microsound

Microsound is a music and sound art practice that treats sound on a time scale much smaller than traditional musical phrases, focusing on micro-events and grains that last from a few milliseconds to a few seconds. It emerged with advances in digital signal processing and granular synthesis, and the term was popularized in the early 2000s through Curtis Roads' book Microsound (MIT Press, 2001). The approach encompasses the deliberate manipulation, recombination, and processing of short sound fragments to create new textures, timbres, and rhythmic structures.

Techniques central to microsound include granular synthesis, in which a stream of short grains is synthesized and controlled in density, duration, pitch, and envelope; spectral processing and resynthesis; time-stretching and pitch-shifting of grains; and stochastic or algorithmic sequencing of grains. Other practices include micro-edits of field recordings, multi-layered granular textures, and spectro-temporal editing that emphasizes the microstructure of sound rather than longer melodies.

Characteristics often include highly abstract or textural results, a focus on timbre, micro-rhythmic detail, and emergent phenomena from the combination of many short events. The field draws on electroacoustic, musique concrète, and computer music traditions and has influenced contemporary sound design, installation art, and avant-garde composition. Notable contributors include Curtis Roads and a broader community of electronic musicians who employ granular and texture-based approaches, including Francisco López.

See also: granular synthesis, acousmatic music, experimental electroacoustic music.