Routledge (New York), 2012 xv, 208pp ISBN 978-0-415-898461 (Paperback) ISBN 978-0-415-806787 (Hardback) http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415898461/

Making Music with Sounds offers a creative introduction to the art of making sound-based music.  It introduces the elements of making compositions with sounds and facilitates creativity in school-age children, with the activities primarily for 11-14-year-old students. It can also be used by people of all ages becoming acquainted with this music for the first time.

Sound-based music is defined as the art form in which the sound, rather than the musical note, is the basic unit and is closely related to electroacoustic music and the sonic arts. The art of sound organization can be found in a number of forms of music – in film, television, dance and new media.  Despite this, there are few materials provided for people to discover how to make sound-based music. This book offers a program of development starting from aural awareness, through the discovery and organization of potential sounds to the means to generate and manipulate sounds to create sequences and entire works. The book’s holistic pedagogical approach to composition also involves aspects related to musical understanding and appreciation, reinforced by the authors pedagogical resource website ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS 2).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations                       
Preface                               
Acknowledgements                       
I. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD                
    A.    A delineation of the two key areas           
            Sound-based music               
            Making music with technology           
    B.    The book’s approach               
    C.    An overview of selected genres and categories related to sound-based music           
II. DISCOVERING MUSIC ALL AROUND US          
    A. Discovering soundscapes               
            A word on various types of listening       
    B. Investigating soundscapes               
    C. Composing soundscapes               
III. THE SOUNDS OF SOUND-BASED MUSIC           
    A. Finding real-world sounds               
            Recording (or downloading) sounds       
            Special case: sounds that sound like notes or groups of notes               
    B. Synthetic sounds                   
    C. Sculpting with sounds               
IV. ORGANISING SOUNDS/1: COMBINING SOUNDS AND CREATING SONIC GESTURES                   
    A. Placing sounds in sequences               
            Creating vertical relationships between sounds   
    B. Creating, analysing and evaluating sonic gestures   
V. ORGANISING SOUNDS/2: COMPOSING WITH SOUNDS   
    A. Placing sound sequences into structures (or sequencing sequences)           
            Varying sounds, gestures and sequences in time    
            Layering sounds and sequences horizontally   
            Spatialising sounds               
            To have a beat or not to have a beat, that is an important question
            Allowing music ‘to breathe’ – an old trick: tension and release
            Another way of working – formalised approaches
            A word about performance          
            Making sound installations          
    B. Analysing and evaluating composed work      
VI. NEXT STEPS                       
GLOSSARY                           
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READING      
INDEX