About Soundpainting Dictionary
Soundpainting is a multidisciplinary live-composing sign language.
At present the Dictionary is available in the English and French languages. It will soon be available in Spanish, German, Italian, Portugues and Arabic.
If you have any questions about the Soundpainting Dictionary, please send an email to info@soundpainting.com
Access
To access the Soundpainting Dictionary you must first sign up, then follow the instructions to purchase and receive your access to the signs. The cost is a one-time fee of $75 USA dollars.
If you encounter any problems with the payment or if you are unable to use Paypal, please send an email to info@soundpainting.com for an alternate means of payment.
If you are a teacher/professor at a school, university, conservatory, etc. and would like your students to have a time-limited course related access to the Dictionary, please email info@soundpainting.com with your request.
Using the Soundpainting Dictionary
The signs in the Soundpainting Dictionary are organized in alphabetical order. A suggested way to use the Dictionary is to start at the letter A and study each sign to see if it may be relevant to a concept you may want to use or that it may open up new ideas and paths for your composing. Most of the signs are applicable across all the disciplines though some signs are for specific disciplines only – they will be identified as such.
You may enlarge the photo of the sign simply by clicking on it and clicking again to reduce the size of the sign. I suggest you read the physical description of the sign prior to studying the photo. At the bottom of the page you will see Voir. Here you can find signs that have a relationship to the one you are viewing.
Each sign is describe by:
Definition – short definition of the sign
Description – physical description of how to make the sign
Utilization – how the Soundpainter may use the sign
Example – an example of phrase incorporating the sign
Syntax – where the sign lies in Soundpainting Syntax of Who, What, How, When
Voir – related signs
The Soundpainting Dictionary is not a document to teach Soundpainting, it is like any other dictionary that contains the words of a language though not how to speak the language. To learn Soundpainting, I suggest purchasing the Soundpainting Workbooks, taking a workshop, studying the open source Soundpainting lessons on You Tube, etc.
Printed version
Contact info@soundpainting.com if you are interested in having a printed version of the Soundpainting Dictionary.
Agreement of terms of usage
Copyright
The Soundpainting Dictionary is copyrighted by Walter Thompson. You agree that the Soundpainting Dictionary is the sole Intellectual Property of Walter Thompson and that it may not be copied, downloaded or reproduced in any way, shape or form.
Credits
The artwork is by Jennifer Rahfeldt and is copyrighted. It may not be copied, downloaded or reproduced in any way. Web design by Pål Bergström.
Special thanks
I would like to give special thanks to Pål Bergström for all his help with the website; to Jennifer Rahfeldt for her artwork; to Carina Dengler for her editing assistance; to my daughter Kaylee for her patience while I completed the Dictionary, to my dear friend and fellow Soundpainter François Jeanneau for his wonderful French translation and to all the Soundpainters who have worked with me over the years in the development of the language.
I dedicate the Soundpainting Dictionary to my beautiful and fantastic daughter Kaylee.
Brief history of the Soundpainting Dictionary
I created Soundpainting in 1974 though it wasn’t until the early 1990s that I began compiling and writing a Soundpainting glossary of the signs I had created. The glossary was a document where I kept a list and definition of all the signs – it was for my own personal use. In the early years of Soundpainting -1974 through the 1980s – I felt that there was no need for a formal dictionary. In the middle 1990s, I began teaching Soundpainting to others. After a few years Soundpainting began to be used by many others and the need for a formal dictionary became apparent. In the late 1990s I began codifying the Soundpainting signs in a much more formal manner in order to write workbooks and ultimately the Dictionary. The purpose of the Dictionary is to offer you the possibility to more deeply explore the Soundpainting language. The Dictionary includes all the signs from the Soundpainting Workbooks as well as many others not included in my workbooks. I have been working and re-working the Dictionary for more than 25 years. The Soundpainting Dictionary, to date, comprises more than 900 of the approximately 1500 signs. I will continue to add to the Dictionary. The Soundpainting language is a living and growing language, it is a work-in-progress – new signs and concepts are regularly created by me as well as by others.
Walter Thompson