Emmerson Simon - On Sonic Art

It is a dilemma for Trevor Wishart that so many people appreciate and demand his writings rather than just simply listen to the music. But luckily for us, providing the music is not compromised, he has consistently agreed to put his thoughts to paper. In this book there is an advocacy and an evangelism which is characteristically direct and uncompromising. On Sonic Art is a demand for a renewal, not just a personal credo. Alsonotwithstanding a forthright statement on the very first page that the book is about the why and not the how of sonic artthere are clear insights into methods and means which will help attain these aims.

It was sometime in 1993 that Trevor Wishart said in an aside that, due to work on a new (self-published) book, he was having difficulty financing and organizing a reprint of On Sonic Art. By good chance I was due to discuss another project with Robert Robertson of Harwood Academic Publishers and added the suggestion of a newly edited edition of this work to the agenda. To my surprise and delight, Robert had known the book for some years and accepted the project with enthusiasm. He was, in fact, one of an enormous group throughout the world for whom this text had been an inspiration, a stimulus and a constant reference.

The problems of editing were several. I wanted to preserve Trevor Wishart's idiosyncratic style and have only altered to clarify or correct. I decided that with a few minor exceptions the datedness of some of the text was a strength. There are elements of the book that remain 1985; to have updated these would have been difficult without major rewriting. By that time, while PCs and mainframes may yet have remained substantially separated and a great deal less powerful, the landscape we have today (of music software tools, at least) was largely formed. But in fact, and more importantly, many critical points which Wishart made remain unaddressed more than a decade later. A very high proportion of the book remains as

I intend the suggestions on the production of sound and music examples to represent a challenge to the reader, the listener and the teacher. The recording accompanying this book was produced by Trevor Wishart and myself and is largely of otherwise unavailable material. But increasingly the expanded ideal list of examples will be available through the development of on-line facilities: On Sonic Art suggestseven foretellsthe development of this new resource. It is a key text for the aurality of the network.

Simon Emmerson
London, 1995

Audible Design (A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Sound Composition). York: Orpheus the Pantomime Ltd., 1995.

For this reason added footnotes only reference more recent developments where this helps clarify a point.