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This is a presentation of a study I conduct through collecting data from student assignments between2023 and 2025 about what they hear in music recordings. The preliminary results point to students fo-cusing on various musical properties in their analyses. In some recordings, the prominent propertiesare perceived through bottom-up processes where students focus on the stimulus, that is, they reactto sensory data. In other recordings, the prominent properties are those perceived through top-downprocesses that are more contextual and dependent on the student’s frame of reference. In short, whatstudents report that they first and foremost hear in recordings vary quite a lot, but it is possible to seesome trends. In music production educational programmes, there is usually a lack of adequate methodsof music analysis in the repertoire of teaching material. This is in contrast to the great supply of materialon music industry, social practices, music technology, studio practices. This is partly explicable by thechallenges music recordings pose on music analysis. Music recordings are dominated by musical prop-erties that fall outside of the score, where music analysis traditionally operates. There are many eventshappening simultaneously in all music. The question of which of these events (are intended) to draw ourattention the most is a question of musical foreground and background. This foreground/backgroundrelation is a question of salience. My PhD work-in-progress studies salience in works of phonographyto discuss which musical properties or events are the most functional, or account for the coherence, inthese works. Studying salience in these works is put forward as a possible method to tackle the afore-mentioned challenge of analyzing music recordings.

This presentation outlines a study conducted through collecting data from student assignments in a music production educational programme between 2023 and 2025 about how students interpret music recordings. The majority of the students in question were already active as music producers and regarded analysis assignments as a way to improve their own productions.

The analysis assignment consisted of two sections. In the first, students described what they heard, in the second, they described the lasting impressions the recordings had on them after a few days had gone since they heard the recordings. The preliminary results point to students focusing on various musical properties in their analyses. In some recordings, the prominent properties were perceived through bottom-up processes where students focused on the stimulus, that is, they reacted to sensory data. In other recordings, the prominent properties were those perceived through top-down processes that were more contextual and dependent on the student’s frame of reference. In short, what students report that they first and foremost hear in recordings varied quite a lot, but it was possible to discern some trends.

This assignment was a way to tackle the challenge of music analysis of recordings where the central musical properties fall outside of the score, where music analysis traditionally operates. This study is a part of a PhD-thesis-in-progress on salience in music recordings, which investigates foreground and background relations in music recordings as a possible method to tackle the aforementioned challenge of analyzing music recordings. The study also aims to develop pedagogical methods to facilitate communication of musical content that students perceive.

 The recent Dolby Atmos releases of older recordings originally released in stereo launch new staging possibilities that were absent in the original recordings. As Zagorski-Thomas formulates, staging is “external to the performances” that we hear “yet contribute to the meaning that we perceive” (2014: 73). Thus, these staging properties have become integrated features of the works now re-released thanks to the developments in immersive audio.

Staging in the realm of stereo recordings can be analyzed with analytical tools such as Moore’s (2012) “soundbox” or Moylan’s (2014) “perceived performance environment”. These tools place the sound stage in front of the listener. However, this is not necessarily the case in the Dolby Atmos mixes. In our work, we have analyzed several Dolby Atmos releases of older works, in different genres and eras, that put the listener in various locations in relation to the sound stage. In some mixes, the listener is placed among the sound sources on stage, hence “the performance” surrounds the listener. In some other mixes, the listener is placed in front of the stage but the room where the audience is situated is portrayed with the help of immersive audio. In some other mixes, some sound sources are on a stage in front of the listener and others surround the listener. Furthermore, some mixes do not fit any of these models, and the position of the sound stage varies throughout the performance.

Our study has raised a few questions concerning the immersive audio phenomena itself, how we can study it, and how this knowledge can be useful for staging and mixing in immersive music production: (1) Where does this leave us when it comes to staging and what Clarke (2005) calls “subject-position” in Dolby Atmos mixes? (2) Are we approaching a convention with regards to staging in Dolby Atmos mixes as a convention in stereo mixes appeared in the 1970’s? And, (3) do these mixes change the original work to such a grade that we can call the Dolby Atmos mixes as new works?

“Salience” from a music production perspective This is a presentation of the preliminary results of observations in mixing sessions about what producers and mixing engineers regard as the most noticeable features of the music they are working on for the listeners.

I will present results from three cases, where I observed mixing sessions in two contrasting genres and interviewed a mixing engineer about a past mixing session. The aim is to delineate what producers and mixing engineers intended to bring forward in the piece of music that they were working on. This will hopefully shed light on salience in works of phonography from a production perspective.

One of the preliminary results indicates that music creators in some genres rely more explicitly on the listeners’ frame of musical reference to be able to communicate certain "prioritized" features of music.  

The study is part of my PhD-thesis in progress, where I apply the concept of salience to music analysis, specifically to analysis of works of phonography.The thesis investigates what musical properties or events are the most functional, or account for the coherence, in these works from both production and reception perspectives. This presentation is about the preliminary results of the former.

