Digital Sound Cultures

Cancelling-Noise-Cancelling, or Profound Listening and the Expansion of Reality

2011-11-22T16:38:00.001-08:00

This podcast takes a critical look at the role of attention in sonic experience. Taking Francisco Lopez as the primary artist of the investigation, it examines several of his works over the last two decades: La Selva, which consists of unaltered arrangements of field recordings in the La Selva cloud forests of Costa Rica and two different pieces, Klokken, and Fahrstuhle, from a 2010 release titled Machines." In addition, there are samples of city sounds, and cicadas drawn from my own library and from a freesound user named "edibles," a short sample of an above ground subway and an airplane landing. Ending the podcast is a short excerpt from a field recording that I did at the Traditions shopping center between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Throughout this investigation we look at how Pierre Schaeffer's concepts of the sonorous object and acousmatic listening set the trajectory for Lopez's work. It also pursues the ways in which Lopez thinks that profound or intentional listening can expand our notions of sonic reality. As a supplement to Lopez's work we examine brief excerpts from two of artist/composer/armchair-scientist David Dunn's repertoire that use time-domain independent pitch shifting to render audible invisible sound worlds. First is Chaos and the Emergent Mind of the Pond, an exploration of pond life, and next is Sound of Light In Trees, an investigation into an unknown microworld that has real world scientific implications. Both artists use recording technology as a primary tool in their processes but in different ways.

Cancelling-Noise-Cancelling, or Profound Listening and the Expansion of Reality

The Musician Technician Intermediary

2011-11-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

For my podcast I wanted to explore the concept of the producer as an important and relevant musical artist, focusing on the relationship between spaces and music from a production standpoint. In the 20th century, commercial access to certain technological advancements, helped usher in a new and unique wave of musical artists—not fully musician, not fully technician, but rather intermediaries of the two.

The first artist I introduce is Lee "Scratch" Perry. Sometimes shamanistic, occasionally psychotic, Perry walks the thin line of madness and genius. It was in his Jamaican studio, the Black Ark, he perfected and proliferated Dub style music. He had a spiritual connection with his studio and honed a near symbiotic relationship with his technology.

Next I move to the slightly more contemporary, though no less innovative group the Beastie Boys. Rapper-pranksters who spurred the sampling craze that would consume and become integral to Hip-Hop music. Their initial experiments with the marriage of magnetic tape looping and rapping would go on to define the nature of Hip-Hop for decades.

Finally, I showcase an active and prominent member of the current Hip-Hop community, El-P, who strives to find a more authentic voice in a genre that has, perhaps, lost touch with its roots. El-P draws on his experiences in New York, and uses an impressive array of technology to channel an eerie empathy while attempting to find a voice for his city.

The Musician Technician Intermediary

Oneiric Sensuality and Perceptual Ecologies

2011-11-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

For my podcast, I created an acoustic dream landscape in which the listener travels through a series of sound works as the texture and terrain for different sense experiences, and philosophical inquiries into perception, language, and sensuality. In the first part, we move through Francisco Lopez' "La Selva," exploring phenomenon involved in listening. We then enter Pierre Schaeffer's "Etude aux Chemins de Ferbi" as an exploration of the ‘mind’s ear,’ as sound inside of the head and the philosophical problems involved with sound, mind, and memory. As we move into James Tenney Karlheinz Stockhausen and William Winant's "Kontakte," We explore this piece as it relates to vision, its relation to sound, and concepts of synesthesia. Then we emerge into Janek Schaefer's "Rink," and its relation to tactility. The previous philosophical explorations are interpreted here through the lens of the tactile, branching briefly into the realm of autism. Finally we conclude with a resolution into "Lantern Marsh" by Brian Eno and "CCC (Cistern Chapel Chance Chants" by Deep Listening band. These works have woven throughout the entire work and conclude here with an exploration into the underlying connectivity of all sense perception.

Other intelectual works included by Alan Watts, Terrence McKenna, quotes from Francisco Lopez, quotes from Caroline A. Jones’ essay "Synaesthesia", Jill Bolte Taylor on left brain shutdown, and Samantha Baggs on the experience of autism.

