In this paper the author expresses his view that the music of the Mississippi Delta region of the U.S.A. was a major instigator in returning musical impulses to a more natural and intuitive path, while also presaging many of the formal compositional innovations that took place in the latter half of the 20th century.

What makes a musical interval consonant? Since the early Greeks, there have been two contrasting views: an “objective” approach, focusing on the mathematical relationship of frequencies, and a “subjective” approach, emphasizing auditory perception. These approaches are reviewed, as are several proposed measures of consonance. The author then presents a composition that uses intervals that are rated highly by the measures of consonance but are outside the scales of Western music and so are subjectively unfamiliar.

Sonification can allow us to connect sound and/or music via data to the environment; in another sense, by “displaying” data through sound, sonification participates in creating our acoustic environment. The authors consider here the significance of certain aspects of this relationship.

The author considers the relationship between architecture, acoustics and audience. The author proposes we think of audience in a more active sense and attend to conditions of audience. This dynamic approach demonstrates how changes in architecture designed for sound both are related to social changes in practices of listening and influence how people come to experience sound. Such an approach reveals contemporary acoustic architecture as biased toward music as spectacle, with conditions of audience that demand a silenced and attentive listener.

The desire for instrumental qualities in computer music often leads the artist to a process of “synthetic limitation,” wherein constraint is designed into a performance system, permitting creation only within prescribed limits. These practices can emerge as a consequence of the sheer dearth of possibilities available to the digital artist: as though the path to new sounds and ever more intimate control leads ultimately to a retreat. The author's response to this perennial dilemma has been to try to discover instrumental limitations within the ear itself.

The author discusses his sound installation Threshold as a system to explore an evolving acoustic ecology. For the purpose of this brief examination, the author observes how the soundscape functions as an interface in communion with its participants.

The artist describes the use of virtual audio for spatial music composition.

The author describes his approach to using sustained tones in his compositional work and how he harnesses acoustical and psychoacoustical occurrences to create individual listening experiences.

The author describes her creation of a sound installation inspired by the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations.

The author discusses a piece that recycles noise in the surrounding environment, inviting active listening and contemplation on the act of listening itself.