Music is usually created by instruments designed to artificially manufacture rhythms and pitches.
But on Monday night, a group of local composers will provide an alternative version to a normal concert experience with “Cinema for the Ears.”
The concert will be hosted by the LSU School of Music in association with the AVATAR — Arts, Visualization Advanced Technologies and Research — initiative in digital media and will feature several compositions best described as electroacoustic and experimental “sonic art.”
While the term cinema can conjure up ideas of a theatrical performance or large-screen productions, “Cinema for the Ears” focuses on the ability of sound to create visual images, according to Stephen David Beck, director of the LSU electroacoustic project and one of the concert’s featured composers.
“It’s cinematic in that there’s always a narrative to each of these pieces but also in the sense that it is very colorful and imaginative to the ears in the same way that cinema is to the eyes,” Beck said.
Jesse Allison, a composer and professor in the School of Music, said the compositions are designed to make the audience visualize images through the sounds around them.
“You think of a series of moving images, and [‘Cinema for the Ears’] creates sort of a sonic version of what you would normally pick up with your eyes,” Allison said.
The basis of each composer’s piece are the natural sounds that exist all over the earth. The composers take sounds from everyday activities and record, edit and play them as if they were musical instruments, according to Beck.
“In the process of recording, we use the most advanced computer software in place for digital media and music,” Beck said. “While some of it can be found in a normal recording studio, other programs are very experimental pieces of equipment from research centers around the country.”
While the composers use software like Pro Tools or Apple’s Logic Studio, Beck noted that most of the software is much more specialized and specific to the idea of electroacoustic music.
“ProTools or Logic — we use those, but we also use some techniques that aren’t available to the average person,” Beck said. “This helps us create music outside of the normal context and on a completely different, experimental level.”
To capture the experimental sound each composer creates, a different stereo setup is needed to truly immerse the audience in the performance.
Enter the Immersive Computer-controlled Audio Sound Theatre — a 27-channel, state-of-the-art, surround-sound system.
ICAST’s capabilities far exceed typical movie theater sound quality by allowing the composer to control exactly where each sound is coming from and how the audience will hear it, Allison said.
“That’s such a unique ability to be able to control the sounds so precisely, and it creates quite an intense atmosphere — like being inside an instrument,” Allison said.
Before each composition, the composer has the opportunity to explain the narrative that inspired or informed the piece.
“A lot of this style of music is so new, and we find that when people have an idea of what they’re listening to, it prepares them to be actively listening for what the composers were going for,” Beck said.
Beck said the audience ultimately gets a “completely unique sonic experience.”
“They will hear an entirely different way of thinking about music — as more than just a collection of tones, pitches and rhythms, but how all the sounds around us has a musical context,” Beck said.
“Cinema for the Ears” will be held Monday night at 7:30 p.m. in the Manship Theatre, located in the Shaw Center downtown. Tickets are $12 for adults and $6 for students and senior citizens.
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Contact Chris Abshire at [email protected]