Sound: Practice and Study
A Lecture Series 2026 / 9
Sound: Practice and Study
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™
October 23, 2026
ROBIN DANIEL Z. RIVERA PH.D
Performing musician and retired professor
Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines Diliman
October 22, 2026 | 2:00 PM, Thursday
MK Tan Hall, Bayanihan Center, Pasig City
Sponsors/partners visible: MusKKat, Unilab Education, NCCA, and related cultural institutions. Registration link and social media handles for MusKKat PH appear at the foot of the slide. A formal portrait of the speaker in traditional Filipino attire with medals/sash is displayed on the left.
AREAS OF PRACTICE
Music
Sound Recording and Production – the production of sound and music recordings in controlled environments such as studios.
(John Eagle, Sound Recording, 1976)
Field Recording – the production of sound recordings outside controlled environments, like in the life world.
AREAS OF STUDY
Acoustic Ecology – the study of how humans interact with the sounds in their environment.
(R. Murray Schafer, The New Soundscape: A Handbook for the Modern Music Teacher, 1969)
Anthropology of the Senses – the study of how sensory perceptions are shaped by culture.
(Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures, 1993)
Sound Studies – Sound studies examines concepts, practices, and technologies of sound and listening in different historical and cultural contexts.
Robin Daniel Z. Rivera 2026
A relation of the materials
The materials present a binary yet porous architecture: practice (making and capturing sound) and study (theorizing and historicizing sound and listening). Practice is subdivided into studio-based Sound Recording and Production (controlled, intentional, technologically mediated) and Field Recording (uncontrolled, environmental, “life-world”). Study is organized into three overlapping domains: Acoustic Ecology (human–environment sonic relations), Anthropology of the Senses (cultural mediation of perception), and Sound Studies (the meta-discipline that historicizes and conceptualizes both the practices and the sensory regimes).
The relation is dialectical. Practice generates the empirical and technological materials that Study analyzes; Study, in turn, supplies the conceptual frameworks that orient, critique, and expand practice. Field recording, for instance, is both a practical technique and a privileged method of Acoustic Ecology; studio production is both a technical craft and an object of Sound Studies inquiry into technological mediation and cultural encoding of listening.
Expounding and expanding the premise in rigorous, academic, and esoteric registers
The premise—“Sound: Practice and Study”—rests on an ontological and epistemological claim: that sound is never merely given but is always already a site of making and of knowing. Rivera’s schema refuses the common-sense hierarchy that treats practice as pre-theoretical and study as post-hoc commentary. Instead, it treats the two as co-constitutive modalities of sonic being-in-the-world.
In the register of practice, the distinction between controlled (studio) and uncontrolled (field) environments is not merely technical but phenomenological. Studio recording, following Eagle’s mid-1970s technical rationalism, enacts a Cartesian separation of subject from world: the environment is neutralized so that the sonic object may be isolated, manipulated, and aestheticized. Field recording, by contrast, is an immersion in the Lebenswelt. It inherits the phenomenological insistence that perception is always situated; the recordist’s body, microphone placement, and temporal presence become constitutive of the sonic document. The field recording is therefore not a neutral capture but a practice of attention—an ethical and aesthetic act of co-presence with the more-than-human sonic field.
In the register of study, Acoustic Ecology (Schafer) supplies the ecological and critical vocabulary: the soundscape as an acoustic environment that can be “tuned,” polluted, or designed. Anthropology of the Senses (Classen) radicalizes this by historicizing and culturalizing the sensorium itself. Hearing is not a biological constant but a historically variable regime of attention, hierarchy, and meaning. Sound Studies, as the encompassing meta-field, performs the genealogical work of showing how particular regimes of listening (the concert hall, the radio, the smartphone earbud, the indigenous ritual, the urban noise ordinance) are produced by and productive of power, technology, and subjectivity.
