A Sign to write Acousmatic Scores

This paper aims at describing an approach meant to build a sign adapted to acousmatic music and based on reduced listening. The sign, to be efficient, must obey to a certain number of requisits: precision, ergonomy, relevance... It must be both easy to use and able to create relations between sounds. A simple description of their qualities is not enough: it must be able to create or analyse sound compositions and structures, such as instrumental scores. To fulfill this purpose, it must be able to give each sound a value, in a saussurian meaning of the word. I will try to show the genealogy of my sign, how I took elements of reflexion from musical knowledge, linguistics, semiotics and aesthetics. From there I deduced the concept of minimal unit of sound applied to electroacoustic music and I created a sign combining symbols to decribe its features. I'll show how I have reorganised sound paramaters described by Schaeffer and how this sign works. At last, I will show the possibilities of writing scores sound by sound and I'll show two kinds of analysis: the analysis of a pure acousmatic work from a formal point of view and the analysis of a work for tape and instruments both from a formal and a symbolic point of view