Oneiric Sensuality and Perceptual Ecologies

Music For An Apocalpse

2011-11-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

For my podcast I focused on music that revolved around apocalyptic ideas and themes. I highlighted a few different ways that sound artist portray post apocalyptic scenarios within their work. The first artist work that I explored was Godspeed You Black Emperor! I showed how they used found sound splices and narration to express an end of the world event. I also showcased Carla Bozulich and her band Evangelista. Bozulich in her album Evangelista creates a personal apocalypse where her beautiful voice carries over moaning strings and sounds of confusion and dismay. I then transitioned to a completely different way of displaying apocalyptic themes. Murder by Death is a band that tells stories through their music which is rich with an Americana sound. I related this to how a wild west setting is often used as the back drop for a these types of dooms day events. The Murder by Death album Who Will Survive and What Will is about a small town in Mexico getting wiped out by the Devil, I showcased a sample of a song of this album. There are many ways to express a post apocalyptic world and in my podcast I highlighted a few that really stood out to me.

Music For An Apocalpse

Video Games and Their Soundtracks

2011-11-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

My podcast gives a brief and easy to follow overview of what exactly video game soundtracks are musically, and how they help to define an experience with video game playing. The podcast includes multiple songs from video games, with a specific focus on the soundtracks of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Shadow of the Colossus. Video games as a type of ambient music is first discussed, and then what makes video game music different than movie soundtracks is also discussed. Also interwoven throughout the podcast is an interview with a friend of mine who also plays video games on a regular basis. Her opinion is used to compare and contrast my own, and create a more personal feeling throughout the podcast. It is meant to be an introductory level conversation so that anyone can understand the terms and follow along with why the examples exemplify the point being made.

All audio files were taken from sources on Youtube:
Amnesia: The Dark Descent: "Ambiance Theme 1" and "Terror"
"Super Mario Bros Theme"
Shadow of the Colossus: "Prologue To The Ancient Land" and "In Awe of the Power"
Pokemon Black and White: "Legendary Pokemon"

Video Games and Their Soundtracks

The Glam Rock Experience

2011-11-21T18:04:00.000-08:00

This podcast explores the 'Glam Rock' of the 1970s. I introduce the listener to a concert space and interview some pretend fans to introspect why they may be interested in listening or going to Glam Rock concerts. The podcast takes the listener back in time to see where and how this genre was born. Interviews of David Bowie and other artists come in and out with interwoven music to create a discourse about the significance of glam rock in popular music culture. I also talk about the superficial presentations that these musicians would perform when going on stage. There is a relationship between technology and identity construction from the glam rock genre, which created a subculture of followers and fans alike. I also changed the voice pitch of my recorded material, to create an androgynous effect. The Glam Rock genre in many ways glamorized stardom, fame, and art through the music vehicle. Musicians and performers were able to explore their identities as men dressing as women or wearing makeup, to exaggerate female characteristics and question gender differences. When listening to this podcast, it's important to imagine yourself as a listener and participant in a live concert space, where you can envision a scene of over-the-top rock music theatre, where the costumes are just important as the music. With that said, Glam Rock was a transformative period that went to create an excessive experience of sight and sound. Disclaimer note: original interview and music audio material were from Youtube, and the rest were from personal recordings.

The Glam Rock Experience

M.W. Burns: a new approach to “everyday” sonic warfare

2011-11-21T17:09:00.001-08:00

M.W. Burns uses everyday sounds in unsuspecting places at randomtimes to surprise and startle listeners. By using elements of fear, surpriseand spatial encasement, Burns draws inspiration from sonic warfare in hispieces. Although his work and sonic warfare are in fact very different, bothsounds have very similar ideas, and one may even consider Burns’ work to besonic warfare in everyday life. This podcast explores these ideas byillustrating the comparisons in their applications and meanings. The soniclandscapes portrayed bring attention to the similarities, allowing listeners togain a better understanding of Burns’ work and how it may be influenced by theidea of sonic warfare.

M.W. Burns: A new approach to everyday sonic warfare

Going Back to Push Forward - Hip Hop Tape Culture

2011-11-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

We move very fast in the digital age, there is something to be said about slowing back down again. With the cassette tape, fans of music of all types can sacrifice the immediate convenience of digital music for the analogue alternative, which lets you learn something about yourself in the process. It allows you to listen carefully and wholly to a track or album considering the inconvenience of doing otherwise, it gives back the sensual aspects of music often lost, such as touching, feeling, smelling, and physically sharing a song/album, and gives you a deliciously low-fi tone to boot. Young hip hop beat makers have been turning to tapes as their mediums for production in recent history, revealing a new form of the genre, and a new form of ourselves in the process.

