ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the nature of the audio-object and the manner of its employment, within the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), providing specific reference to electronic music production practice. It considers the way in which the relationships between sound and object may impact upon electronic music producers’ thinking about, and working with, audio as a material for creative use. The chapter suggests that new ways of working with digital sound, using a refined series of interactions between the creative user, visualized objects, and the intrinsic creative potentiality of those onscreen “audio-objects”. It proposes a new theoretical model for working with the audio-object within a speculative DAW, one that combines a free-flow creativity with touchscreen devices. Pop producers unhindered by the theoretical purity advocated by P. Schaeffer and his acousmatic followers have instead developed intuitive aesthetic approaches to the utilization of the audio-object.