The Listening Experience of Paramnesia

The commissioned chapter is a detailed analysis of the thought processes and structural decisions made during the composition of my acousmatic piece Paramnesia, emphasising the important connection between spectromorphological development and connotations evoked by real or imagined environmental sound events. The analysis has been carried out with scrupulous attention to detail, and addresses the philosophy, technology, aesthetic and methodology of the composition, in a style that is clear and comprehensible to a broad audience.

The text focuses on the merging of the spectromorphological thought and soundscape composition. Sonic qualities, imaginative elements and extra-musical meanings coalesce into one connected whole, contesting a divergence between acousmatic and soundscape music, and between the role of abstraction and contextual immersion. The analytic text enhances understanding in the related composition fields, and considers our view of encoding and interpreting information; it suggests that environmental sounds are not necessarily tied to their interpretation in contexts where spectromorphologies make us unsure about the reality of the source and cause of sounds, or when memory distorts interpretation, thus presenting an enriched perspective on listening, perception and composing.