Going Back to Push Forward - Hip Hop Tape Culture

Lyrics for Social Change

2011-11-21T16:16:00.000-08:00

My final podcast talks about Michael Franti and other artists who use there lyrics for a better purpose. This purpose is to conduct social change. The Bioneers movement is explained thoroughly in this recording. It is a non-profit organization who are interested in keeping the web of life for future generations. My podcast also talks about technologies that these artists use to help persuade others to help the world. Artists are becoming more and more involved in changing the world to be a better place. This podcast goes deeper into examples of artists that are contributing to making the world a better place.

Lyrics for Social Change

Global Beats: World Fusion Illusion

2011-11-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

What is “World fusion” music? "Global Beats: World Fusion Illusion" sets out to explore the topic, focusing on the various approaches to creating music within this genre and the potential outcomes of musical globalization. Tied in with this theme of a global musical culture are the inherent issues of access, origin, production, and dissemination. How do these variables affect the mental construction of other cultures in the minds of consumers? This podcast invites listeners into a rich sonic landscape of worldbeat samples, with hopes of shedding some light on a widely misunderstood genre.

Global Beats: World Fusion Illusion

Sonorous Fractals

2011-11-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

This episode of Sonorous Fractals investigates the relationship between listening and argumentation. This podcast pivots around the question: can listening be an argument? Attempting to answer this question leads Justin, our host, into the archives. Sifting through ancient texts and interviewing experts in the field, Justin is able to discern how listening has come to be understood as a passive sense. However, simply foregrounding our problematic relationship to listening is insufficient. Utilizing the work of avant-garde artists like Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage, Paul D. Miller, and Girl Talk, Justin traces the emancipatory potentiality of using listening as a mode of invention. He argues that listening to the ordinary sounds of the everyday provides artists with an index of possible tropes that tap directly into social memory. In other words, it affords artists the ability to resonate with their audience, persuading them into different states of being. Our handsome host concludes by noting that listening is a mode of argumentative invention because it provides arguers a reservoir of relevant sounds to guide the assembly of a piece.

Sonorous Fractals: The Podcast

emotional complexities and atomic cyborgs

2011-11-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

"In the near future, nuclear energy [will] create a world 'in which…routine household tasks are just a molter of pushing a few buttons…where the air is everywhere as fresh as on a mountain top and the breeze from a factory as sweet as from a rose…Imagine the world of the future…the world that nuclear energy can create for us."

"technology was becoming out of control, that humans were becoming machines themselves, that people were losing their ties to nature."

In Lunar Rhapsody, from the album Music Out of the Moon, we start with a musical segment that mixes human voice with the technological theremin, capturing a mood that is full of both love and union as well as loss and sadness. In the era of this piece, society was indeed merging with technology, embodied here in the subtle mixture of theremin voice and human song. People were being taught to love the atom, and its utopian possibilities, as well as merging their homes and spaces with technological complexity. Yet at the same time people were learning to cope with the loss of a simpler world and a simpler time. The first atom bombs had been dropped only two years previous, and technological complexity had crossed a threshold where its implications (threatening and enlightening) pervaded everyday life.
In this piece, whenever the theremin comes in, we enter into these subtle emotional mixtures of both loss and love. The ambiguity of these emotional states captures the true emotional tones of the time, rather than a binary emotional tone that is either exotic and exciting or scary and dangerous.
Humans were merging their domestic spaces with these new elements; technological complexity and atomic and cold war fears. Musically, it becomes unclear where exactly the theremin plays and where the human voice plays, mirroring the difficulty in defining the borders of new technologies in the everyday life and homes spaces. This ambivalence is slightly haunting, and the musical tones of Lunar Rhapsody captures this feeling.
Towards the end, when the theremin pulls out completely, and we are left with humans singing and classical interments, we enter into and conclusion full of excitement and adventure. The merging of technos and human has become one, and the only way to escape the strangeness of these changes in the daily life spaces is to blast off into the cosmos. We end with adventure and suspense, as the unified cyborgian populous leaves the home for new frontiers of outer space, rocket ships, and alien colonies.

Dub and the Virtual Sound Space

2011-10-31T15:37:00.001-07:00

The unique ability of the dub artist is to create a virtual universe in your mind. A three dimensional canvas to stage his sonic wizardry. Using low, rolling baselines and sparse drum hits, Lee "Scratch" Perry evokes a futuristic and mystical sound space on his tracks. One of the most important things to a dub artist is their production space. Most artists at this time had a very personal connection to their craft that stems from having a 'sacred ground' in which to work.

David Toop, a well respected writer on contemporary music explains how Lee Perry and his contemporaries approached the mixing board in the recording process. He says, "the mixing board becomes a pictorial instrument, establishing the illusion of a vast soundstage and then dropping instruments in and out, as if they were characters in a drama."

Lee Perry's studio was called the Black Ark, and it was there he worked with many famous Reggae artists, including Junior Murvin, the Heptones, and Bob Marley and the Wailers. I believe there is a direct correlation between Perry's studio space, and the virtual sonic space that he crafts on his dub tracks. If the producer's studio is the vehicle, then the mixing board is his control center. Using a plethora of effects and techniques, Perry opens up a world inside your head. Sending elements of sound across your mind like a shooting star. He deconstructs instrument sounds and reconfigures them in a new ways. The sparseness and slow tempo of the music actually enhances its ability to create an inner space in your mind. Perry's tricks open the universe inside your head where you can sit embryonically floating and watching the sonorous elements fly towards and away from you at the speed of sound.

Perry's track "Upsetting Dub" starts off with a tight drum roll that explodes and multiplies outward into the universe. These, delay-heavy drum hits are a staple of dub music, as they repeat faster and faster ad infinitum, they give the impression of staring into an infinity mirror. You can imagine each sonic element visually in your mind. The drama metaphor used by Toop is very apt. There is a story unfolding, each part of the composition carries a personality. A strum of the guitar, saturated in reverb brings a harsh and isolating feel. A bold drum fills up the space in the front of your mind before spiraling out into orbit. A cool melody from the organ lulls you into a place of meditation until it is cut short and aggressively looped, shocking you from your complacence. The low, meandering groove comes in the form of a slow lackadaisical bass line. It is the only anchor in the song, and is essentially the vehicle upon which the listener travels through the track. It serves as a vantage point to keep you grounded as other sonic elements are firing off above and below you. Overly-reverberated snare hits cut through the space like a knife, then ricochet off into the nothing. A semblance of a drum beat is created, giving an assertive direction to the track. Though no sooner has it settled in, it is abruptly removed where it disintegrates and echoes away.

Like many of his contemporaries, Perry's Black Ark studio did not feature the latest in recording technology. In fact, much of his equipment was rudimentary and dilapidated. It was by the creative genius of the producer which imbued each track with a mix of black magic and cosmology.

This unique approach to the recording process would make a lasting impression on music to come. The Boards of Canada are one group that has made studio sound crafting as important in the musical process as the music itself. This electronic duo use modern processing techniques to give their sound a retro feel. They, like Lee Perry, strive to strip the music down to the basic elements. Imperfections are celebrated rather than avoided. With this mindset, the music can be organic and vibrant; it takes on a life of its own. The Boards of Canada acknowledge this feeling in the title of their 1998 album, "Music Has the Right to Children.

The essence of Dub

2011-10-31T15:37:00.000-07:00

“Dubbing, at its very best, takes each bit and imbues it with new life, turning a rational order of musical sequences into an ocean of sensation.”

This quote from Audio Cultures ch. 51 Replicant: On Dub by David Toop really gives a good image of what dub music is about and the effect it projects on the listener. In the track titled, Flash Gordon Meets Luke Skywalker by Scientist and Prince Jammy you can really hear the elements of dub and the special techniques they use in the studios to create the very spatial sounds they desire. As the track starts we hear echoes of voices and a muffled bass guitar as if it is being played underwater. Every sound is repeated and delayed with precision to give it the sound that I have come to expect from a dub track. The essay by Toop discusses how the sounds that the dub producers were making were “giving the impression of an eerie tropical ghost town.”

The sound in Flash Gordon Meets Luke Skywalker definitely eludes to empty deserted streets. I can’t help but imagine a producer alone in a studio for hours late at night at their mixing boards trying to create the perfect sonic, spatial atmosphere. The track name really highlights the outer space emphasis in a lot of these tracks. There is a narrative that runs through dub tracks that are reminiscent of science fiction. “No coincidence that the nearest approximation to dub is the sonar transmit pulses, reverberations and echoes of underwater echo ranging and bioacoustics.” This quote also from Toops easy, really helps give a sense of the sounds associated with dub music. All the delays and repetitions are carefully crafted to form the essence of a dub track.

Once Around Altair

2011-10-31T15:20:00.000-07:00

This delightfully eerie and minimal track by Louis and Bebe Baron was a huge leap of faith for its time. A leap of faith because it required much more from the listener to be enjoyable. Heavy filter oscillations cascade from high to low, varying in layering and timbre. Using little other than the conventional analog synthesizers to create alien-like spaceship passes were inspired by the hi-fi revolution and the atomic age, where people were fascinated by the space program and the impending humungous shift in energy consumption and possible discovery of life outside of planet earth.

What was innovative about this album no less this piece of music was the fact that it required much more from the listener. Most music in the mid twentieth century was very accessible to the general public, did not require any participation from the listener, but for this piece to be effective you have to close your eyes and envision the world that the Baron's are trying to create, to submit and use the sound object to enhance a visual imagery that is left up to the listener to paint in their mind. This new style parallels with Glen Gould's segment in Audio culture called "The Participant Listener", where he states that "..there is a new kind of listener-- a listener more participant in the musical experience. The emergence of this mid-twentieth century phenomenon is the greatest achievement of the record industry. For this listener is no longer passively analytical; he is an associate who's tastes, preferences and inclinations even now alter peripherally the experiences to which he gives his attention, and upon who's fuller participation to the future of the art of music awaits" (121-122).

2011-10-31T14:59:00.000-07:00

Dub has changes overtime but still contains the same elements. David Toop talks about the fact that dub is the type of music that regenerates throughout the years. All dub is the same no matter what year it was created right? Wrong! David’s concept stuck with me because I do not know much about dub especially dub before today. King Tubby came out with the song Borderline Dub in 1996. When I listen to this song I think reggae not dub, but David Toop has helped me understand why it is dub. He says, “dub music is a long echo delay, looping overtime.” When I listen to this song I hear the repetition and the echoing that he speaks of in this chapter. It helps me understand the meaning of dub.

When I hear the song Gave Dub by Boxcutter, which was made in 2006, i see that regeneration of dub throughout the years. This song has all of the elements of dub that Toop speaks of, but is in an extremely different sound. This is the sound I think of when I think of dub. When comparing the two songs side by side, I understand his concept of regeneration. These songs are both dub, but dub has changed since 1996. Now it has become more universally known as the shattering loud noise that he speaks of, but King Tubby has music that is calmer and a little quieter than dub today.

Repetition in DJ culture and its effect on our experiences

2011-10-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

Mixing and altering songs and sounds plays with space rather than time, allowing not only the aspects of the song to repeat, but also listeners to repeatedly listen to the performance. In fact, Brian Eno states that recording transforms transient and ephemeral sounds into repeatable and memorable songs (Cox and Warner 127). The constant repetition of the rhythm and sounds provides listeners with a memory-based interpretation of the emotion portrayed through the song, encouraging people to listen to songs multiple times in order to hear all of the sounds within the mix. One example of this idea is “Glass” by Kode9 + the Spaceape. This song uses repetition with the same sounds fading in and out throughout to create a constant rhythm, and a speaking voice seems to be the only distinct change. Consequently, it creates a tranquil effect that draws in people in order to repeatedly listen to it. Like “Glass,” “Upsetting Dub” by Lee Perry and “Dark Side” by Scientist both have a strong rhythm due to repeating soundsAfter listening to it a number of times, one may get encapsulated by the sounds, creating an environment based on memories of the old sounds in order to focus on the emotions felt in the past and present.

Paul D. Miller supports this idea in his article “Algorithms: Erasures and the Art of Memory” in Audio Culture:

“Triggered by the sensuous touch of the DJ’s hands guiding the mix, the spectral trace of sounds in your mind that existed before you heard them, telling your memory that the mixed feelings you get, the conflicting impulses you feel when you hear it are impressions – externalized thoughts that tell you you only know that you have never felt what you thought you were feeling because you have never really listened to what you were hearing."

Miller describes the listening experience as emotional and psychological because of the repeating noises and subtle differences in sounds listeners discover after numerous listens. Like with Pierre Schaeffer’s “Etude Violette,” subtle changes in the song “Glass” are only noticeable after repeating listening sessions. Although “Glass” has a stronger, more distinct rhythm, both songs provide listeners with an emotional, temporal experience.

Cutting the Conductor

2011-10-31T14:50:00.000-07:00

When considering an audio track such as Louis and Bebe Barron's Battle with the Invisible Monster, from the soundtrack of Forbidden Planet, one thing is very obvious: the sounds were not made by a band. No orchestra of strings and wind instruments could make such noises, so they are obviously electronic in nature. When a composer no longer needs a band to make music, they can completely cut out the need for a conductor. As talked about in Audio Culture, the removal of the role of the conductor opened up many new possibilities for musicians. No longer was there a problem with the language of writing music that one conductor might see differently than the composer. Before, there was the problem of "the composer [writing] a piece of music in a language that might not be adequate to his ideas" (109). They had no actual control over the way the piece played - it might not sound much like what they had in mind.

Battle with the Invisible Monster is an example of something the artist had control over. They specifically picked each sound for a reason, and there is no loss of ideas for lack of language to adequately describe how to make a "bloop" of a noise. As we all know from earlier exercises, trying to describe one of these noises with language is nearly impossible. Each person will think of a different sound when they see just the word. The same can be considered for music notes on a sheet. When a composer has to write in this form, the exact sound they are thinking of cannot be translated into just a few notes. If they want it to be very specific, they could only hope that the conductor was thinking along the same lines as they were, and even then, it might not be right. A song like Grave Dub by Boxcutter is in a similar situation. The bloops and bleeps in it cannot really b described by a language. They are best heard the way the composer originally intended for them to be. Since composers were given the ability to make their own music through studios and tapes, this became possible.

Dub and Real-Time Studio Performance

2011-10-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

"Spreading out a song or a groove over a vast landscape of peaks and deep trenches, extending hooks and beats to vanishing point, dub creates new maps of time, intangible tunes, sacred sites, balm and shock for mind, body and spirit."

David Toop, Replicant: On Dub

In Audio Cultures, a great emphasis is placed on the impact of recording technologies on practices of consumption and production. From Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's vision of a visual vocabulary for drawing grooves into vinyl to the early tape based experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and Musique Concrete, the physical medium exerts dramatic influence on the creative approach to the production and development of music. In some cases it simply allows new avenues for listening, but in others it allows entirely new modes of production. Dub--a medium made possible entirely by advances in tape-based systems--is a most compelling example of the latter. In his brief article, Replicant: On Dub, David Toop highlights some of the historical and sensational features of dub, claiming it as the herald of remix culture, as something that deconstructs and creates new meaning out of existing material, and also as a mechanism for revisioning time and space. While almost any dub track could serve to illustrate these points, I found Lee "Scratch" Perry's, Lee Perry Upsetting Dub, particularly compelling.

It begins with a drum roll that rapidly decays, seeming almost to break apart into barely cohesive shards of noise, almost like low-fi radio transmissions. A few seconds in, a deep and reverberant melody comes in. The deep space created by that reverb serves to anchor the other elements, creating cohesion at moments where there is no melody or rhythm. As the drum roll fades away, I am already on my way to outer-space. The drums come back in punctuating bursts, sometimes just a kick or a snare. But the kick or snare rises up and stretches like the drumroll at the beginning. Soon one of these swells takes over completely and the melody falls out for a measure. When it comes back, it seems to have taken on new force so that plucks begin cascading into echo chambers, implying a space not restrained to a studio, but reaching far out into the cosmos and slapping back. As I listen over and over, I start seeing Lee Perry as the captain of the Black Ark, interstellar spacecraft, rapidly moving between sliders and knobs, charting a path through the sensational unknown. Kicks start sounding like spring-loaded cartoon anti-gravity boots. Snares repeat off into infinity, slowly dropping away at the edges of perception. About halfway through, the whole band seems to be on stage. The harmonium (is it?) drones away in the back; Larger than life guitar skanks slip in and out, super sonic, like a dirt road turned into a four lane highway; hand drums and kit drums concerting and combating. Suddenly the guitar is gone and a nasal kazoo blast rides up to the top, atonal, almost a snarl, implying deep discontent and even eliciting a sense of dread, but for only a moment, as if to remind us that in adventure there is also always danger. Then the drums take on a steadier rhythm for the rest of the track, layering and oscillating between a kit and hand drums. A lighter, almost celebratory melody takes over and the track begins to fade out.

