"Calling BS" is a Ph.Dead feature in which I lament over those pretentious academics who deem themselves important enough to make up words or concepts and expect a) that we know what the hell they're talking about, and b) that others will use them, too.
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Calling BS, 11/10/08: Spectromorphology
I have a great personal grudge against this word. In the field of electroacoustic music, it's impossible to get away from it. One of the great dilemmas of the field is finding a good way to talk about music that often has no score, and that uses sounds in ways we aren't familiar with. It's kind of the popular thing to do when you need to publish something to try to come up with your own solution to the problem. Denis Smalley is one of the few whose ideas actually caught on and became widely talked about among electroacoustic musicians, and for good reason. He's actually quite well respected, and he's not really a bad guy. However, he loses major points in my book for coming up with this clunker of a word. Who the hell wants to write a 20-page paper on Spectromorphology and have to type out that mammoth over and over? Just having to write a 3-page summary of the article in which he introduces the word made me want to cry. To add insult to injury, he not only invents this term, but coins a few others and appropriates dozens more in his attempt to create his “spectromorphological vocabulary”. For the record, here is the origin of this troublesome word:
“I have developed the concepts and terminology of spectromorphology as tools for describing and analysing listening experience. The two parts of the term refer to the interaction between sound spectra (spectro-) and the ways they change and are shaped through time (-morphology).”
In fact, Smalley even admits that his word is FAIL:
“The term may be rather jargonistic and it is perhaps an ungainly word, but I have not managed to invent an alternative which encapsulates the interactive components so accurately.”
I personally vote for “Bob”.
((All quotes are taken from Smalley, D. 1997. Spectromorphology: explaining sound-shapes. Organized Sound 2(2): 107-126.))
