A Sound Word Almanac

This almanac of sound words important to artists and scholars highlights words that expand the way we speak (and write) about sonic experiences. Why write about music, and how? If music philosophy is the attempt "to think about music by philosophical means," then a metaphilosophical debate appears almost immediately on the horizon: What is called for is an understanding about music and language, but also about the preconditions of musical understanding. What is at stake is the question of language and sound, as well as expanding how we speak about sonic experience. This almanac tackles these questions from artistic, experimental, and personal perspectives. An assemblage of nearly 70 practitioners and theoreticians, artists and scholars, write short and slightly longer entries on their favorite sound word words related to sound: onomatopoetical, mythological, practical, etc., words of personal importance to the artists and their craft, words from their memory, related to sound. This almanac has mainly collected sound words from contributors for whom English is not the first language, to contribute such a word or concept in their own mother-tongue (maybe even untranslatable) with a personal, explanatory, poetic entry, and also English-speaking artists, to contribute with non-standard English--for example Gaelic Irish, different dialects words--words that have the potential to maybe even change our perspective on listening-musicking-thinking.