Eternal Beach (2008)

Pythagoras used “acousmatics” to define sound disconnected from its visual source. The term was later used by French theorist Jerôme Peignot  to describe musique concrète’s method of sampling sound in 1955.

“It was Pierre Schaeffer, the father of the French musique concrète school who developed the term further. He emphasized that a visual link between the sound source and its origin was not necessary and if anything, undesired.  Schaeffer believed sound sources were chosen based on timbral, rhythmic and textural qualities not on the visual connections implied… Schaeffer suggested that those who have rigorously trained their ears to listen morphologically become practitioners of écoute réduite or reduced listening. This process involves negating visual implications or reference from the mind. For instance, if I were to hear a locomotive whistle, I would not hear a train and visualize it, I would only hear the morphological qualities of its sound.” [1]

Eternal Beach explores the morphological qualities of a virtual beach with droning comfort to sleep to, meditate to or fill the silence.  Eternal Beach is synthesized ambience that will play forever, without the mess of sand, biting flies or overcast skies...

What are the “morphological” qualities of the sounds of the “eternal beach”?  Can they be attended to without an overarching narrative or without visual referents?

You can download your own copy here-
http://organicode.net/eternalBeach.pd

You will need Pure Data to run it (free)-
http://puredata.info

McFarlane, Matthew, The Development of Acousmatics in Montreal, http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/Quebec/McFarlane.html, (accessed May 2008).