During Week Ten’s session on listening and the soundscape, I was initially overwhelmed by the volume of terminology created and defined by R Murray Schafer. Terms such as ‘Earwitness’, ‘Schizophonia’, and ‘Acoustic Ecology’ seemed at first to be buzzwords created in order to justify Schafer’s controversial views on the purity of sounds within a space. Before diving into these terms, I want to discuss some of Hildegard Westerkamp’s ideas of soundscape composition in relation to composition for Video Games.
Westerkamp’s (2002) view that soundscape studies are ‘the study of the interrelationship between sound, nature and society’ reminded me of an interview by Jennifer Walden featuring CD Projekt RED sound designer Paweł Daudzward (2021), in which he discussed how the ‘Distinct Ambiences for all six regions’ in the game Cyberpunk 2077 were created. He explained how the built-up urban areas of the game needed to feel ‘heavy, oppressive and dirty’, showing that the fragile relationships between society, nature and the player (humans) described by Westercamp were considered in order to bring the dystopian and unnatural setting of Night City to life. There is a complete lack of nature recordings, and foley is limited to the roar of car engines and multiple layers of human noise (voices, footsteps, etc). Having experienced these areas of the game, I think that the practice of amplifying sounds that Schafer would describe as ‘boring’ and ‘destructive’ is what makes the soundscape of Cyberpunk 2077 so eerily convincing to the player. This is why I believe that contentious claims made by Schafer that certain sounds must be ‘eliminated’ are counterproductive and limit the possibilities of what can be achieved when crafting and shaping a convincing soundscape, particularly in a digital setting.
Out of all of Schafer’s terms, I find ‘Schizophonia’ to be the most interesting. His initial definition- that electroacoustically reproduced sounds are ‘aberrational’- doesn’t necessarily imply that he regarded them as ‘destructive’ and in need of being eliminated. Instead, it seems that although Schafer views said sounds to be abnormal, he never claimed they could not be used as an effective tool to craft a soundscape. He is simply highlighting the distinct difference between sounds with an original source and those without. However, his term ‘Moozak’ that describes schizophonic sounds as ‘musical drool’ confuses the original definition. In my opinion, these two terms can co-exist without implying that all schizophonic sounds are unwanted ‘drool’; this is because Moozak is used primarily to describe sounds heard in public places. Therefore, I believe that in using the term Moozak, Schafer was aiming to describe the negatives of being bombarded with electroacoustic noise in everyday life, meaning that Schizophonic sounds can still be effective when mixed with ‘pure’ recordings or in the creation of entirely digital soundscapes.
Reference list
Westerkamp, H. (2002) ‘Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology’, Organised Sound, 7(1), pp. 51–56.Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771802001085
Walden, J. (2021) Cyberpunk 2077: inventing the Sound of the Future. Available at: https://www.asoundeffect.com/cyberpunk-2077-sound/ (Accessed: 10 December 2025).