PhD Thesis: Exploring environmental space through sound - compositional relationships across external location, internal structure and environmentally mediated spaces.

This thesis demonstrates an approach to composing with environmental sound that uses spatial concepts and techniques to bridge the aesthetic divide between reductive and relative compositional philosophies. It responds to the complex issues of contextual integration and separation through a detailed compositional approach, which uses the spatial medium of acousmatic music to translate aspects of acoustic ecology, biomimetics, soundscape studies and ecoacoustics into the domain of contemporary composition.  

This research makes claims to new knowledge by examining how the activities of the composition process inform the development of novel techniques for environmental sound composition. It takes a practice-based approach to research, which uses the creative practices of field recording, fixed-media composition and software programming to highlight and respond to the issues implicit to the production of environmentally mediated spaces through sound. Furthermore, it provides new theoretical perspectives on the relations between musical form and the external environment. 

Central to this research is a body of creative work, which presents a portfolio of compositions and the custom software tools integral to its production as significant research outcomes. As the activities of practice and the insights gained through practice are as crucial to the practice-based research paradigm as its outcomes, this thesis uses a self-reflective approach to explicate and document how the knowledge generated during the composition process shaped the outcomes of the creative artifacts.  

​An engagement with spatial concepts characterises the reflective discourse of this research. The non-linear and iterative ways of shaping and applying these ideas in practice underpin the discussion of each composition in the folio and the further algorithmic realisation of these concepts using the SuperCollider programming language

McConaghy, N. (2020). Creation of the Distance Mixer. Paper presented at the Australasian Computer Music Conference, Canberra, Australia.

This paper outlines a personal approach to composing with environmental sound that integrates reductive and contextual aesthetics into a single compositional language. It discusses the strategies that led to the creation of a new software artefact, the DistanceMixer, and the musical value of the sounds produced through this technology. 

The Distance Mixer is a custom SuperCollider class designed to assist in the composition of fixed media works that seek to integrate environmental structures into electroacoustic composition. Its ongoing development reflects an attempt at maintaining the integrity of natural sound environments via acoustic partitioning while still permitting a degree of abstraction and transformation of sound materials. The Distance Mixer allows natural sound ecologies to inform the deployment of materials and encourages the practitioner to explore in real-time, the relationship between perspective, movement and distance and the influence of these spatial attributes on spectral space and the designation of acoustic niches.

McConaghy, N., & Mooney, A. (2019). The sound field and the archive. Paper presented at The Australasian Sound Recordings Association: Sounds and Silences, Australian National University.

The technical and aesthetic advantages of the ambisonic format are well recognised; however, there is a paucity of information about its application in archival contexts. Channel-based audio formats restrict playback to configurations that precisely match the channel specifications of the original setup. With an increase in the number of tools that support large numbers of channels, the artist and archivist face a multitude of issues surrounding the long-term availability of channel-based surround sound formats. The hierarchical nature and the two-stage process of encoding and decoding inherent in the ambisonic approach offers a potential solution to the problem of format obsolescence. The authors discuss their experience with the ambisonic format and its relevance to those working within collection institutions.

McConaghy, N. (2013). Interstitial approaches to soundscape: discursive analysis #1 Anthozoa. OREMA(1)

Of fundamental importance to the soundscape composer is the manner in which they chose to interpret the complexity of the external environment within an artistic context. Daniel Blinkhorn’s soundscape composition Anthozoa (composed in 2011) is analysed to gain one such insight into this process. In this instance, the relationship between musical structures and the external environment are analysed against a continuum, which reveals a primacy when expressing the relationship with the outer world through abstract musical structure. The brief exegesis is presented in two parts. The first examines aspects of the continuum in which the work is situated aesthetically, whilst the second presents an analysis whereby the entire structure of the composition is broken down and examined segmentally to examine the internal musical relationships and their metaphorical connections to the external environment. The formal analysis of the composition does not adhere to any particular musical vernacular, rather it choses to describe each event in a manner best suited to describing its own metaphorical connection with the physical world.