aMcGill University
bDetmold University of Music
cUniversité de Montréal
Abstract :
ODESSA is a collaborative project between the Université de
Montréal, McGill University and Detmold University of Music
aiming to study orchestral blending effects, examining how
instrumental sounds are sculpted by the conductor, the
musicians and the hall acoustics and how the sound changes
when heard and recorded from different perspectives. This
project is realized in context of the ACTOR (Analysis,
Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration) partnership, which
involves a diverse international team of composers, music
theorists, musicologists, computer and signal processing
scientists, psychologists, acousticians, sound recordists and
conductors. ACTOR’s main goals are to develop a perceptually
based theory of orchestration and to create new tools for music
analysis, composition, teaching and mediation. Under the
combined leadership of four researchers, the ODESSA project
consists of a complex multitrack recording of the Orchestre de
l’Université de Montréal performing excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s
Sixth Symphony, “Pathétique”. More than 50 microphones are
used in a combination of close microphone pick-up and
ambient recording. Concurrently, the acoustical balance of the
instruments is examined employing techniques such as 3D
intensity probes and an acoustic camera. Excerpts of the
recording of varying instrumental combinations are used as
listening test stimuli with the purpose of investigating timbral
blending effects.