some string quartet pieces might be best recorded with four separate channels then played through four widely separated speakers, so that the listener can more easily follow a melody or theme being passed around different instruments. the instruments overlap in range, especially violin 1 and 2, and distinguishing them by timbre can be difficult. direction is easier.
we only have two ears, so probably need a swiveling chair or to listen standing. turning can help distinguish sound coming from an ambiguous direction. should sound be able to come from above or below? fancy hypothetical tech: headset that tracks your head orientation. perhaps it communicates with the swivel of your chair.
which quartets? or, compose pieces assuming this is how they will be played. composer specifies direction of each instrument. a piece could be played live with audience in center. probably cannot have much audience because other bodies block and diffract sound.
generalizable to any music with a small number of instruments: polyphonic.
do we have the infrastructure to disseminate and play audio with more than 2 channels? on my computer, even if there are multiple stereo audio output devices, there isn't an obvious way to play to more than one of them simultaneously.
inspired by Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, though it also has sections of big thick chords that might sound weird coming from different directions.
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