This text deals with the difficult task of notating timbre by addressing how it can be classified, synthesised, recognised and related to visual correspondences, and then looking at the relevance of these topics for notational purposes. Timbre is understood as dependent on both spectral and time-dependent features that can be notated in ways that make sense in relation to both perception and acoustics. This is achieved by taking the starting point in Lasse Thoresen’s spectromorphological analysis. Symbols originally developed for perception-based analysis are adapted for use over a hybrid spectrum-staff system to indicate the spectral qualities of timbre. To test the system, it was used to transcribe excerpts of three classic electroacoustic music works. In addition to the benefit of being able to compare the three excerpts transcribed with the same system, there is the advantage that the visual representation is based on spectral measurable qualities in the music. The notation system’s intuitiveness was also explored in listening tests, showing that it was possible to understand spectral notation symbols placed over a staff system, particularly for examples with two sound objects instead of one.

The motivation for this text is my ongoing research into creating a uniform and comprehensive notation system for music regardless of sound sources, acoustic or electronic. I propose a way to visually represent the positions and movements of sound in composition and analysis of music which in different ways utilises space as a parameter. I address a number of aspects of spatialised music to take into account when defining a notation language for the music. I suggest visually representing the room in different ways depending on how the music relates to the concept of space: as projections from the center of a sphere for more structural work, or as coordinates in a cubic room for works that depict a physical or imagined space. I also show how these descriptions of space are integrated with my existing notation system.

This paper details my adaptation of Lasse Thoresen’s spectromorphological analysis notation for the sake of composition and transcription, re-imagining the analysis symbols for use over a spectrum staff system over which pitch and spectra can be indicated with great detail, and possibly interpreted by musicians and computers for performance. A sound object is notated with regard to its spectral width, density, centroid frequency, significant sound components, modulation and amplitude envelope. It can also have a spectrum reference. The symbols are placed over a spectrum grand-staff with a frequency scale to show each parameter both from a frequency and pitch perspective. Also included are suggestions for the visual representation of spatialisation where positions and movements are displayed in two or three dimensions above the sound notation while constant rotations are notated as modulations. 

In this article, we present our work on the sonification of notated complex spectral structures. It is part of a larger research project about the design of a new notation system for representing sound-based musical structures. Complex spectral structures are notated with special symbols in the scores, which can be digitally rendered so that the user can hear key aspects of what has been notated. This hearing of the notated data is significantly different from reading the same data, and reveals the complexity hidden in its simplified notation. The digitally played score is not the music itself but can provide essential information about the music in ways that can only be obtained in sounding form. The playback needs to be designed so that the user can make relevant sonic readings of the sonified data. The sound notation system used here is an adaptation of Thoresen and Hedman’s spectromorphological analysis notation. Symbols originally developed by Lasse Thoresen from Pierre Schaeffer’s typo-morphology have in this system been adapted to display measurable spectral features of timbrel structure for the composition and transcription of sound-based musical structures. Spectrum category symbols are placed over a spectral grand-staff that combines indications of pitch and frequency values for the combined display of music related to pitch-based and spectral values. Spectral features of a musical structure such as spectral width and density are represented as graphical symbols and sonically rendered. In perceptual experiments we have verified that users can identify spectral notation parameters based on their sonification. This confirms the main principle of sonification that is that the data/dimensions relations in one domain, in our case notated representation of spectral features, are transformed in perceived relations in the audio domain, and back.

This text describes the musical evaluation of a hybrid music notation system that combines traditional notation with symbols and concepts from spectromorphological analysis. During three academic years from 2017 to 2020, three groups of composition students learned to work with sound notation, recreating and interpreting short electroacoustic music sketches based solely on their notation transcriptions – they had not heard the original sketches. The students’ score interpretations bore obvious similarities to the original music sketches and their written reflections showed that there were no major difficulties in understanding the notation although some difficulties existed concerning finding suitable sounds, especially sounds with stable pitch.

This article describes the music data format of the recently introduced Sound Notation system, and how it makes possible computer-aided composition of scores represent- ing sound-based music. The Sound Notation system is an adaptation of Lasse Thoresen’s spectromorphological analysis notation, developed for composition and analysis. A detailed description of the data format is followed by two examples of its application in a computer-aided composi- tion process resulting in the sounding interpretation of two score excerpts of an electroacoustic composition. Generat- ing sound structures as symbolic notation data in this way provided possibilities for the creation of sound-based mu- sic otherwise limited to works of traditional notation.