‘Spectral music is by its very essence a textural music because the spectrum itself textural, sculptural and nature.’ P. 78
‘Similar to an architect’ blueprint, visual representation are used by spectral composers in order to collect and display data about a sound, which they can then apply to their compositions. One such representation is the sonogram, which displays the frequency, amplitude, and duration of an análises sound. A dark horizontal line represents every constituent partial contained in the sound; the vertical axis indicates frequency, the horizontal axis represent time, the shading of the lines designates amplitude. In this way, the onset and release times of each partial can be precisely indicated, and the minute variations in frequency and amplitude can be seen. the lines are essentially tracings of each frequency component. A sonogram represents sound in much the same way that traditional musical scores do, so it is easy to see how this visual representation can be transferred to notation. In fact, parts of many spectral scores closely resemble a sonogram; composers such as Grisey, Murail, and Hurel often indicate longer durations with horizontal lines.’ P. 78
‘In spectral music, texture is constantly evolving, sometimes very gradually and in subtle ways., These transformations are meant to be perceived by the listener and they contribute to the overall form of the work.’ P. 79
‘As discussed in chapter 1, orchestral or instrumental synthesis is a technique invented by spectral composers that is unique to spectral music. In this procedure, a composer takes information from the analysis of a sound file, and then, in the most baxsic sense, orchestrates the partial data. The process of orchestral synthesis is never as simple as an orchestration exercise form a textbook, but rather a step along a compositional path that often involves many other processes and techniques. It is at this step where the intimate relationships between spectrum and texture first becomes apparent.
Although spectral composers have used collections such as the overtone series, or subsets of it, or, have been generated artificial spectra for their basic material, many spectral works begin with the analysis of a sound file. the first step in this process is to record a sound. Next, this sound is análises for spectral content by a computer running some type of analysis program, and a visual representation such as a sonogram is made. The frequency and amplitude information is then translated into musical notation. In order to preserve the non-tempered spectral content of natural sound, spectral composers generally translate frequency with as much fine detail as possible, approximating each partial with microtones.’ P. 80