It points toward a deeper claim: sound is the privileged medium through which the boundary between self and world, culture and nature, technique and perception is continually negotiated and dissolved. Studio practice enacts a will to mastery; field practice enacts a will to receptivity; Acoustic Ecology diagnoses the pathologies of sonic modernity; Anthropology of the Senses reveals the cultural contingency of every “natural” mode of hearing; Sound Studies historicizes the very categories through which we think these distinctions. The lecture therefore stages sound not as an object but as a practice of worlding—a continuous, historically situated labor of producing and interpreting the audible.
The Philippine and Southeast Asian context (implied by the institutional frame of UP Diliman Art Studies, MusKKat, NCCA, and the Bayanihan Center) further densifies the premise. Local sound worlds—kulintang ensembles, street soundscapes of Metro Manila, indigenous ritual acoustics, the mediated sonic environment of overseas Filipino labor—cannot be adequately addressed by either pure technical practice or pure Western theoretical importation. Rivera’s dual framing invites a situated practice-study that is simultaneously technical, ecological, anthropological, and decolonial.
Summative conclusion
The premise of Rivera’s lecture is that sound exists only as the double movement of practice and study. Practice without study remains craft or documentation; study without practice remains abstraction. Their rigorous interrelation produces a critical, historically conscious, and culturally situated sonic praxis capable of both making and understanding the audible world. In an era of ubiquitous recording technologies, algorithmic listening, and ecological crisis, this dual orientation is not merely academic but necessary: it is the condition for any responsible engagement with the sonic field as both material and meaningful.
An Abstract
This lecture by Robin Daniel Z. Rivera, Ph.D. (University of the Philippines Diliman), frames sound as the co-constitutive dual of practice and study. Practice encompasses studio-based sound recording and production (controlled environments) and field recording (uncontrolled life-worlds). Study comprises acoustic ecology (human–environment sonic relations), anthropology of the senses (cultural mediation of perception), and sound studies (historical and technological regimes of listening). These domains operate dialectically: practice generates the materials that study analyzes, while study supplies the conceptual and critical frameworks that orient practice. Drawing on Schafer, Classen, and related traditions, the lecture positions sound as a situated practice of worlding—technical, ecological, phenomenological, and culturally contingent—particularly salient within Philippine and Southeast Asian sonic contexts. The dual orientation of making and knowing sound is advanced as essential for responsible engagement with contemporary auditory environments.
A DANCE FOR THE NEW BUT NOT QUITE NORMAL SUMMER (2022)
I produce Electronic Dance Music for leisure, but avoid the standard “four on the floor kick plus backbeat snare/clap” rhythmic formula. In this case, I adapted a kulintang ensemble rhythm section, with a 1/16 note snare simulating a dabakan, a syncopated cymbal bell simulating a babandir, and syncopated kick drum simulating an agung. This latest work was done in summer of 2022 when Covid restrictions were being relaxed. Instead of topping things off with a melody, I used soundscapes of crowds, a sound I missed during the lockdowns.
The first soundscape came from families having fun in our village swimming pool, recorded with a Sony PCM M-10 stereo omni digital recorder in 2018. The second soundscape came from wet section of Nepa-Q mart in Quezon City, at approximately 5 AM sometime in 2004. The recording was made with a Sony MZ R-50 Minidisc recorder. The sounds and music were laid down and mixed in Logic Pro X in 2022.
Collation with the overarching premise
This composition exemplifies the lecture’s central premise—Sound: Practice and Study—by enacting the dialectical relation between the two domains previously outlined.
- Practice: It integrates studio-based Sound Recording and Production (composition, synthesis of kulintang-derived rhythms, multitrack mixing in Logic Pro X) with Field Recording (two site-specific soundscapes captured years earlier in uncontrolled environments).
- Study: It operationalizes Acoustic Ecology (re-deployment of lived soundscapes as affective and environmental markers), Anthropology of the Senses (cultural re-coding of kulintang percussion into electronic dance music, thereby shifting sensory and social meanings), and Sound Studies (historicizing listening practices across technological platforms—Minidisc, solid-state recorder, DAW—and across pandemic temporalities).
