17th

My experiments in electronic music #1

15th

Presentation / evolution sketch for a "documentary" on BBC Radio 3:

Electronic music set it self out to discovery... First like a child, rehearsing and playing... Then, trying to go behond, to new sounds, to a new world... Today there are no bars, no limits... Find out for yourself Tuesday and Thursday night on BBC Radio 3...

Music clips: Création du Monde (Vangelis); Eulogy and Light (Funkadelic); Erotic (Pierre Schaeffer); Trip to the moon broadcast; |Exchange| (Massive Attack);

14th

13th

Music On a Long Thin Wire, Alvin Lucier

As seen in the first Q&A, describing electronic music isn't easy. What do we mean when we say electronic music? Purely electronic generated sounds? Sounds diffused by electronic means? If it's the latter, it means all music is, in fact, electronic, all it takes is ear-buds. I think, however, this is over-simplifying things. Surely that without electronic experimentation, most of Beatles albums wouldn't sound as good, but should we call it electronic music? It's pop, nevertheless, but music, foremost, and apart from Tomorrow Never Knows, A Day in The Life and Revolution 9 there aren't many Beatles songs we could rightly call "electronic".

Musique concrète was born under the sign of tape manipulation, that is, looping, distortion of recorded sounds, and what Schaeffer, as Henry or Varèse, were interested in, was not being faithfull to those recorded sounds, but changing them by all means possible and creating something completely new, the New Atlantis of Music, if you will. Achieving this by technical and electronic inovation.

After the proliferation and establishment of these technics in the music industry, electronic music became mainstream. But that doesn't mean, again, we shouldn't call Kraftwerk or Air, for instance, electronic music, their music is generated by sounds you cannot hear from any known acoustic instrument.

Is electronic music, then, somewhere around the place where acoustic music ceases to be acoustic?

Maybe, maybe not. Don't expect me to answer...

12th

Q & A with Katherine Norman, writer and composer:

Q: Given that information travels so fast, and that no one seems to have the time, or the will, to listen, really listen (I talk of young people, at least), do you think there's a place for musique concrète, today?

A: Well, I'd disagree with you. I think there's a lot of listening going on - now that we all have ipods, and easy ways of listening to good (and bad) quality music and other sound-based work as we travel about. Nearly every 'young person' I see on the train is listening to music. But I agree that listening 'skills' - a more critical, analytical listening to sound-based music, and to sound in the environment, are a different thing - I can't comment on whether people listening less, or more badly than previously. Certainly the levels of noise and sonic activity in post-industrial landscapes are high, and noise is definitely a stressor (look at the number of court cases about noisy neighbours etc). I think if anything there's more scope for a bigger intest in musique concrete because a wider range of people are able to record sound easily, and digitally transform it. In addition, there is of course an increased interest in the environment, in ecology etc - and I think a lot of young people are interested in 'saving the planet'. But yes, sound is often last on the list.

Q: Musique concrète (or electronic music) has an obsessive relation with sound and noise, a mere sound can originate a symphony. As a composer, is this what estimulates you the most? To be able to deconstruct and then articulate sound?

A: I enjoy doing that, yes, but most of all I enjoy dealing with sounds that having meaning for me, and I hope for others - though their meanings may be different. Everyone brings personal associations to sound - I like that most of all. When you and I listen to the sound of the sea, we each access different remembered experiences as well as similar associations.

Q: Would you agree that musique concrète's mais departure from classical and harmonic music, is its proximity to realism? Has musique concrète brought realism to music?

A: I'm not sure I understand that one, but I think a lot of electronic music using concrete sounds is quite surreal, it is going 'beyond' realism.

Q: What are the composers that influenced and influence you the most? In what way, if you could explain?

A: Bach is top of the list, which may seem odd, but it's to do with the construction and meticulously balanced counterpoints and melodies - the way he puts things together.

In e/a music I was very influenced by my PhD supervisor, Paul Lansky's interest in voice and text, and that started me off in all kinds of areas to do with voice and sound. But lately I'm not hugely inspired by a lot of electronic music - it is all very similar, at least in the UK. I'm impressed by Hildegard Westerkamp's work, and like many of her more 'documentary' soundscape pieces. I really like some of the noise music from Merzbow and Otomo Yoshide's work - both noise and instrumental.

Q: Is there a future for electronic music?

A: That's a very open question, I'm sure music of all kinds will continue as long as people are around to make it, and want to listen to it.

11th

Peter Christopherson

(27 February 1955 – 24 November 2010)

10th

9th

Q & A with Nicollas Collins

Q: Do you think there's a place for musique concrète, today? Given that information travels so fast, and no one seems to have the time, or the will, to listen, really listen. I talk of young people at least..

A: Well, I've never been a big fan of traditional "musique concrete" -- in the words of my mentors, I never liked the way natural ("non-musical") sounds were "pushed around" in order to fit more-or-less traditional musical forms. But phonography -- the most interesting new genre of non-Pop music -- represents a wonderful update and ideological correction of musique concrete, with a rather diverse base of producers and fans.

Q: Do you think analog means of producing sounds are still up to date? Or has digital come to stay? What material or software do you use to compose?

A: I've been using instruments since 1970, analog circuits since 1972, software since 1977. They're all useful, and are not out of date -- it's all a question of what you do with them.

Q: What's the composer (or composers) that influenced, and influences, you the most?

A: Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, David Tudor, Peter Cusack.

Q: In what way, if you could explain?

A: There's a book there... you can read some of my on-line essays: http://www.nicolascollins.com/essays.htm

Q: Listening to your album, Devil's Music, I thought for a second of Public Enemy. Did they influence you in any way? And do you think the hip-hop scene in the 80s influenced modern electronic music?

A: Read http://www.nicolascollins.com/texts/devilsmusichistory.pdf.

I'm not really sure hat you mean by "modern electronic music" (see below), but there are an increasing number of sub-genres in Pop music that are highly electronic, and considerable crossover between Pop and non-Pop in which hip-hop (and numerous other genres) have influence.

Q: Is there a future for electronic music?

A: Probably more so than for string quartets, sadly. Most music is electronic these days, by my definition (all it takes is earbuds...)

6th

(John Donald Robb)

Electronic music emerged from a dying will of exploring new sounds, a soundtrack for a new world, a world in constant transformation. A formal chaos, a musical revolution.

From the futurist manifestos in the 1910s and 20s to the experiments in radio by Pierre Schaeffer, there was a wish to keep distance from beautiful and harmonical sounds, and keep up with evolution, industrial and social evolution.

This "keeping up" would end up being an aesthetical revolution and would make us re-evaluate sound and its nature, even its morphology, the sine waves within a sound, vibrations and parcels, as theorized my nineteenth century french matematician, Fourier.

Combining sine waves, the simpler components in a sound, new "noises" would emerge, a new world filled with possibilities was possible.

After being possible to reproduce a sound, it was now possible to distort it, manipulate it and sson it would be also possible to create them (sounds) from scratch, by electronic means. Now, music now longer sounds good, or is not its ambition, rather, but to describe. Music as a realistic art, now, as mean to represent the world as it is...