Acousmatic music is conceptual genre which stands mainly for the sound being separated from its origins. The source of the sound should ideally not be possible to identify by listener – both, in recorded and produced pieces as well as during performances.

The composition is often based on several prominent elements. It usually has long forms and contains so called “gestures” and “textures”. Gestures are usually very prominent sounds standing more upfront. To me they reminded forms of glitches. Textures are usually ambiences, something which we could commonly call “pads”, although they aren’t necessarily melodic but it could be. Sound objects within composition also changes their pitch. Compositions are often interrupted by dramatic hits or booms following quieter or silent parts bringing to it the element of negative space.

After listening to several examples found particularly interesting the element of separation. Separation is not only achieved by concealing the sound source but also from my observation acousmatic music appears to be somehow separated from its creator to especially in comparison to commonly listened music. Like in performances, thus in recordings, there is often kept the focus on the artist. There is an inherent element of artist’s ego in the most of the music. Acousmatic music is usually very abstract and my mental and emotional processes remained quite different in comparison to listening of “usual” music. I kept myself being intellectually stimulated by its abstraction and sort of mathematical precision in the apparent chaos which was in fact sophistically constructed order rather then being entertained or emotionally drifted away, however this doesn’t mean that acousmatic music does not or cannot contain an emotional aspect. The significant abstraction of the acousmatic music led me as a listener to the thoughts about the artist or composer being rather lacking or non-existent creating another level of the separation from the source – even from the artist themselves.

The piece called ‘Klang’ was little bit confusing because the source of the sound is quite obvious considering even the cover of the piece. It almost feels like a game at this point since we still cannot say for sure if the sound source is the clang of the pot or something else. This suggest another important characteristic of the acousmatic music which is creative freedom. Considering the certain boundaries which makes music being acousmatic, there is not many other limits how to compose or perform.

Acousmatic piece of Berk Yagli and the other example like Murmures by Robert Normandeau reminded me my very favourite experimental electronic music composer Roly Porter. Roly Porter’s music probably isn’t inherently acousmatic but to me it seems that it overlaps and carries a lot of its elements.