The work thus functions as a concrete instantiation of the lecture’s claim that practice generates the materials study analyzes, while study supplies the conceptual frameworks that orient and critique practice.
An analysis
Rivera’s piece stages a deliberate refusal of EDM orthodoxy. By replacing the ubiquitous four-on-the-floor + backbeat matrix with a kulintang-derived polyrhythmic skeleton (*dabakan* → 1/16 snare, *babandir* → syncopated cymbal, *agung* → syncopated kick), the composition performs a cultural translation that is neither pure preservation nor wholesale appropriation. The rhythmic adaptation retains the interlocking, non-hierarchical temporal logic of Maguindanao/Maranao kulintang ensembles while rendering it legible within electronic dance contexts. This is not mere “ethnic flavoring”; it is a formal negotiation between two distinct temporal regimes—one cyclic and communal, the other typically metric and individualist.
The substitution of melodic climax with field-recorded crowd soundscapes further radicalizes the formal structure. In conventional EDM, the “drop” or melodic hook provides affective resolution. Here, resolution is displaced onto the return of the social: the sonic density of families at a village pool (2018) and the early-morning wet market (2004). These recordings, made with modest portable devices (Sony PCM M-10 and MZ-R50), carry the indexical weight of specific places and times. Their re-insertion in 2022—after prolonged pandemic isolation—transforms them from archival documents into affective counter-memories. The piece therefore operates simultaneously as leisure music, cultural translation, and sonic historiography of the lockdown.
Technologically, the work spans nearly two decades of consumer recording formats and culminates in a contemporary DAW. This multi-temporal layering itself becomes an object of Sound Studies: it demonstrates how listening practices and sonic meanings are co-produced by successive media regimes.
A View of Support
Empirical and theoretical support converges on three points:
1. Formal evidence — The explicit mapping of kulintang instruments onto electronic drum elements and the replacement of melody by field recordings are stated by the composer and audible in the described structure.
2. Ecological and sensory frameworks — Schafer’s acoustic ecology legitimates the elevation of everyday soundscapes to compositional material; Classen’s anthropology of the senses accounts for the cultural re-sensing of both kulintang rhythms and crowd noise when transplanted into EDM.
3. Historical contingency — The 2022 production date, framed by the relaxation of Covid restrictions, and the deliberate choice of pre-pandemic crowd recordings supply a clear temporal and affective logic that aligns with Sound Studies’ emphasis on situated listening.
Sonic Practice as Cultural Negotiation: Robin Daniel Z. Rivera’s A Dance for the New but Not Quite Normal Summer (2022)
In his 2026 lecture “Sound: Practice and Study,” Robin Daniel Z. Rivera delineates a dialectical framework in which the making of sound and the systematic inquiry into sound constitute mutually constitutive domains. Practice encompasses studio-based sound recording and production in controlled environments as well as field recording in the uncontrolled “life world,” while study comprises acoustic ecology, the anthropology of the senses, and the broader field of sound studies (Rivera 2026). Rivera’s own composition A Dance for the New but Not Quite Normal Summer (2022) offers a concrete instantiation of this premise. The work integrates electronic dance music production with kulintang-derived rhythmic structures and archival field recordings, thereby enacting the reciprocal relation between technical making and conceptual reflection.
The piece explicitly rejects the conventional “four on the floor kick plus backbeat snare/clap” rhythmic formula of electronic dance music. In its place, Rivera adapts the interlocking patterns of a kulintang ensemble: a sixteenth-note snare simulates the dabakan, a syncopated cymbal bell evokes the babandir, and a syncopated kick drum stands in for the agung. Rather than culminating in a melodic line, the composition incorporates two field-recorded soundscapes of crowds—one captured at a village swimming pool in 2018 with a Sony PCM M-10 stereo recorder, the other recorded in the wet section of Nepa-Q Mart in Quezon City around 5 a.m. in 2004 with a Sony MZ-R50 Minidisc recorder. These materials were assembled and mixed in Logic Pro X in 2022, during the gradual relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions (Rivera 2022/2026).
