Types of music (week 5) Flashcards
Post WWII music milestones (1946-60)
1948- Musique Concrete, abstract tape music
Late 1940s – first multitrack tape recorder.
1951 – Elektronische Musik, music created electronically.
1950s- Chance music, indeterminacy, live electronics.
1957 – Computer music. Max Matthews working at Bell Labs.
1958- BBC Radiophonic workshop, minimalism/ drone music. La Monte Young.
1961- The Once Festival, evolving to touring group sonic arts vision.
1962 – San Francisco Tape Music Center.
Magnetic tape
1928 – Fritz Pfleumer invented magnetic tape for recording.
Tape rec. Became prominent.
1940s- Commercially developed in late 1940s.
1950s- Reel to reel tape rec. Machines spread with companies like Ampex.
Mid 1990s – Using tape for rec. And editing was status quo.
What is acousmatic music
Acousmatic sound is sound that is heard without an originating cause being seen. We listen with our ears, not with our eyes. An evolution of music concrete.
Acousmatic refers to 3 concepts:
Compositional genre
Performance practice
Listening experience.
Listening to music involves?
The sound (its physical qualities).
The context (and purpose)
The meaning (association).
What is acoustic ecology?
Study of the relationship between human beings and the environment, as meditated through sound
What is a soundwalk?
A walk where the listening focus is the environment
Term coined by WSP (world soundscape project)
“A soundwalk is a form of active participation in the soundscape”
Encourages person to make critical judgement about sounds heard and their contribution to the balance/imbalance of the sonic environment.
What is deep listening
A way of listening in every possible way to everything possible, to hear no matter what you are doing.
Explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature of listening.
It cultivates heightened awareness and experimentation.
What are ecoacoustics
An interdisciplinary science that studies natural and human made sounds and their relationship with the environment.
What is the range of approaches to audio processing
Found sound —————- Abstracted
Found sound = field recordings or natural sounds as opposed to synthesized sounds.
Abstracted sound = Transformed, processed, or significantly manipulated.
Minimal approach aka ‘neutral’
Minimally processed or “found composition” - the compositional process is finding the location and selecting how it will be captured.
The minimal approach often requires observing a location over a long period of time and becoming aware of the sonic patterns, and the change of those patterns to determine the best time of day (or month) to record.
Abstracted
Use of studio processing techniques to edit, transform, or manipulate recordings.
May process sounds to clean up recordings (noise reduction).
May process sounds beyond their recognition (time and pitch manipulations).
Often a mix of minimally and maximally processed sounds.
3 perspectives in relation to time and space
Fixed
Moving
Variable
What is the fixed perspective
Emphasizng the flow of time; or a discrete series of fixed perspectives.
Time compression (ex. Compress 24 hrs into 24 mins through editing).
Narrative
Techniques – layering found sounds to create transitions between space and/or time.
Transitions are clear markers between sections/perspectives.
Ex. Recording from one position over 24 hours, or rec. Multiple places at the same time.
What is the moving perspective
Smoothly connected space/time flow; a journey.
A soundwalk, which might be simulated or real.
Layering and cross-fading real/minimally processed and abstracted sounds.
Transitions are smooth and overlapping to create seamless movement between sections/perspectives.
What is the variable perspective
Discontinuous space/time flow
Multiple perspectives either through time (the duration of the piece), or layered (think polyphony).
Most use of abstracted/heavily processed sounds.
