Reduced Listening
Pierre Schaeffer gave the name reduced listening to the listening mode that focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and of its meaning. Reduced listening takes the sound-verbal, played on an instrument, noises, or whatever-as itself the object to be observed instead of as a vehicle for something else.
A session of reduced listening is quite an instructive experience. Participants quickly realize that in speaking about sounds they shuttle constantly between a sound's actual content its source, and its meaning. They find out that it is no mean task to speak about sounds in and of themselves, if the listener is forced to describe them independently of any cause, meaning, or effect. And language we employ as a matter of habit suddenly reveals all its ambiguity: "This is a squeaky sound," you say, but in what sense? Is "squeaking" an image only, or is it rather a word that refers to a source that squeaks, or to an unpleasant effect?
So when faced with this difficulty of paying attention to sounds in themselves, people have certain reactions. "Laughing off" the project, or identifying trivial or harebrained causes which are in fact so many defenses. Others might avoid description by claiming to objectify sound via the aids of spectral analysis or stopwatches, but of course these machines only apprehend physical data, they do not designate what we hear. A third form of retreat involves entrenchment in subjective relativism. According to this school of thought, every individual hears something different, and the sound perceived remains forever unknowable. But perception is not a purely individual phenomenon, since it partakes of a particular kind of objectivity; that of shared perceptions. And it is in this objectivity-born-of- intersubjectivity that reduced listening, as Schaeffer defined it, should be situated.
In reduced listening the descriptive inventory of a sound cannot be compiled in a single hearing. One has to listen many times over, and because of this the sound must be fixed, recorded. For a singer or a musician playing an instrument before you is unable to produce exactly the same sound each time. She or he can only reproduce its general pitch and outline, not the fine

details that particularize a sound event and render it unique. Thus reduced listening requires the fixing of sounds, which thereby acquire the status of veritable objects.
Requirements of Reduced Listening
Reduced listening is an enterprise that is new, fruitful, and hardly natural. It disrupts established habits and opens up a world of previously unimagined questions for those who try it. Everybody practices at least rudimentary forms of reduced listening. When we identify the pitch of a tone or figure out an interval between two notes, we are doing reduced listening; for pitch is an inherent characteristic of sound, independent of the sound's cause or the comprehension of its meaning.
What complicates matters is that a sound is not defined solely by its pitch; it has many other perceptual characteristics. Many common sounds do not even have a precise or determinate pitch; if they did, reduced listening would consist of nothing but good old traditional solfeggio practice. Can a descriptive system for sounds be formulated, independent of any consideration of their cause? Schaeffer showed this to be possible, but he only managed to stake out the territory, proposing, in his Traite des objets musicaux, a system of classification. This system is certainly neither complete nor immune to criticism, but it has the great merit of existing.
Indeed, it is impossible to develop such a system any further unless we create new concepts and criteria. Present everyday language as well as specialized musical terminology is totally inadequate to describe the sonic traits that are revealed when we practice reduced listening on recorded sounds.
In this book I am not about to go into great detail on reduced listening and sound description. The reader is encouraged to consult other books on this subject, particularly my own digest of Pierre Schaeffer's work published under the title of Guide des objets sonores.
What Is Reduced Listening Good For?
"What ultimately is the usefulness of reduced listening?" wondered the film and video students whom we obliged to immerse themselves in it for four days straight. Indeed, it would seem that film and television use sounds solely for their figurative, semantic, or evocatory value, in reference to real or suggested causes, or to texts?but only rarely as formal raw materials in themselves.
However, reduced listening has the enormous advantage of opening up our ears and sharpening our power of listening. Film and video makers, scholars, and technicians can get to know their medium better as a result of this experience and gain mastery over it. The emotional, physical, and aesthetic
value of a sound is linked not only to the causal explanation we attribute to it but also to its own qualities of timbre and texture, to its own personal vibration. So just as directors and cinematographers -even those who will never make abstract films- have everything to gain by refining their knowledge of visual materials and textures, we can similarly benefit from disciplined attention to the inherent qualities of sounds.
The Acousmatic Dimension and Reduced Listening
Reduced listening and the acousmatic situation share something in common, but in a more ambiguous way than Pierre Schaeffer (who first developed both notions) gave us to understand. Schaeffer emphasized how acousmatic listening, which we shall define further on as a situation wherein one hears the sound without seeing its cause, can modify our listening. Acousmatic sound draws our attention to sound traits normally hidden from us by the simultaneous sight of the causes-hidden because this sight reinforces the perception of certain elements of the sound and obscures others. The acousmatic truly allows sound to reveal itself in all its dimensions.
At the same time, Schaeffer thought the acousmatic situation could encourage reduced listening, in that it provokes one to separate oneself from causes or effects in favor of consciously attending to sonic textures, masses, and velocities. But, on the contrary, the opposite often occurs, at least at first, since the acousmatic situation intensifies causal listening in taking away the aid of sight. Confronted with a sound from a loudspeaker that is presenting itself without a visual calling card, the listener is led all the more intently to ask, "What's that?" (i.e., "What is causing this sound?") and to be attuned to the minutest clues (often interpreted wrong anyway) that might help to identify the cause.
When we listen acousmatically to recorded sounds it takes repeated hearings of a single sound to allow us gradually to stop attending to its cause and to more accurately perceive its own inherent traits.
A seasoned auditor can exercise causal listening and reduced listening in tandem, especially when the two are correlated. Indeed, what leads us to deduce a sound's cause if not the characteristic form it takes? Knowing that this is "the sound of x" allows us to proceed without further interference to
explore what the sound is like in and of itself.