Sonic Methodologies of Sound

‘Sonic Methodologies of Sound’ in the Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies, Marcel Cobussen and Michael Bull eds, London and NY: Bloomsbury, 2020.

The scope of this essay as it is indicated by the title might seem self-evident. The expectation being that sound practices and studies by necessity and logic realize themselves through sonic methodologies; that their method of investigation, doing and interpretation refer themselves to sonic vocabularies and theoretical tools that draw on sonic initiatives and experience. However, this impression soon gives way to a different insight which shows that sonic practices, from music to audiology, more often than not do not trust their own ‘immaterial’ base, but seek a visual framework and language to develop their tools of investigation and interpretation, in order to confer reliability, repeatability and consensus.