Sound object

In music a sound object (objet sonore: Pierre Schaeffer 1959, 1977, p. 95), has a time scale that encompasses events of a duration associated with the elementary unit of composition in scores: the note. A note usually lasts from about 100 ms to several seconds, and is played by an instrument or sung by a vocalist. The concept of sound object extends this to allow any sound, from any source. To Schaeffer, the pure objet sonore was a sound whose origin a listener could not identify. A broader interpretation takes any sound within a stipulated temporal limit as a sound object.

Sources

• Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-18215-7.