MUSICAL MAPS: A musical approach to cartography or a cartographic approach to musical composition

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MUSICAL MAPS A musical approach to cartography
or a cartographic approach to musical
composition ?

• Brian Rogers

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Legendary American Jazzman, Louis Armstrong, when
asked if he ever played from sheet music,
replied Man, I dont dig them maps, I just
play!
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PRELUDE TO A MUSICAL ODYSSEY

• Project represents attempt to fuse twin interests
  in music and mapping into aural experience of the
  landscape
• Resultant compositions differ from musical
  pictures painted in sound by great composers -
  represent attempt at degree of spatial accuracy
  as opposed to essentially 'impressionistic' works
• mavlast1.wav
• mavlast2.wav
• alpsymph1.wav
• alpsymph2.wav
• Essentially a conceptual experiment in sound

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PRELUDE TO A MUSICAL ODYSSEY

• INTRADA How the Musical Maps Project began
• ETUDE What is aural mapping? An overview
• FANTASIA The Musical Maps Project
• Objectives and Methodology
• Coding System
• Meter and Harmonic Considerations
• CODA First Results and Further Development

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INTRADA Background

• Why and how the Musical Maps Project came into
  being

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Necessity and opportunity

• Music degree studies dissertation
• CARTO-SOC forum discussion
• Media articles on research into navigation using
  sound

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CARTO-SOC discussion
If music can make you cry, can it also make you
produce great maps?......it seems that unless we
engage the emotions we cannot be creative or
rational......do cartographers who listen to
music make better maps than those who do not?
(Alan Collinson, Convenor BCS Design Group)
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CARTO-SOC discussion
Music at the workplace in general most
definitely lightens the spirit, makes individuals
happier and more likely to be creative, analytic,
and productive......I am a musician, music is
woven through my creative process. That merging
of Art with Science paid off for me on my Africa
Series maps which won the Macromedia Information
Illustration Award......I think it was Mars, off
the Holst of Planets, (?!) that helped me decide
to put a flaming sunset in the background of an
Eritrean marketplace .......Cartography is a
cross between an art and a science, both analytic
and creative. Perhaps what music does is help let
creative aspects to mapping come out......Frankly
I feel that if we had more Music inspiring our
mapping, we might have a world with better and
prettier maps in it, happier mappers, happier
musicians, happier travellers......
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CARTO-SOC discussion
Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that
people who are not emotional cannot be
creative......It does not follow that emotional
people are necessarily creative nor does it
follow that anything that impinges on emotion
affects creativity. It may be that creativity is
strongly directed by only one specific aspect of
one emotion, and unless that specific emotion is
affected, then neither will creativity be
affected......Your proposition of musical tastes
influencing cartographic aesthetics is
interesting, but......building this kind of
knowledge requires the most exacting
research. If your hypothesis is correct, it
would perhaps suggest that deaf people are
handicapped in their map-making abilities?"
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CARTO-SOC discussion
This last correspondent then goes on to somewhat
redirect the focus of the discussion saying I
know there has been a lot of research conducted
into producing maps for the blind......on the
design and use of tactile maps......read
through the sense of touch. Has anyone tried
producing aural maps, where cartographic
concepts are mapped as sounds rather than as the
raised shapes and textures of Braille or other
mapping?
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Aboriginal songlines

• Ancient cultural concept passed on through oral
  lore, singing, storytelling through dance and
  painting
• Intricate series of song cycles identifying
  landmarks and subtle tracking mechanisms for
  navigation eg. Where waterholes may be found in
  the desert
• Network of songlines criss-cross Australia, from
  few kilometres to hundreds of kilometres long
• Rainbow Serpent - path across Northern Australia
• Walujapi, Dreaming Spirit of black headed python
  venerated by Yarralin people of Victoria River