This formal strategy simultaneously enacts the two areas of practice identified in the lecture. The construction of synthetic kulintang rhythms and the multitrack assembly in a digital audio workstation exemplify sound recording and production within controlled studio conditions (cf. Eagle 1976). Concurrently, the deployment of location recordings made years earlier in uncontrolled public and communal spaces constitutes field recording in the life world. The temporal span between the original captures (2004 and 2018) and their 2022 recontextualization further underscores the archival and selective nature of field practice.
Theoretically, the composition engages the three areas of study. The elevation of everyday crowd soundscapes to structural and affective prominence aligns with acoustic ecology’s concern for human interaction with environmental sound (Schafer 1969). The cultural transposition of kulintang percussion into an electronic dance idiom illustrates the anthropology of the senses: sensory and rhythmic perceptions are shown to be historically and culturally mediated rather than universal (Classen 1993). Finally, the work participates in sound studies by examining how concepts, practices, and technologies of sound and listening operate across distinct historical and cultural contexts—from indigenous gong-chime ensembles to consumer portable recorders to contemporary digital production environments.
The piece’s strengths lie in its formal inventiveness and its affective response to pandemic isolation. By substituting social soundscapes for melodic resolution, Rivera transforms the conventional EDM trajectory into a meditation on the recovery of collective presence. Yet certain tensions remain. The solitary electronic simulation of a traditionally ensemble-based and often communal practice risks aestheticizing rather than enacting sociality. The nostalgic redeployment of earlier field recordings raises questions of representational ethics: specific places and moments are converted into portable affective resources. Moreover, while the work subverts one rhythmic convention of electronic dance music, it remains situated within the broader leisure-oriented framework of the genre, potentially limiting its critical reach.
Nevertheless, A Dance for the New but Not Quite Normal Summer demonstrates the practical force of Rivera’s premise. Technical procedures of recording and production supply the sonic materials; frameworks drawn from acoustic ecology, sensory anthropology, and sound studies supply the rationale for their selection, transformation, and interpretation. In the Philippine context—marked by the coexistence of indigenous musical systems, dense urban soundscapes, and the collective experience of pandemic restriction—the dual orientation of practice and study becomes a method for negotiating cultural continuity, technological mediation, and the audible restoration of the social. The composition thereby confirms that sound is constituted through the ongoing, situated labor of both making and knowing.
References
Classen, Constance. 1993. *Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures*. London: Routledge.
Eagle, John. 1976. *Sound Recording*. London: Page.
Rivera, Robin Daniel Z. 2022/2026. *A Dance for the New but Not Quite Normal Summer*. Composition and accompanying lecture notes. Lecture Series 2026/9, “Sound: Practice and Study,” MK Tan Hall, Bayanihan Center, Pasig City, 22 October 2026.
Schafer, R. Murray. 1969. The New Soundscape: A Handbook for the Modern Music Teacher. Toronto: Berandol Music Limited.
A Brief Critique
The work’s strengths—cultural specificity, formal inventiveness, and affective resonance—are accompanied by tensions. First, the adaptation of kulintang into a solitary electronic practice risks aestheticizing a traditionally collective, ritual, or communal form; the sociality of the ensemble is simulated rather than enacted. Second, the use of field recordings as “missed” social sound raises questions of representational ethics: the 2004 market and 2018 pool recordings become nostalgic resources for a 2022 listener, potentially flattening the original contexts into affective texture. Third, while the rejection of four-on-the-floor is asserted, the piece remains within the broader leisure-oriented EDM paradigm; its critical force may therefore be limited by the very genre conventions it partially subverts. Finally, the reliance on consumer-grade portable recorders and a commercial DAW, while democratizing, also embeds the work within globalized technological infrastructures whose political economy remains largely unexamined in the accompanying text.
