Psychoacoustics is a fringe discipline that studies the relationship between sound and the auditory sensations it evokes. I felt that the term psychoacoustics was very confusing to me when I first heard it, but it’s really quite simple – it’s the way that the human brain uses to interpret sound. For example, if a person shouts at the top of their lungs and gently steps on their foot at the same time, I will hear them shouting, but I may not hear them stepping on their foot. I am then mentally attracted to his shout because it is richer in high frequencies. I was thinking that when we listen to some music, if there is an instrument that is very special, it might make the listener attracted to that instrument. I was listening to a piece of Chinese-influenced music that had a part played by the suona, a traditional Chinese instrument, and when I got to that part, my attention was completely drawn to the melody of the suona. This is probably the same as shouting and stamping in which the shout is more appealing.

In my piece I can also use the concept of psychoacoustics to accomplish this. Because I want to create an atmosphere with a combination of field recordings and synthesisers. My field recordings may be more appealing to the audience than my synthesizer sounds, and I hope that this will turn the piece into a better sense of rich space.