Subject: Re: ANALYSIS USING SPECTOGRAM & TIMELINE (fwd)
From: ALYCE LYN PUMPHREY (al_pumph@alcor.concordia.ca)
Date: Wed Nov 24 1999 - 04:34:20 EST
Hello. I'm a third-year Communications student enrolled in a
first-year EAMT course. I apoligize if this posting presents a
question which might be overly simplistic to some. However, given
the discourses that I have read on this email list, I assume that
I might not have long to wait for an intelligent and concise response.
Presently I am working on attempting to fully comprehend the utility of
the spectogram belonging to an EA piece for which I will be making a class
presentation (and which I previously loaded onto Sound Edit 16 to make
a printout of the spectogram to be used as a visual aid to my anaysis of
the EA piece.)
First, I would appreciate any input offered about spectograms in general,
but was also hoping for a discourse regarding the various ways to read, to
specifically interpret and sufficiently use the spectogram (primarily the
2-D version though I would gladly entertain any comments about what
different things the 3-D says that the 2-D may not).
Secondly, I would appreciate your comments about how you feel the waveform
is/is not more useful (if not at least quite different) than the
spectogram in terms of the possible different types of information that
the two representations of sound provide to the novice and/or the
experienced analyser.
Thirdly, do you find that the spectogram is useful in terms of analysing
the frequencies of the sound(s) represented through a piece and/or in
layers of a particular section of the piece? I ask this because, I'm at
the point where, though I find the spectogram for this particular piece
[which is under my analysis] as being rather "visually" interesting, I am
trying to find significant ways to understand the representational aspects
of the spectogram so that I may link what I see in the spectogram to
what I hear in the piece. I would like the link to be much stronger than
the one that can be seen when the 2-D spectogram and the wave timeline
for the same piece are placed alogside eachother. I confess that the
spectogram does reveal the existence of certain "enduring" sounds that are
heard at specific frequencies. Though this aspect of the spectogram
makes it more useful than the waveform timeline to me on one level, I feel
that there should be a lot more to the textured picture than meets my
eyes. What are the pros and cons of the spectogram/the waveform?
Please share your knowledge with this very curious observer? Should the
spectogram/waveform timeline just be used as an outline for a more
detailed description of the more complex elements that might be happening
in the piece? If so, what would you suggest (to a student)as a different
approach to reviewing the textural and sonic characteristics present in a
piece? (Once analytical listening is done, that is.)
Thanks in advance! :)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b27 : Wed Jun 11 2003 - 13:09:14 EDT