---
id: acousmatic
title: "Acousmatic Music"
year: 1974
category: "Ideas"
lang: en
canonical: https://nodemusic.cc/node/acousmatic
source: node.music
---

# Acousmatic Music (1974)

Ideas · https://nodemusic.cc/node/acousmatic

## Summary

François Bayle turned tape music into 'acousmatics': reduced listening through the Acousmonium speaker orchestra, where the source is hidden and only trajectory matters.

## Full text

The term was proposed by Jérôme Peignot as early as 1960, but it was François Bayle in the mid-70s who made it the banner of the Paris school. Acousmatics relies on the concept of 'reduced listening': when we hear a recording of a train, we must forget the locomotive and listen only to the rhythm, screech, and dynamics of the metal.

Technically, this is music that exists only on a medium (tape, disk) and is intended for playback through an orchestra of loudspeakers (Acousmonium). The 'Pythagoras curtain' here is the loudspeaker itself, which hides the physical cause of the sound from us, turning it into a pure 'sound object'.

## People

- François Bayle (b. 1932) — French GRM composer who popularized the term “acousmatic music.”

## Connections

### Influenced by

- [Musique Concrète](https://nodemusic.cc/node/schaeffer.md) - EVOLVED
- [Coupigny Synthesizer](https://nodemusic.cc/node/coupigny.md) - TECHNIQUE

### Influenced

- [De Natura Sonorum](https://nodemusic.cc/node/parmegiani.md) - EVOLVED
- [Pentes (Acousmatics)](https://nodemusic.cc/node/smalley.md) - EVOLVED