Aural Discourse refers to conventional and familiar structuring and discursive musical attributes such as relationships and patterns of pitches and rhythms. Mimetic Discourse refers to the signifying potential of referential or extrinsic attributes of sound, being particularly pertinent to Electroacoustic Music which uses recorded sound as material. The pairing was proposed by Simon Emmerson, in ’The Relation of Language to Materials’ in Emmerson, S., ed. (1986). The Language of Electroacoustic Music (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press), in which he proposes a continuum between the two. The pair is also related to Abstract/Abstracted Discourse.
See also:
Abstract Sound, Abstract Syntax and Abstracted Syntax, Mimesis, Referential SoundBibliography: Barret, Natasha (1999). Little Animals: Compositional Structuring Processes
Emmerson, Simon (1982). Analysis and the Composition of Electro-Acoustic Music
Emmerson, Simon (1986). The Relation of Language to Materials
Keller, Damián (2000). Compositional Processes from an Ecological Perspective
Wishart, Trevor (1986a). Sound Symbols and Landscapes

