Sju ... Who?

This paper presents a discussion of the motivations and techniques used in the author’s electroacoustic work Sju. The piece is based on digital recordings of a Swedish word that, in daily Swedish, is pronounced in two distinct ways, thereby presenting a real-life sonic opposition ready for musical exploration. This is related to the concept of sonological competence (drawn from soundscape studies) since both versions of the word are awkward to pronounce for non-Swedish speakers, an issue stemming from the composer’s first-hand experience with Swedish. The approach used in the manipulation of these sounds is outlined, especially the development of material around the variations in noise attack which define the different ‘versions’ of the word, and extrapolation of the play between noise and speech into the larger formal structure of the work.