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Aboriginal songlines

• Songlines by Bruce Chatwin (1987)
• "...the labyrinth of invisible pathways which
  meander all over Australia and are
  known to Europeans as 'Dreaming-tracks'
  or 'Songlines' to the
  Aboriginals as the 'Footprints of the
  Ancestors' or the 'Way of the Law'.
• Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary
  totemic being who wandered over the continent in
  the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything
  that crossed their path- birds, animals, plants,
  rocks, waterholes- and so singing the world into
  existence."
• These shapeshifting spirits embodied forms of
  animals, plants, people,natural phenomena and/or
  inanimate objects and their existence is revealed
  by their formative journeyings and the signs they
  deposited through the landscape
• (source Wikipedia)

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Times Newspaper article

• Sound of music could enable blind people to see
  detailing research being carried out at UMIST,
  Manchester by Prof John Cronly-Dillon using
  hand-held video camera attached to an earpiece
  to translate complex visual objects into
  distinctive notes
• reference to enabling people to navigate their
  environments ..... investigating anything from a
  piece of text, someones face or the street
  ahead.....
• parallel piece of research carried out into the
  accuracy with which blind, partially sighted and
  sighted people could pinpoint sounds at Montreal
  University, Quebec

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ETUDE What is aural mapping?

• An overview of interpretations and research on
  the subject

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Recent research in aural mapping

• Studies in the natural world and medicine
• http//www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/25/15894
• Mapping for the visually impaired (Canada)
• http//tactile.nrcan.gc.ca/page.cgi?urlindex_e.ht
  ml
• SmartSight for the blind - the vOICe
• http//www.seeingwithsound.com/
• New York Soundmap
• http//www.nysoundmap.org/
• James Boyk, California Inst. of Technology
• http//www.performancerecordings.com/maps.html
• Dmitri Tymoczko, Princeton University
• http//silvertone.princeton.edu/dmitri/

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The Orbifold used by Dmitri Tymoczko
Orbifold depicting three-note chords, with major
and minor triads found near the centre
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FANTASIA The Musical Maps Project

• The journey so far

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Objectives and Methodology

• Overall Objectives
• produce musical framework using conventional
  Western notation equivalent to a cartographic
  symbology that can be used as basis for musical
  composition
• flexibility desirable to allow personal
  expression on part of individual composer without
  affecting overriding accuracy of most important
  characteristics of precise musical map
• Symbology (version 1) musmapssymbology.pdf
• Real-time composition? The distance dilemma
• impractical to consider composing in real time
• reference points along the journey most
  important, NOT how long takes to travel from A to
  B (variable)

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Research programme 4 Phases

• PHASE I
• Enlist aid of 12 cartographers from
  geographically different locations across the UK
• Each to supply data on minimum two different
  journeys using code system and proforma sheets
  supplied
• Code sheets do not contain any musical symbology
• OBJECT - to codify journey data which differs in
  environment, purpose and mood that can be
  translated into the musical equivalent of a
  descriptive map or navigation chart of the route.

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PHASE I data collection areas
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Research programme 4 Phases

• PHASE II
• Using collected data, compose pieces of music
  portraying a variety of work and leisure related
  journeys
• OBJECT - to construct musical maps describing the
  sequence of physical events necessary to navigate
  from Point A to Point B on a specified journey.
  The compositions will differ through such
  features as the sequence of movements, mode of
  transport, terrain being negotiated and mood of
  the traveller as affected by the purpose of the
  journey

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Research programme 4 Phases

• PHASE III
• Taking a small, varied sample of the Phase I
  data, enlist the aid of approximately six current
  or recently graduated BA (Hons.) Band Studies
  students to create compositions of their own
• OBJECT - to test the consistency and flexibility
  of the composition system.
• Finished compositions from Phase II and Phase III
  will be compared and similarities and differences
  analysed
• similarities should exist in melodic progression
  and rhythmic structure
• differences possible in meter and probable in
  harmonisation,

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Research programme 4 Phases

• PHASE IV
• Review of the results of Phases I to III
• Identify and implement any improvements which may
  be made to the descriptive notation and dynamic
  systems to improve the musical structure of the
  compositions
• OBJECT - to ascertain the validity of carrying
  out further study and development of the system
  of composition

