Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research

CMMR 2015: Music, Mind, and Embodiment pp 228–242Cite as

Balancing Audio: Towards a Cognitive Structure of Sound Interaction in Music Production

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

  • 1385 Accesses

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9617))

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of balance in music production and examines the role of conceptual metaphors in reasoning about audio editing. Balance may be the most central concept in record production, however, the way we cognitively understand and respond meaningfully to a mix requiring balance is not thoroughly understood. In this paper I treat balance as a metaphor that we use to reason about several different actions in music production, such as adjusting levels, editing the frequency spectrum or the spatiality of the recording. This study is based on an exploration of a linguistic corpus of sound engineering literature. Using this corpus, I show how corpus data may contribute to better understand the relation between embodied patterns of experience and hands-on interaction with sound.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  1. Lakoff, G., Johnson, M.: Metaphors We Live By. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1980)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Johnson, M.: The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1987)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  3. Kövecses, Z.: Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  4. Deignan, A.: Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam (2005)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. O’Keefe, A., McCarthy, M.: The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge, London (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Hurtienne, J., Blessing, L.: Design for intuitive use – testing image schema theory for user interface design. In: International Conference on Engineering Design, Paris, 28–31 August, pp. 1–12 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Hurtienne, J., Israel, J.H.: Image schemas and their metaphorical extensions: intuitive patterns for tangible interaction. In: Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, New York, pp. 127–134 (2007). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1226969.1226996

  8. Droumeva, M., Antle, A., Corness, G., Bevans, A.: Springboard: exploring embodied metaphor in the design of sound feedback for physical responsive environments. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Auditory Display, Copenhagen, Denmark, 18–22 May, pp. 1–4 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gelineck, S., Overholt, D., Büchert, M., Andersen, J.: Towards an interface for music mixing based on smart tangibles and multitouch. In: Proceedings of New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Daejeon, Korea, 27–30 May 2013

    Google Scholar 

  10. Moylan, W.: The Art of Recording: The Creative Resources of Music Production and Audio. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York (1992)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Searle, J.: Metaphor. In: Ortony, A. (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, pp. 83–111. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1993)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Kövecses, Z.: Metaphor and Emotion: Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Forceville, C.: Pictoral Metaphor in Advertising. Routledge, London (1996)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  14. Gibbs, R.W.: Embodied metaphor in women’s narrative about their experiences with cancer. Health Commun. 14(2), 139–165 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Johnson, M., Larson, S.: “Something in the Way She Moves”: metaphors of musical motion. Metaphor Symb. 18(2), 63–84 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Kant, I.: Critique of Pure Reason, vol. 1781. Penguin Books, London (2008). (Trans. by. Weigelt, M.)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Oakley, T.: Image schemas. In: Geeraerts, D., Cuyckens, H. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, pp. 214–235. Oxford University Press, New York (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Vernallis, C., Richardson, J., Gorbman, C. (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Grimshaw, M. (ed.): Game Sound. Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments, IGI Global, Hershey (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  20. DiFranco, D.E., Beauregard, G.K., Srinivasan, M.A.: The effect of auditory cues on the haptic perception of stiffness in virtual environments. In: Proceedings of ASME, Dynamic Systems and Control Division, DSC, vol. 61, pp. 17–22 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Simner, J., Cuskley, C., Kirby, S.: What sound does that taste? Cross-modal mapping across gustation and audition. Perception 39(4), 553–569 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Belkin, K., Martin, R., Kamp, S.E., Gilbert, A.N.: Auditory pitch as perceptual analogue to odor quality. Am. Psychol. Soc. 8(4), 340–342 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Grimshaw, M., Walther-Hansen, M.: The sound of the smell of my shoes. In: Proceedings of 10th Audio Mostly Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece. ACM Digital Library (2015). doi:10.1145/2814895.2814900

  24. Bieber, D., Connor, U., Upton, T.A.: Discourse on the Move: Using Corpus Analysis to Describe Discourse Structure. John Benjamins Publisher, Amsterdam (2007)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  25. Cameron, L., Deignan, A.: The emergence of metaphor in discourse. Appl. Linguist. 27(4), 671–690 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Arnheim, R.: Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. University of California Press, Berkeley (1954)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Talmy, L.: Force dynamics in language and thought. Cogn. Sci. 12(1), 49–100 (1988)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Scruton, R.: The Aesthetics of Music. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1999)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  29. Granot, R.Y., Eitan, Z.: Musical tension and the interaction of dynamic auditory parameters. Music Percept. 28(3), 219–245 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Hjortkjær, J.: A cognitive theory of musical tension. Ph.D. thesis, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Brower, C.: A cognitive theory of musical meaning. J. Music Theor. 44(2), 323–379 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Walther-Hansen, M.: The force dynamic structure of the phonographic container: how sound engineers conceptualise the ‘inside’ of the mix. J. Music Mean. 12, 89–115 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  33. Wadhams, W.: Dictionary of Music Production and Engineering Terminology. Collier MacMillan Publishers, London (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  34. The British National Corpus, Version 3 (BNC XML Edition). Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium (2007). http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

  35. Hodgson, J.: Understanding Records: A Field Guide to Recording Practice. Continuum, New York and London (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Chion, M., Gorbman, C.: The Voice in Cinema. Columbia University Press, New York (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Moore, A., Dockwray, R.: The establishment of the virtual performance space in rock. Twentieth-Century Music 5(2), 219–241 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Zbikowski, L.: Conceptual models and cross-domain mapping: new perspectives on theories of music and hierarchy. J. Music Theor. 41(4), 193–225 (1997). Autumn

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  39. Tom Dowd and the Language of Music. Moormann, M. (Dir. Universal.) DVD (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Daley, D.: The Engineers who Changed Recording: Fathers of Invention. Sound on Sound Magazine (October 2004)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Hurtienne, J., Blessing, L.: Design for intuitive use – testing image schema theory for user interface design. In: Proceedings of 16th International Conference on Engineering Design, Paris (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Achintya, K.B.: Interactive Displays: Natural Human-Interface Technologies. Wiley, Hoboken (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  43. Sodhi, R., Poupyrev, I., Glisson, M., Israr, A.: AIREAL: interactive tactile experiences in free air. In: SIGGRAPH Conference Proceedings, Pittsburg (2013)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Mark Grimshaw and Justin Christensen for comments and suggestions on this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Mads Walther-Hansen

Authors
  1. Mads Walther-Hansen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mads Walther-Hansen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS - LMA, Marseille Cedex 20, France

    Richard Kronland-Martinet

  2. CNRS - LMA, Marseille, France

    Mitsuko Aramaki

  3. CNRS - LMA, Marseille, France

    Sølvi Ystad

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Walther-Hansen, M. (2016). Balancing Audio: Towards a Cognitive Structure of Sound Interaction in Music Production. In: Kronland-Martinet, R., Aramaki, M., Ystad, S. (eds) Music, Mind, and Embodiment. CMMR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9617. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46282-0_14

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46282-0_14

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46281-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46282-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation