TAPE MUSIC

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The White Album // Revolution 9 2

Brussels World’s Fair (1958) The Philips Pavilion

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Brussels World’s Fair The Philips Pavilion

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Project directed by Le Corbusier Philino Agostini - projected visuals Main music by Edgard Varèse “Poem Electronique” Interlude by Iannis Xenakis “Concret PH” Music developed at the Philips laboratory in Eindhoven, Netherlands 350 speakers, mounted on walls, with 10 on the floor 500 people saw the 10 minute performance at a time; 2 million had seen it by the end of the Worlds Fair

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Edgard Varèse

6Poème Électronique (1958)

Edgard Varèse

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Poème Électronique (1958)

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Electricity

Recording systems Electronic Instruments

MAGNETIC TAPE9

MAGNETIC TAPE

1928: Fritz Pfleumer invented magnetic tape for sound recording (German-Austrian engineer)

1930s: Magnetophone (AEG, Germany)

1940s: Magnetic tape and tape recorders became prominent.

1940s: Commercially developed in the late 1940s by American Jack Mullin with Bing Crosby Reel to reel audio tape recording machines spread in 1950s with companies like Ampex

Using magnetic tape for recording and editing sound was the status quo until the mid 1990s (computers and digital audio recording).

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MAGNETIC TAPE RECORDERS

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HOW IT WORKS

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SPEED & BANDWIDTH

Tape Speed (inches/s) Bandwidth Use

38 cm/s (15) 20Hz - 20kHz studio recording

19 cm/s (7.5) 30Hz - 15kHz home recording

9.5 cm/s (3.75) 40Hz - 13kHz general use

4.8 cm/s (2) 50Hz - 6kHz speech dictation

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EDITING TAPE

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1. Speed - transposition

2. Backwards - direction

3. Cutting - remove attacks, change envelopes

4. Splicing - editing, crossfade sounds

5. Looping - create rhythm from repetition

6. Mixing - record multiple layers of sound

7. Delay – run one tape past two machines, mix outputs

BASIC TAPE MANIPULATION PROCEDURES

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Iannis Xenakis

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CONCRET PH (1958)

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CONCRET PH (1958)

ELECTRONIC MUSIC RESEARCH CENTERS

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PARIS - COLOGNE - NEW YORK - LONDON - MILAN

TO RECORD OR TO SYNTHESIZE

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Music Concrete Elektronische Musik (moozeek)

France Germany

Recorded Sounds Synthesized Sounds

Montage, Film Art Music, Serialism

Pierre Schaeffer Herbert Einmert

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MUSIC CONCRETE

GRM (Research Group on Concrete Music) established by Pierre Schaeffer in 1951. Part of RTF, the main radio station in Paris.

Real world sounds abstracted to be used as musical material.

sound object Acousmatic sound - sound heard without seeing its cause.

Liberated from its source, the sounds could then be used musically as a “sequence of sound objects.”

Among the composers who worked at the studio in the 50’s: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Éliane Radigue, Olivier Messiaen, Edgar Varese, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis.

The studio continues to thrive today and is active in computer music.

& the Paris Studio

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PIERRE SCHAEFFER

Trained as a radio engineer for Radiodiffusion-Television Française (RTF) - 1940s

worked creating radio operas, combining non-musical sounds into montages l’Objet Sonore (the sonic object) “Sound Object”

working directly with sounds (waveforms), not with symbols (scores)

Any sound source could become musical

Listen: Etude Aux Allures (1958)

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Pupitre D’Espace (1951) a system for realtime sound spatialization, using four Theremin-like rings to control the intensity of four speakers: stereo pair, top and rear.

The central concept underlying this method was the notion that music should be controlled during public presentation in order to create a performance situation; an attitude that remains in acousmatic music to the present day

Pierre(s) - Henry & Schaeffer

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teamed with Schaeffer to create Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul

Premiered in 1950, broadcast in 1951

epic work using both discs and tape. Eleven movements each exploring different types of sounds.

Listen: Movement VII - Prosopopée II

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ELEKTRONISCHE MUSIK

NWDR (Northwest German Broadcasting) Studio opens in 1951

Founded by Dr. Werner Meyer-Eppler, Herbert Einmert, Robert Beyer

Synthesized sounds over recorded sounds

An extension of serialism with all musical aspects carefully controlled, such as timbre, duration, volume, etc.

Music Concrete was just “fashionable and surrealistic”

Things changed when Stockhausen took over in 1963 (even a bit before)

listen: Herbert Einmart’s Klangstudie II (1952)

& the Cologne Studio

Karlheinz Stockhausen

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Score Excerpt

Generated sound: Sine wave oscilators, filters, amplitude modulators and reverb (echo) effects

Serial composition: used rows or sets of attributes (pitch, attack, timbre, etc) to determine how to manipulate sounds

Processed in multiple stages: re-recording with effects and manipulations

Karlheinz Stockhausen

STUDIE II (1953)

combines electronic sounds with prerecorded and manipulated sounds. Recorded on five distinct tracks and one of the first surround-sound works.

Three sound sources: a boy soprano, generated sine tones, and generated noises (clicks).

Based on the biblical story of Daniel.

Plays in the space between recognizable speech & ‘abstract’ sound. Phonemes translated to sound, vowels are sine tones, consonants are bands of noises, plosives are impulses.

Sound as speech, speech as sound.

Built a bridge between French and German schools

Karlheinz Stockhausen

GESANG DER JÜNGLINGE (SONG OF THE YOUTHS) (1955-56)

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Karlheinz Stockhausen

KONTAKTE (1958)

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Focus on spatialization of sound (Quadrophonic Sound)

Wanted to create the effect of sound spinning around the listener at different speeds

Spatial projection of sound mixed to stereo, similar to techniques used later by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix.

In 1963, Stockhausen succeeded Eimert as the director of the Cologne studio

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Hugh Le Caine

Canadian scientist/composer with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in Ottawa

Transformations of a single sound source as an organizing principle, the sound of a single drop of water

Le Caine also invented the Electronic Sackbut in 1945, an early voltage controlled synthesizer (pictured)

Listen: Dripsody (1955)

Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (1958)31

Vladimir Ussachevsky

Piece for Tape Recorder (1956)

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From Ussachevsky’s Notes on Piece for Tape Recorder

BBC Radiophonic Workshop (1958)Daphne Oram, Brian Hodgson, Delia Derbyshire, David Cain, and many more...

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Drawing Sounds

Developed “Oramics” in 1959, a graphically controlled synthesizer.

Classically trained musician and BBC engineer.

Visited Schaeffer and RTF in Paris

First to notate ideas for synthetic sounds that could be reproduced by sound-generating instruments

Daphne Oram

LOOK AT ORAMICS (1961)

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Delia Derbyshire & Ron Grainer

DOCTOR WHO THEME (1963)

OTHER IMPORTANT ELECTRONIC MUSIC CENTERS

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Studio di Fonologia Musicale, Italy (1953)

Luciano Berio & Luigi Nono

Nippon Koso Kyokai (NHK) Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (1954)

Toshiro Mayuzumi & Toru Takemitsu

POST WWII MILESTONES

1948 - Musique Concrète, abstract tape music. Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry - l’ORTF radio station in Paris

late 1940s First privately-built studios. Louis and Bebe Barron (1948) & Raymond Scott (1946) (both in NY)

late 1940s - First multitrack tape recorder, popular & commercial music. Les Paul & Raymond Scott (in 2 weeks, Tu)

1951 - Elektronische Musik, music generated by electronic means. Herbert Eimert - Cologne Studio

1951 - Columbia University Studio, tape music. Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky

1950s Chance music, indeterminacy, live electronics. John Cage

1957 - Computer music! Max Mathews working at Bell Labs (in 2 weeks!)

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