THE ELECTRONIC WORKS OF GYÖRGY LIGETI AND THEIR ...

specific piece or to address a specific analytical problem, they are not as susceptible to
subjective bias that may result from the analysts attempt to gear the notation towards
making a specific point. This is not to say that spectrographs are completely neutral, for
like any chart or graph, they can be manipulated or distorted as well, but there is at the
very least, a blind starting point that will ideally help curtail the unconscious bias of the
analyst and sharpen his or her audition, exposing details of the piece that a first hearing
might not uncover or that a first interpretation might initially suppress.
The types of distortions that can arise from spectrographic analysis of a work are
based on the misconception that the spectrograph is, in itself, the analysis, and these, so
called distortions can be made transparent by a few words on cognitive considerations and
through the simple realization that a spectrograph is a type of descriptive notation and will
not substitute for hearing the piece–and usually with electroacoustic music, for multiple
hearings.
One category of distortion can arise through the relative scales of various
parameters. For example, the maximum number of decibels can be set to any level of
sensitivity to get images which are correspondingly darker or lighter. Moreover, to take
one of Brech’s examples, when an event has all of its energy concentrated in one partial
(as the sine tone strands in the middle of the example above), it may appear darker, and
thus louder, than a single event where the same amount of energy is split among different
14