Listening to TheatreTeaching Aesthetics of Theatre Sound

Overview of Sound Program at Purdue

Overview of Aesthetics Course Sequence

Theory

Music is an art form separate from referential, semiotic meaning that emphasizes the manipulation of time over space through the organization of color, time, mass, space, line and form.

Sound Design is a subcategory of music

Music is a biological, evolutionary adaptation targeted by natural selectionFundamental processes related to those targeted by natural selection work the same today as they have for tens of thousands of years.Inasmuch as music is fundamental to theatre, the same fundamental processes of music apply to theatre.

Iconic images and signficiations, of which language is a subset;Music, which as we have already defined, is a non‐referential communication involving the temporal organization of elements such as color, rhythm, etc., andThe material world of the theatre upon which both language and music are imprinted, especially including the actor.

Music has special powers to arouse interest and to stir emotions;Music communicates from composer through performer to listeners in a unique manner;The experience of emotions in theatre provides pleasure to listeners.

These last two points are part of the “cathartic” experience (i.e., pity and fear, “purging” of emotion).

Language is referential; music is ambiguous;Music is predominantly right brained, language, left brained;although music performance and analysis involves the entire brain;

Music is simultaneous and sequential; language is sequential only;Music is simultaneously untranslatable yet intelligible across cultural boundaries.

Music has special powers to arouse interest and to stir emotions:The brain is an arousal seeking organ;Arousal is activated by structures and energy distribution (e.g., color, loudness, etc.) that produce habituation, arousal, suspense, and resolution;Emotions are stimulated by the direct connection between the inner ear and the cerebellum.

Music Communicates in a Unique Manner from Composers and Playwrights Through Performers to Listeners:Emotions are all about memories; Music stimulates the hippocampus (brain’s memory center), but random tones don’t;Pulse is not imprinted on the listener; brainwaves in the primitive cerebellum are entrained to audible pulses. Communication in music is fundamentally dependent on communication of pulse.

The experience of emotions in theatre provides pleasure to listeners:Music stimulates emotion before analytical processes complete;Emotions are aroused, and then are analyzed; the analysis triggers the reward centers of the brain (esp. the ventral striatum), stimulating the production of dopamine.

Perception in both sight and sound is dependent on frequency;Both are subjective and relative;Similar psychoacoustic properties: fatigue, color blindness, etc.Takete and Uloomu:

Frequency and Wavelength of perception;Light reveals mass in space by defining it relative to time; sound reveals time by defining it relative to mass in space. One of the most important characteristics of music—especially when compared with visual art forms—is its strictly temporal character.

Time is not completely separate from and independent of space, but is combined with it to form an object called space-time. Relativity: time is relative to each individual.Relativity predicts the ability to travel through time; theatre is a form of time travel.

Frame of Reference: A “set or system (as of facts or ideas) serving to orient or give particular meaning”Two frames in theatre: the physical theatre space and the dramatic theatre space;Theatre changes our consciousness from one frame to the other; reality (based on memory) changes accordingly.Hearing and emotions stay in the dramatic frame, thought moves back and forth between frames.

Sound Design organizes time;Sound compels us to experience time frames created by others subjectively, i.e., as real experiences, even though the intellectual communication or the visual experience may have no bearing in truth or reality;Visual art may provide the fantasy, but the audible one makes the fantasy a reality.

Appia’s asserted that Music served as the foundation of theatre, not text:

Music communicates the “inner-life” of characters;The general assumption seems to be that the ideas of a play give birth to the musical expression. Appia suggests that the nature of drama was the other way around; language provides the musical manifestation of the inner life with a practical dramatic form. A symphonic performance can create the inner life directly in an audience with just music. Drama attaches important ideas to a similar “inner life” in the minds of the audience.

Analysis of prevailing theories of the function of sound in theatre reveals that music really has only one function in theatre: to makes us feel a certain way about the world we are experiencing;

The Elements of Music

For each element (color, time, etc.) we undertake four types of investigation:General discussion to limit attributes of the element;Examination of Academy Award recognized film scores providing examples of the effective use of element and discovery of general principals that govern use of the element;Practical attempts of students to communicate emotion using only the element under investigation;Two minute student composition focusing on element.

Basic Process:Each student creates five sonic samples that each communicate one of five different emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, love;Examples are sequenced and indexed on separate tracks of a CD, prefixed only with vocal announcement: “Example 1,” Example 2,” etc.Each student plays back all five examples with no comment or discussion. Examples are repeated one time only.Students provide written “ballots” on which they identify which emotion they felt each example expressed.

Rules used to limit communication to single element:Color: single timbre, less than five seconds, non-repeating;Time: pencil eraser tapping on counter;Mass: pink noise manipulated for dynamics;Space: pink noise manipulated for location/reverberation;Melody: monophonic melody performed on piano;Form: free use of all five elementsImportant: iconic and imagistic use of sound is disqualified, e.g., human crying for sadness.

Ballot Example:

Evaluation:Project grades are determined solely on completion of exercise, not on success of the communication;Experience has shown that a score of 60 - 70% shows strong communication, while scores below 50 % indicate weak communication;Because so many variables (both under control and not under the control of the composers) are at play, discussion of why communication succeeded, and why it may not play a huge role in effective learning.

The final project for the semester is the creation of a new piece of music based on an existing poem:Note that this is the first attempt by students to orchestrate language; it comes about half way through the two semester (32 week) course;We have primarily used Shakespearean Sonnets (sometimes in collaboration with acting courses dealing with Shakespeare); we have also collaborated with other disciplines to create soundscapes for art exhibits, etc.Students are not required to faithfully replicate dialogue in a linear, naturalistic way; we do encourage them to use the text in one form or another in their piece.Grading is primarily based on project completion, rather than evaluation of subjective attributes.

The final project in the first semester creates a bridge to the second semester, which focuses on adding language to the inner-life of musical ideas. There are three gradated projects:A sixty second sound story that attempts to communicate a literal story without words (in response, the class has to work to reach an agreement on the plot of the story;A sixty second commercial, produced to illuminate fundamental principles of music involved in storytelling;A twenty minute radio drama that airs on campus NPR radio affiliate on the last day of finals.

The radio drama is completed in three stages:A twenty minute script;The multi-track master that includes (in order of completion):

Recording of the dialogue stems;Recording of the sound effects and foley stems;Composition and recording of the music stems

The mixed, stereo master recording.

The script for the radio drama is developed using the following techniques:Exploration of emotional-centric experiences expressed in tensions between competing primal urges and conflictsFleshing out of musical ideas into literal ones through analysis and implementation of story, theme and metaphor;Thee page treatment that shows embodiment of emotional (musical) journey through organization of actions in time;Generation of 20 page script from emotional-centric improvisation.

The scripts require linear storytelling based on Susan Zeder’s method (its close relationship to the art of reading Tarot cards is a very musical method for developing linear structure):

In a one-year sequence of two courses, we trace the roots of playmaking from their primal roots in music to their full realization in dramatic performance.The process emphasizes at every step of the way, 1. Student developing a firm aesthetic

grounding in principles of music and sound that apply to theatre;

2. Students developing specific techniques for communication of aesthetic ideas,

3. Providing students with opportunities to incorporate techniques into their own developing aesthetics.