Application to the premise
A Dance for the New but Not Quite Normal Summer demonstrates the lecture’s premise in action. Practice (field recording + studio production) supplies the raw sonic and rhythmic materials; study (acoustic-ecological, sensory-anthropological, and historical-technological reflection) supplies the rationale for their selection, transformation, and framing. The composition thereby illustrates that sound is never merely made or merely known, but is continually produced through the reciprocal labor of making and interpreting. In the Philippine context—marked by indigenous musical systems, dense urban soundscapes, and the collective trauma of pandemic isolation—this dual orientation becomes a method for negotiating cultural continuity, technological mediation, and the recovery of the social through the audible. The work thus stands as both illustration and extension of Rivera’s claim that rigorous engagement with sound requires the simultaneous cultivation of practice and study.
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Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™' s connection to the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) serves as a defining pillar of his professional journey, most recently celebrated through the launch of the ACC Global Alumni Network.As a 2003 Starr Foundation Grantee, Roldan participated in a transformative ten-month fellowship in the United States. This opportunity allowed him to observe contemporary art movements, engage with an international community of artists and curators, and develop a new body of work that bridges local and global perspectives.Featured Work: Bridges Beyond Borders His featured work, Bridges Beyond Borders: ACC's Global Cultural Collaboration, has been chosen as the visual identity for the newly launched ACC Global Alumni Network.Symbol of Connection: The piece represents a private collaborative space designed to unite over 6,000 ACC alumni across various disciplines and regions.Artistic Vision: The work embodies the ACC's core mission of advancing international dialogue and cultural exchange to foster a more harmonious world.Legacy of Excellence: By serving as the face of this initiative, Roldan's art highlights the enduring impact of the ACC fellowship on his career and his role in the global artistic community.Just featured at https://www.pressenza.com/2026/01/the-asian-cultural-council-global-alumni-network-amiel-gerald-a-roldan/
He is a Filipino multidisciplinary visual artist, printmaker, painter, independent curator, researcher, writer, and cultural worker whose practice spans contemporary art, curatorial work, and cultural advocacy. He has been active in the Philippine art scene since the late 1990s and has worked with galleries, museums, artist-run spaces, and international cultural organizations.
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A multidisciplinary Filipino artist, poet, researcher, and cultural worker whose practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, installation, and writing. He is deeply rooted in cultural memory, postcolonial critique, and in bridging creative practice with scholarly infrastructure—building counter-archives, annotating speculative poetry like Southeast Asian manuscripts, and fostering regional solidarity through ethical art collaboration.
He has been active in the Philippine art scene since the late 1990s and has worked with galleries, museums, artist-run spaces, and international cultural organizations.His practice appears to represent several interconnected concerns:
Cultural work as artistic practice. Roldan has argued that the labor of curating, organizing exhibitions, teaching, documentation, and cultural administration should be understood as creative work rather than merely support work. This perspective has been reflected in his writings and exhibitions.
Social and political engagement. His artworks frequently address politics, religion, faith, denial, courage, social inequality, and the everyday experiences of Filipinos. He has stated that he draws inspiration from Filipino cultural practices while approaching painting, printmaking, and installation from a conceptual perspective.Printmaking and conceptual art. Roldan is particularly recognized for his printmaking, with works shown internationally, including exhibitions in Japan and France. His practice also encompasses painting, photography, installation, and curatorial research.International cultural exchange. A significant milestone in his career was receiving an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2003, which enabled him to undertake research and create work in the United States while engaging with artists and curators internationally.
More broadly, Roldan's work represents an attempt to bridge artistic production, curatorial practice, scholarship, and cultural activism . His writings often emphasize postcolonial discourse, cultural memory, and the ethics of artistic collaboration, positioning the artist not only as a maker of objects but also as a builder of cultural infrastructure.
In the Philippine contemporary art context, he can be understood as representing the figure of the artist-curator-cultural worker —someone who contributes both through making artworks and through developing exhibitions, mentoring artists, and fostering institutional and independent cultural initiatives.
Recent group show at ILOMOCA
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