In this article, Spanish sound artist Francisco Lopez is explaining the main points in the world of the Soundscapes, field recording and Musique Concrete, and in particular he wants to explain the main differences between the theories from R. Murray Schafer and Pierre Schaefer.

Soundscapes are like photographies but in terms of sound recordings. They could also be seen as paintings, depending on how much the artistic factor comes into play. These Soundscapes are sonic representations of certain places, edited recordings that create the most accurate representations of the sounds in these locations.

We can find two different thinking ways within this field, to start with, Schafer and his Acoustic Ecology, finds the beauty in the most accurate representation of the reality, finding other noisy environments very annoying and just another issue related with the human industrialisation and progress. In the other hand, we have Schaeffer’s theories and “l’object sonore”, where the sounds are taken out of their context in order to create other compositions in the form of Music Concrete.

In conclusion, I think that this is a big subject of discussion (and it always will be) as in other artistic fields, with the balance between reality and abstraction when developing a piece of art which is inspired on a landscape or location from the world. In my opinion, both forms are equally acceptable, having the most accurate copy of the reality a more academic and scientific value, whereas, the abstraction of it will have more value in terms of creativity and entertainment.