S.T.OOGE

MADE BY GIUSEPPE SILVI

S.T.OOGE is the outward-radiating spherical loudspeaker array specifically designed for guitar amplification by Giuseppe Silvi.

S.T.OOGE has a truncated tetrahedral enclosure, featuring four independent 8″ full-range dual cone speakers, arranged on the four hexagonal faces, and four bass reflex ports, arranged on the four triangular faces (obtained by truncating the cusps of the tetrahedron). Thanks to its architecture, S.T.OOGE has a regular speaker array for first-order Ambisonics decoding.

S.T.OOGE allows for the total integration of acoustic and electroacoustic listening experiences, restoring in instrumental practice fundamental interpretational tools lost in the use of traditional amplification strategies. Integrating S.T.OOGE in one’s own performance practice means deeply redefining the scope of such, gaining awareness of the interactions between instrument/s, body and space.

S.T.OOGE was developed in 2023 with the support of the Hochschule für Music Basel FHNW and the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology ZHdK.

Giuseppe Silvi (*1981, IT) is an electroacoustic musician and saxophonist.
He studied saxophone with Enzo Filippetti, electronic music with Giorgio Nottoli, Nicola Bernardini and Michelangelo Lupone, and electroacoustics with Piero Schiavoni at Conservatorio di Musica S. Cecilia of Rome. His research on sound space and musical dimensions led him to the construction of electroacoustic prototypes and software for music production. He is a member and sound director of the EMUfest staff, and a specialized sound engineer in surround recordings for Tactus, Naxos, Brilliant Classic and Sony. He is professor of electroacoustic music at the Conservatorio di Musica of Bari.

https://github.com/grammaton

https://l-e-a-p.github.io/

Background

If we think of the classical guitar, its shallow volume has been, throughout history, the major weakness of the instrument. The peculiarities of the guitar’s sound emission made it unsuitable for most chamber music, ensemble or symphonic contexts, where all the tiny tone nuances perceivable in the near field that characterise its timbre and shape the performer’s musical discourse, get lost. In contemporary performance practice, amplification became such an omnipresent tool and such an important element of the guitar listening experience that I cannot keep thinking of it just as a prosthesis needed for the good of the audience and detached from my instrumental practice. I need to consider acoustic and amplified sound as a single complex, and I need to be able to have the same control over that complex when playing in a big concert hall with an orchestra, as I have over the unamplified instrument in my practice room. However, when dealing with traditional amplification strategies, this is not possible.

„Because of important perceptual differences, the two sources, the acoustic instrument and the loudspeaker belong to two different worlds. This is one of the major issues of all electronic music, yet one of the least worked out. There is a huge mismatch between the richness and complexity with which an instrument radiates sound in space and the way a loudspeaker behaves. Hence, material coming from loudspeakers tends to sound dull and lacks depth of image and presence.”

[M. Stroppa, 1999]

Traditional reinforcement/amplification strategies (involving mono or stereo miking and the use of a single loudspeaker or a PA) introduce many perceptual problems. One loudspeaker radiates one sound, picked up at a specific point in the instrument sound field, in one direction. Nevertheless, acoustic instruments have much more complex behaviour, involving relationships between the dynamic, timbral and primarily spatial factors of the sound. It follows that a traditional amplification strategy cannot amplify the acoustic phenomenon in its entirety, characterised by directivity-dependent parameters, and therefore produces a perceptual mismatch between the acoustic and electroacoustic sources.

With the electric guitar, where the guitar speaker cabinet is an unavoidable part of the instrument itself, the perceptual problems caused by sound diffusion via loudspeakers become even more evident, especially when playing in ensembles together with acoustic instruments. Despite the 50-year-long historical process that has produced swathes of important contemporary literature for electric guitar, some structural problems that prevent its total integration into the art music contexts have never been addressed. Contemporary music requires a fundamentally different listening experience from that of popular music, for which the system electric guitar was designed. By saying “system electric guitar” I refer to all those devices (the guitar itself, effect pedals, cables, amplifier, etc.) that are essential to producing the acoustic phenomenon and defining its spatial and timbral characteristics. As a primary step to address the spatial problem of electric guitar sound diffusion, the last link of the chain, the speaker cabinet, has to be rethought. As for any traditional loudspeaker, its directionality and the inability to interact with the acoustic space in an organic way make the sound of the electric guitar perceptually incompatible with that of any acoustic instrument. This deprives the interpreter of that contact with a multidimensional and malleable sound matter on which the classical interpretative practice is founded.

As a performer, my ability to develop a musical discourse rests inescapably on the sound-shaping possibilities that my instrument offers me and the control I have over all sound parameters. If we start thinking about acoustic sound as a multidimensional phenomenon, as a physical, solid shape, its spatial dimension cannot be excluded from the observation of the phenomenon. Timbre and spatial form are two strictly connected parameters; to manipulate the timbre means to manipulate the shape of sound, and vice versa. Being forced to deal with an instrument (in the case of the electric guitar) that does not allow me to work with those parameters or an amplification system (for the classical guitar) that deprives the instrument of those, is an unacceptable limitation. Therefore, the need to investigate innovative amplification strategies is not a vain aesthetic ambition, aiming for an arid technical development, but rather the result of an artistic necessity: being able to develop a complete and satisfactory musical idea.

S.T.OOGE is the result of the artistic research project Implementing outward-radiating spherical loudspeaker arrays in contemporary guitar performance practice, conducted in 2022-2023 at the Hochschule für Music Basel FHNW and the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology ZHdK with the precise aim to address these matters and overcome the main acoustic and musical issues related to classical and electric guitar sound emissions and their conventional amplification systems.