hailed Finished Symphony as a classic or masterpiece (7%, n = 65). The content analysis also revealed a significant level of disagreement, trolling and abuse (10%, n = 88) as well as many strong agreements and reportage of social togetherness through Finished Symphony (12%, n = 107), a finding that warrants further reflection. The full breakdown of results is shown in Table 3.

Table 3 Content analysis

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The content analysis should be considered as a small qualitative case study and the findings are indicative rather than conclusive. Nonetheless, it highlights the manner in which our subjective life experiences often affect the words we use relating to sound and music. Critically, it should be noted that my use of spectromorphology and space-form terms in the analysis could not be cordoned off from the reality of human subjectivity either. Working with Smalley’s vocabulary required a highly focused and self-reflective mode of listening as well as a great many rewinds of Finished Symphony. Although I tried to use the terms as accurately as I could, it is possible or even likely that Smalley or someone else would question some of the descriptive choices I made. Broadly speaking, it could be said that unmediated, unconditioned descriptions of sound and music are not possible and that we must acknowledge and reflect upon our own subjectivities as listeners. Juslin and Västfjäll (Reference Juslin and Västfjäll2008: 565) note that evaluative conditioning is often considered irrelevant to discussions of music or simply unworthy of study, but a hybrid acoustemology framework must embrace such mechanisms and investigate them rigorously.

The same sceptics that Juslin and Västfjäll allude to might also argue that YouTube comments are unworthy of study, or that they are simply an uninformative, spam-laden form of research data. I would argue that researchers should embrace and wrangle with the deluge of written data relating to sound and music that is readily available online and that YouTube comments are an important aspect of music reception in the digital age. Of more importance is the question of how this online work should be done. In future, qualitative coding could be complemented by a more wholesale quantitative strategy and social network analysis (SNA), for instance (e.g. Thelwall Reference Thelwall2009; Thelwall, Sud and Vis Reference Thelwall, Sud and Vis2012). It might also seem that the online study, far removed from the club dancefloor, undermines or contradicts my emphasis on embodied experiences and ecological sound environments. Following Hine (Reference Hine2015), I would argue that it is wrong to view online experience as disembodied and that we should regard EDM as a formidable multi-sited music, one that is nowadays perhaps more prominent as a transmedial phenomenon than as the music of club culture. During the ‘Dubstep Era’, EDM has spread like a ‘sonic meme’ (D’Errico Reference D’Errico2015): it has become embroiled with broadcast media, socio-political Internet practices, first-person shooter video games, and sometimes a mashed-up combination of all three (Spencer Reference Spencer2017). Writing about EDM in isolation or in its original or ‘authentic’ club context is rather blinkered and not unproblematic.

This brings us to a stark yet telling ontological ultimatum presented by Born (Reference Bornforthcoming): ‘(musical) sound appears to consist, intrinsically and extrinsically, all the way down (as it were), of nothing but mediations – indeed of non-linear, recursive mediations of mediations – of varying scale’. To put it another way, the case of Finished Symphony shows that ‘music is more than just music’ (Gabrielsson Reference Gabrielsson2011). In spite of the elusive, ever receding essence of music and sound, we have also seen that it can approach us as an anthropomorphic agent (Cumming Reference Cumming1997), one that conjures powerful private experiences as well as affective interpersonal alliances (Straw Reference Straw1991). Comment sections for Finished Symphony YouTube uploads consist of nested acoustemologies made public (cf. Born Reference Born2013), in order both to nourish collective millennial nostalgia (convergence) and to share other acoustemologies that lead in different directions (divergence). Pursuing a hybrid acoustemology has brought spectromorphology and space-form into contact with time and place as well as distributed forms of sociality.

One of the most intriguing interactions encountered during the data review begins with a YouTube user commenting as follows: ‘Snowboarding down a long run with [sic] whilst listening to this song has been on my bucket list for the last six years. After I’m done with University, Iam [sic] taking a year abroad in Canada and I’m determined to get this done whilst I’m there. Ill come back and edit this comment when I have achieved that.’ The acoustemological aspiration proves to be a highly contagious sentiment, with another user replying: ‘This is now on my bucket list. I wish all the best, man. Dominate those slopes for us!’ After a gap of eight months, the exchange continues with the two users reflecting on their similar age and circumstances. Additionally, a repeatedly encountered trope in the distinctiverecords (2011) comment section took the form of ‘__ brought me here’, such as ‘SSX brought me here’, ‘the soundtrack of Juiced brought me here’, and ‘my granddad brought me here’. This suggests that Finished Symphony might be best considered as an acoustemological nexus that connects myriad entities, experiences and relationships through diverse ways of knowing through sound. It is certainly more than just music.Footnote ⁶

Although re-orientating Smalley’s theories through a hybrid acoustemology may well have constituted an ‘irresponsible misreading’ (Smalley Reference Smalley2010: 93–4), there are two central points that might be gleaned from this study, the first of which concerns vantage point shifts (Smalley Reference Smalley2007: 52). Musical analysis in words has traditionally been written from a vantage point that remains fixed throughout the discussion, and more often than not this is that of the author. Acoustemology seeks to integrate an itinerant vantage point into analyses so that the focus is more on how something comes to be experienced through sound rather than what is experienced through sound. It also aims to show how individual experiences of music and sound are ‘subsumed in streams and collective motions’ (Smalley Reference Smalley1997: 109) by elucidating acoustemologies that are shared by a number of people. Crystallisation is therefore an important guiding principle, as are methodologies from the seemingly incongruent disciplines of psychology and anthropology, although further work is needed to ensure that the meta-field of acoustemology is more than the sum of its parts.

Secondly, and more speculatively, this study suggests that spectromorphology and space-form could usefully be reconfigured into parallel taxonomies for sound design. Acousmatic art music composition and soundtrack production are not as opposed as they might at first seem and increasingly are being taught alongside one another. Moreover, several electroacoustic composers are currently working with video game technologies to create interactive audiovisual environments and novel types of sonic spatiality that might be suited to virtual reality (VR) presentation (Climent Reference Climent2017; Stevens and Stavropoulos Reference Stevens and Stavropoulos2017). These developments open up exciting avenues for music and sound that remain to be fully theorised.