A Combined Model for the Structuring of Computer Game Audio - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 105

What does this then mean? Voco- and ver-
bocentrism relates to 2 of the 3 listening modes
suggested by Chion (1994), that is, causal listen-
ing and semantic listening. In Chion's work, the
part on semantic listening is very brief and only
discusses semantic value in relation to a code or
spoken language. However, it is fruitful to also
use this concept in relation to the system of sounds
that a given movie or a given game puts forth
which may be understood as a semiotic system
consisting of sound signs. Within such a system
the sounds are part of the communication of the
environment. This line of thought is also found
in Murch's conceptual model.
According to Murch (1998), the clearest ex-
ample of encoded sound is speech and the clearest
example of embodied sound is music. Further-
more, since the human brain normally divides the
processing of sound (and other stimuli) between
the left and right side of the brain, we are able
to discern 5 different layers of sound simultane-
ously, if they are evenly spread on the conceptual
spectrum from encoded/violet to embodied/red.
Murch (1998) provides a number of practice-based
examples and problems from his work on the film
Apocalypse Now! (Coppola, 1979):

1. Dialogue (violet)
2. Small arms fire (blue-green 'words' which
say “Shot! Shot! Shot!”)
3. Explosions (yellow “kettle drums” with
content)
4. Footsteps and miscellaneous (blue to orange)
5. Helicopters (orange music-like drones)
6. Valkyries Music (red).

Something had to be sacrificed whilst main-
taining density and clarity and Murch therefore
decided to omit the music and have a five layer
soundtrack consisting of:

1. Dialogue (“I'm not going! I'm not going!”)
2. Other voices, shouts, etc.
3. Helicopters
4. AK-47's and M-16s
5. Mortar fire.

In Murch's (1998) example, the instances of
“small arms fire” are effect sounds with a semantic
value that Murch calls “blue-green 'words' which
say Shot! Shot! Shot!”. Firing a gun in a game
would typically result in a direct response sound-
wise. The player would also probably anticipate
such a feedback. In addition, firing a gun would
conceptually evoke a sound and some kind of
visual response as well. Sound reveals something
about the environment. In this case, it signals the
presence of guns and a potential danger; it is a sign
that denotes clear and present danger. Humans
tend to seek meaning and structure in and from
the surrounding environment. In this case, we try
to identify the source of a sound and what it might
mean in the present context. We have used both
causal and semantic listening and found a specific
sound among others in the concurrent audio lay-
ers. The sound as such is dense and clear at the
same time since it is carefully planned to occupy
a specific frequency range and to develop within
a specific part of the dynamic range.
Is Murch on the right track with his conceptual
model and his conclusion that five concurrent

[…] it appeared to be caused by having six layers
of sound, and six layers is essentially the same as
sixteen, or sixty: I had passed a threshold beyond
which the sounds congeal into a new singularity -
dense noise in which a fragment or two can perhaps
be distinguished, but not the developmental lines
of the layers themselves. With six layers, I had
achieved Density, but at the expense of Clarity.

What I did as a result was to restrict the layers for
that section of film to a maximum of five. By luck or
by design, I could do this because my sounds were
spread evenly across the conceptual spectrum.

Murch's problem in this case concerned the 6
concurrent layers described below: