Translating sounds to images

Music has inspired artists like Jo Smail, whose abstract work Stutterings and Songs II (1984) seems to have been created in response to sounds. Notice the different qualities of the lines, marks, and texture which can be related to the tone, texture and feeling of music.

Composers communicate the qualities of the sounds, such as the tempo, duration and rests by writing musical scores using the language of musical notation. A musical score is a visual representation of the sounds and pauses we hear when music is played with instruments or sung by the human voice. Musicians read, then interpret the score when playing their instruments. A musical score is an excellent example of the connection between the material and immaterial.

Let’s create

Create a graphic score for the sound piece Hidden Energies (Harris, 2023). Draw marks, lines, shapes to represent the sounds you hear. Try to communicate the quality of the sound in the marks that you make:

Glossary

A graphic score is a score that uses marks and drawings in place of musical notation to represent a what we hear.