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Coding the data Direction Gradient
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Coding the data Junctions Speed
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Coding the data Environment Mood
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Coding the data Proforma
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Gradient profiles good indicator of data with
most potential for musical outcome
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Plotting routes on a grid background
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Plotting routes on stave strip maps- example
Cambridge, England
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Plotting routes on stave strip maps- example
St Andrews, Scotland
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Melody, Meter and Harmonisation

• Melody
• The melody alone contains virtually all the
  significant information for our musical map and
  could stand on its own.
• Experiment is intended to produce musical
  compositions of somewhat more depth than this.
• The melodic progression is the most structured
  component of composition, the parameters being
  clearly defined in our cartographic symbol set.
  
• Further minor additions could be made at the
  composer's discretion

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Melody, Meter and Harmonisation

• Meter
• Defining meter (pulse) needs careful thought and
  perhaps a degree of experimentation.
• Early results from first sets of journey data
  plotted indicate strong likelihood of many
  changes in the number and types of beat in bar in
  majority of pieces depicting journeys through
  undulating terrain.
• In order to make musical sense from irregular
  sequence of notes from raw data, it is a good
  idea to begin constructing musical map by
  plotting notes as a continuous string without bar
  lines. Then one of two approaches may be adopted
  to establish the meter
• Establish rhythmic unit eg. Crotchet. Sub-divide
  total notes OR
• Establish logical phrases more subjective
  approach

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Melody, Meter and Harmonisation

• Rhythm
• The underlying rhythms should aim to enhance the
  creation of the map image, such as mode of
  transport, eg.
• where the melody describes a journey by foot then
  a simple, sedate crotchet 'walking bass' may be
  appropriate
• for a bicycle journey a moving triplet rhythm
  could greatly add to the image
• In the case of a bus or car journey, a repeated
  quaver or semi-quaver rhythm would add required
  amount of atmospheric movement

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Melody, Meter and Harmonisation

• Rhythm (continued)
• Instinctive recognition is often coloured by past
  experience or learning, consequently
  predictability could be seen as a strength by
  association.
• Important that the composer does not allow
  underlying rhythmic accompaniment to overpower
  the primary musical figure, the melody, which
  should be dominant at all times.

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Melody, Meter and Harmonisation

• Harmony
• Symbol set in its current form makes suggestions
  as to how a sense of mood can be introduced into
  our musical maps by the choice of key
• Establishing an overriding key signature as a
  'background colour that makes use of major or
  minor sounds, will assist accurate depiction of
  the mood of the journey in question
• Use of different instrumental voices will
  reinforce environment depiction
• Haunting, sparse woodwind sounds for remote
  moorland
• Thickly layered brass for industrial areas

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CODA First Results and Future Progress

• Musical maps more Schoenberg and Stockhausen than
  Smetana and Richard Strauss!
• klavierstucke1.wav
• Successful in illustrating clear contrast between
  flat and undulating landscapes
• devonandcambridge.pdf
• Unsatisfactory aural definition between
  directional events
• No overriding key signature so harmonisation
  extremely difficult without loss of journey
  clarity

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CODA First Results and Future Progress

• Duration of pieces resulted in soundbites not
  compositions of substance, although many
  avant-garde pieces are very short and composers
  such as Anton Webern (Second Viennese School)
  wrote pieces of just few seconds duration
• Perceptual data recording when checked on route
  plot showed serious errors in system eg. Hooe to
  Plymouth journey data crossed over itself and
  headed east instead of west!
• Serious justification for plotting on Ordnance
  Survey or similar map

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Journey plotted on OS base reduces errors
compared to perceptual data
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Ideas for improving system

• Increase musical intervals in directional symbol
  set use whole-tone scale (newsymbol.pdf)
• Repeat each event sequence (à la vOICe) equal to
  beats in bar eg. x3 in 3/4, x4 in 4/4,
• OR
• Repeat event sequence according to set distance
  measurement eg. every 50 or 100 metres travelled
• Any other ideas from audience?

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MUSICAL MAPS A musical approach to cartography
or a cartographic approach to musical
composition ?
Probably a bit of both!
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FINEQuestions?
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