Implementation of “salience” in music analysis assignments

In music production educational programmes, there is usually a music analysis shaped hole in the repertoire of teaching material. This is in contrast to the great supply of teaching material on the music industry, social practices, music technology, studio practices and the like. This is partly explicable by the challenges music recordings pose on music analysis. Music recordings, or works of phonography, are dominated by musical properties that fall outside of the score, where music analysis traditionally operates.

There are many events happening simultaneously in all music. The question of which of these events (are intended) to draw our attention the most is a question of musical foreground and background. The mechanisms that affects what in music is perceived to be in the foreground vs. background is complex and relates both to musical structure, musical cognition, and more importantly how these two meet.

The above-mentioned foreground/background relation is a question of salience. My PhD work-in-progress studies salience in works of phonography to discuss which musical properties or events are the most 24functional, or account for the coherence, in these works. Studying salience in these works is put forward as a possible method to tackle the aforementioned challenge of analyzing works of phonography.

As a part my study on salience in works of phonography, I conduct an assignment in a music production educational programme, where students write about what they hear in the “foreground” in works of phonography. This is an implementation of salience as an analysis tool. In this conference, I will present the preliminary results of this part of my PhD-thesis in progress.

Kontakt: bsi@du.se

A traditionally interesting question that music analysis has to deal with is to what extent analysis accounts for what is actually heard in music. A way to deal with this question is to take a phenomenological approach to music analysis, which means to study consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view when it comes to the musical experience.Thomas Clifton’s Music as Heard (1983) is probably the best known study that exemplifies this approach to music analysis.

There are many events happening simultaneously in all music. The question of which of these events (are intended) to draw our attention the most is a question of musical foreground and background. The mechanisms that affects what in music is perceived to be in the foreground vs. background is complex and relates both to musical structure, musical cognition, and more importantly how these two meet.

The challenges to music analysis are amplified when it comes to works of phonography, which are dominated by musical properties that fall outside of the score, where music analysis traditionally operates. My PhD work-in-progress studies salience in works of phonography to discuss which musical properties or events are the most functional, or account for the coherence, in these works. Studying salience in these works is put forward as a possible method to tackle the aforementioned problem.

As a part my study on salience in works of phonography, I conducted a number of analyses by applying methods from Clifton’s phenomenological approach to music analyses. In this conference, I will present a number of these analyses selected from different genres of music to demonstrate how a phenomenological approach can help the music analyst tackle the challenges mentioned above.

Referenser

Clifton, Thomas. (1983). Music as Heard: A Study in Applied Phenomenology. Yale University Press

Salience in works of phonography What attracts the listener’s attention when listening to a favorite track? Is it the same feature that attracts attention when heard first time and upon repeated listening? How do producers give prominence to different musical properties? These are all questions regarding salience in works of phonography, i.e. musical works created as recorded sounds. As a part my PhD work-in-progress on salience in works of phonography, participant observation was conducted with in three mixing sessions with two separate artists, where the producers were interviewed on how they see the foreground-background relationship in the music they produce. Their responses, as well as the resulting works of phonography were analyzed using the theories of salience in social semiotics and psychology. The preliminary results show among other things that the salient features of music are genre-specific. How the producers envision what the listeners will notice and actively listen to in their music tell the music researcher much about the foreground-background relationships in particular genres, the production methods, and more generally about salience in recorded music. There are many events happening simultaneously in all music. The question of which of these events (are intended) to draw our attention the most is a question of musical foreground and background. The mechanisms that affects what in music is perceived to be in the foreground vs. background is complex and relates both to musical structure, musical cognition, and more importantly how these two meet.While this is not a new question, or specific to works of phonography, it is pertinent in the context of works of phonography, where musical properties outside of those we have methods for analysis dominate. This thesis work is about the challenge of analyzing works of phonography and offers studying salience in them as a useful way to tackle this challenge.

Salience in works of phonography

What attracts the listener’s attention when listening to a favorite track? Is it the same feature that attracts attention when heard first time and upon repeated listening? How do producers give prominence to differentmusical properties? These are all questions regarding salience in works of phonography, i.e. musical works created as recorded sounds.

As a part my PhD work-in-progress on salience in works of phonography, participant observation was conducted with in three mixing sessions with two separate artists, where the producers were interviewed on how they see the foreground-background relationship in the music they produce. Their responses, as well as the resulting works of phonography were analyzed using the theories of salience in social semiotics and psychology. The preliminary results show among other things that the salient features of music are genre-specific. How the producers envision what the listeners will notice and actively listen to in their music tell the music researcher much about the foreground-background relationships in particular genres, the production methods, and more generally about salience in recorded music.

There are many events happening simultaneously in all music. The question of which of these events (are intended) to draw our attention the most is a question of musical foreground and background. The mechanisms that affects what in music is perceived to be in the foreground vs. background is complex and relates both to musical structure, musical cognition, and more importantly how these two meet.

While this is not a new question, or specific to works of phonography, it is pertinent in the context of works of phonography, where musical properties outside of those we have methods for analysis dominate. This thesis work is about the challenge of analyzing works of phonography and offers studying salience in them as a useful way to tackle this challenge.