Music and science meet at the micro level: Time‐frequency methods and granular synthesis

Musical research over the last century has become increasingly entwined with the areas of acoustics, psychoacoustics, and electroacoustics. One of the most striking results has been to push the frontiers of models of sound and music to the micro level, what is generally termed microsound. At this level, concepts of frequency and time are conjoined by a quantum relationship, with an uncertainty principle relating them that is precisely analogous to the more famous uncertainty principle of quantum physics. A class of methods of sound synthesis and signal processing known as time‐frequency models have their basis at this quantum level such that changes in a signal’s time domain result in spectral alterations and vice versa. One such method, granular synthesis and the granulation of sampled sound, produces results by the generation of high densities of acoustical quanta called grains. Such a radical shift has profound implications for not only our models of sound design, but also for the compositional methods that emerge as well as the role of the composer in guiding complex processes. The paper will argue that these models are examples of a class of complex systems exhibiting emergent form that create a new form of virtual music instrument.