Abstract

Immersive audio is an important concept in our listening experience as we enjoy films, games and other audio content. In musical works, while the concept of multichannel formats isn’t new, spatial audio technologies have been far underutilized in the inception of content; technologies such as ambisonics and spatial audio are, with an overwhelmingly wide margin, used in the recording, mixing and mastering stages of music production today. These audio production phases are wedged between the music creation and exhibition (performance or playback) phases, with spatial decisions typically made during the mixing process, often in absence of a spatial-musical concept. Here we propose the consideration of space as a compositional element of music. We examine how its use in the earliest phase of conceptual design has a substantial effect on the composition itself.

Focusing on the creative possibilities offered by space, what if decisions such as an instrument’s location or its movement in space were not made during audio production by engineers, but rather, they were conceptual choices made by composers during the content creation phase, much before the start of audio production? Composers utilize melody, harmony, rhythm (and often timbre) to inspire and express a musical idea and evoke emotions – what if such ideas could be also shaped or even inspired by space? Would such space-derived decisions about notes, timbres and the roles of musical parts be the same if they were made before, rather than during audio production? And even more interestingly, would spatial decisions made during the composition process have a bearing on the resulting composition itself?

This paper explores, through an elaborately conceptualized and documented composition test process, via the analysis of the resulting stereo and spatial compositions, and through the evaluation of focus group feedback from comparative listening sessions, how various spatial environments can shape compositional design. The paper discusses the consequences of using immersive technologies in the earliest phases of music production and recommends best practices to impactfully express spatial-musical concepts. It concludes with the analysis of the advantages and drawbacks of using space as a compositional element and proposes approaches to consider in the future practice of spatial music composition.

[Read the full paper here]
Published: November, 2024
Revised: February, 2025