Found in Space

This chapter introduces a musicological three-tool analysis synergy to posit the substance of the three-dimensional (3D) spatiality of music and its spatial audio scene language in the immersive Dolby Atmos format. “The natural listening environment can be defined as the acoustic space we occupy during our daily lives. A virtual auditory space is an acoustic environment created through the use of loudspeakers or headphones designed to replace or augment the natural listening environment” ( Roginska & Geluso, 2018 , p. 1). Subjective listening in a hyper-calibrated 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos Hyper Near-Field Dolby Atmos Tiny Studio reveals that some music mixes present a highly compelling sensation of spatiality. This perception invites the following questions: 1) What is the substance of compelling spatiality in immersive 3D Dolby Atmos music recordings? and 2) How can we find it? To answer these questions, this author presents a theoretical three-part analysis system called a Synergy. Part one of the synergy offers a “Concept Map” ( Seetharaman & Pardo, 2014 ), a thesaurus-like listing of 3D concepts, vocabulary, and terminology, based on William Moylan’s stereo framework of music spatiality ( Moylan, 2020 ). The Concept Map enables the analyst to find their scope for perception of 3D spatial componentry involving: properties, attributes, relationships, and perspectives. The second part offers a rudimentary Five-Facet Typology which incorporates a distillation of substantive concepts and percepts into five essential facets of properties and attributes. Spatial properties are the subjectively perceived craft/objective grammar of spatiotemporal orchestration. Human experiences of sound in spaces, places, and emplacement, involve artful “acoustemological” attributes ( Feld, 1994 ; Rice, 2018 ) to describe subjective song meaning. The third part prescribes ear training exercises that improve perception of 3D recorded sound. This three-part system utilizes pre-existing “cognitive image schema” ( Lakoff, 1987 ; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980 ; Leviton, 2006 ) and leverages intertextual cross-domain mapping of adajacent concepts, vocabulary, and terms from human anatomy, anthropology, psychoacoustics, acoustics, electroacoustics, musicology, and live concert/club/theatrical arts, to provide a “patterned way-of-knowing” that is “translatable from one sense-domain to another” ( Moore et al., 2011 , p. 84). Intended for composers, songwriters, mixing engineers, and pedagogues, the synergy requires “ecological listening” ( Clarke, 2005 ) and practical application. This author’s 3D Music Analysis Synergy assembles the semantic language of 3D spatiality for popular music. Concepts, vocabulary, and terms map across domains to form specific intertextualities that clarify perceptions of 3D spatial properties, attributes, relationships, and perspectives.