Thoughts on Sound Diffusion II

When we first started doing sound diffusion, I thought that all we would really be doing is expanding a normal stereo speaker system from 2 to 6 speakers. I was not all that sure about what we would actually accomplish. However once we set up the system, and introduced the MIDI sliders to control the levels of each speaker, I knew that there was potential.

What set sound diffusion apart from a multi-channel piece of music for me was the live performance aspect it allowed me to explore. It gave me the opportunity to take an existing recording of a piece of music, and re-perform it by controlling the dynamics, and spatial placement of the sound. I could make a sound start from the back of the room, and slowly (or rapidly) bring it out, sending the sound skyward, expand it out to the sides, or both.

Until now, I had only really worked with how you could emulate space in music by changing parameters such as volume, reverb and panning. At the beginning of this project, I did not think that having multiple sound sources would be very different to what I had done. However, I quickly found that I was wrong, and that there were many aspects of physically placing a sound in a space that I could not emulate. The room contributes to the performance, as you can hear the sound bouncing off the walls, the ceiling and the floor, something that would be extremely difficult to emulate, and almost impossible to do realistically. The freedom to move the sound anywhere whenever I wanted truly made me feel as though I was in control.