Doctoral artistic research · Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre
How can the acoustic features of a real-world recording become a source of pitch material for new music?
This research develops a systematic way to listen to, analyse and compose with environmental sound. It follows particular recordings from the field into the concert work, bringing spectral analysis together with close listening and artistic judgement.
Environmental Sound as Pitch: Developing a Systematic Method for Deriving Pitch Collections from Sound Recordings
The method
Begin with a sound that holds artistic or personal significance, attending to its character and changing layers.
Capture the sound in its environment. Distance, direction and listening position all shape the recording.
Use spectral views to locate candidate frequencies, then assess their prominence, recurrence, stability and perceptual clarity.
Choose frequencies for their musical usefulness and form them into a pitch collection. The original frequency values remain intact rather than being rounded to equal temperament.
In the field
Estonian landscapes provide the research’s central sound worlds: sustained flows, brief impacts and fragile, changing events.
At Pirita River Gorge, a steady river bed meets recurring impacts as water breaks against rocks. The contrast between continuous and transient sound became a source of material for Feather’s Allure.
This case attends to a nightingale’s song as environmental sound, listening for the shape and resonance of its changing phrases and their relation to the surrounding landscape.
On the Tädu Nature Trail in Viimsi, a snow-covered woodland offers a different kind of event: the short, irregular sound of a breaking branch, never quite repeated in the same way. Each recording must be heard on its own terms.
The dense, continuous rush at Jägala Waterfall offers a sustained sound field. The research observes how a change in recording or listening position shifts the balance of its perceived low and high frequency regions.
Featured case study · Composition
A work shaped by environmental sound
Feather’s