MAP Project: Peter Ko — Questionnaire & write-up

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Peter Ko — Questionnaire & write-up

1. How did binaural listening impact your reflections on how your partner’s intent in the composer-performer interaction is communicated?

Binaural listening framed the approach of how we decided to form the concept of the piece. We felt that it represented an opportunity to explore an unusual level of perspectival intimacy in regards to sound, which involved a lot of discussion in trying to understand how the other partner perceived sound from their own perspective, rather than the typical mode of listening that focused on how sound would be projected in a more standard, “objective” sense.

2. How did listening to binaural recordings of your own practice provide for methods in which these intentions can be communicated and preserved with regards to the interaction between composition - score and performance?

It helped me understand what the realities of binaural recording were, and how it captured the sound a little differently from what I actually heard under my ears. I would sometimes need to modify slightly what I did in order for the effect to come across with the recording. At the same time, it also opened my ears to certain sounds and effects that I either took for granted or filtered out, which allowed me to notice and attune to them as I played in real life.

3. How did listening to binaural recordings influence your perception of timbre? In what ways did this compliment the theoretical timbral descriptors that already exist within ACTOR’s research axes?

Listening to binaural recordings made me really understand the importance of spatialization in terms of how we perceive timbre, how distance can change the character of a sound as certain transients of the sounds disappear after a certain distance. I also found that the position of my head would alter slightly my timbral perception, and that I would often subconsciously position my head in a way that “EQ’d” what I found to be balanced for the sound.

4. Did any of your attitudes towards timbre change during the course of the project? This may include phenomenological characteristics of spatialized timbre. For instance, how one feels, hears, and thinks about the real-life application of binaural technology. How did this technology change how you perceive the world around you?

My attitude did not necessarily change, but I certainly learned new things that I wasn’t quite expecting. I think in particular, it has made me more aware of and appreciative of acoustical phenomena, and how one tends to filter things in their daily life of listening.

5. How did our experience together as a composer performer duo inform your creative improvisational and/or compositional structure?

The process of collaborating with Tiange allowed me to have a different perspective of things that helped me learn a lot, as she helped prompt me to explore many new ideas and to think of things in a different way.

6. Do you have a creative personal statement to accompany your final work?

I think that the focus on binaural technology delves into a niche that is subtle, but can be quite provoking in challenging the way assume to perceive sound, and has a lot of potential for creative exploration.

7. With our new compositional freedom, there has emerged a need to understand how music as it is notated and performed maps onto music as it is perceived. How did binaural technology inform these ‘translations’ for you? How did you think binaural listening contributed to negotiation between the composer and performer?

I think it has just reframed these translations to a different realm, albeit a bit unique, but it largely remains the same regardless.

8. How do the varieties of interindividual differences shape timbre perception? What may be a good test in the future to compare the timbre perceptions of different individuals using binaural technology?

Interindividual differences adds a large degree of subjectivity to timbral perception, Tiange seemed to perceive overtone structures differently than I perceived them. However, our perceptions of timbre seemed to largely match up overall, but perhaps the issue of hearing overtones differently could be further explored with binaural technology.