Lee Perry Upsetting Dub is a great example of the ways that a studio approach to composition enables producers to work in new creative modes. What is particularly compelling to me about dub is the real-time aspect. The tape manipulations of Shaeffer, Henry or Oswald (of whom I am also a huge fan), are painstaking labors of love, processes of highly detailed cutting and splicing often written out as a visual score prior to compilation. Conversely, the tape manipulations of dub, while studio based, are primarily live; that is, the producers are listening to the playback of the original tracks and making decisions at the moment of listening on how to sculpt, alter, layer, or oppose material. As tools like Ableton Live and Max/MSP become more and more powerful, enabling things like auto-quantization, and as laptops really do become more and more like virtual studios, the boundaries between what is possible in the confines of a studio and live are beginning to blur. In either case, we can see that the studio, whether physical or virtual, is a form of instrument, laden with untapped potential and even entirely new genres.

"In a compositional sense… one becomes empirical in a way that the classical composer never was… It puts the composer in the identical position of the painter--he's working directly with a material, working directly on a substance, and he always retains the potions to chop and change, to paint a bit out, add a piece, etc."

Brian Eno, The Studio As Compositional Tool

Communication and meaning through Sound Compositions

2011-10-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

Sounds were not only just subjected to experiments with different sonorous manipulating technology, but they could be organized and induce a certain feeling or emotion and a way of expression. Composer Pierre Henry was more interested in communication and use of language in his pieces. His pieces were about creating a feeling and emotion. In his terms, he defined communication as having "expressivity, accessibility, and referentiality" (Taylor, 61). He believes that his works must have a overarching theme or significance in order to have meaning in them. He acheived this through electronic music and a library of sounds he had collected. You can hear that in his pieces that he had collaborated with Michel Colombier, with "Teen Tonic," a mix of electronic, soothing beats, vocals, and clashing objects incorporated from various sounds. In his "Psyche Rock" piece with Michel Colombier, which later inspired the tv series Futurama produced before the turn of the century, he mentions that this piece in many ways retells the history of the psychedelic mood of that period. It also inspired others to look back and use Henry's work of what the future might have been imagined or was hoped to be in the animated series. There is definitely a narrative within the piece, which seems to have several layers with a complex and even chaotic structure with its' reverbs, soothing background beats, and screechy foregrounded sounds. In many ways, his pieces are described as having certain poetic elements that are able to create a transient mood and inspire visuals over the listener. His pieces even inspire a certain idea of upbeat technological sounds and unknown eeriness from sonorous objects with overlaid opposing and distinct elements.
Although Pierre Schaeffer and Henry had worked together, their styles were significantly different. As Taylor mentions, Schaeffer's pieces were rather "empirical" because he approached his works in a scientific manner, while Henry was more about the story and was idea driven. When you listen to Pierre Schaeffer's piece, "Etude Noire," you notice the repetition of alternating sounds in different spaces, but the structure is much more predictable and formal, while introducing various sound elements throughout. In contrast, Henry's pieces are code driven, they have a certain meaning that he has personally encoded as a composer and is therefore meant to be understood and not just heard. He calls himself a "communicator" and not necessarily an artist, since he composes to create another form of language through sound. Schaeffer admits Henry's pieces when listened to, "one feels something of being taken by anguish, fear, emotion, waiting" (61). I think he is much as an artist as other self labeled artist composers. Even though his pieces can be widely read for meaning and can be placed in various environments for atmospheric effect, his works are about self expression and using the audio medium as a way to communicate a message or an overarching theme.

Anxiety in Space-Age America

2011-10-31T09:29:00.000-07:00

While French artists such as Pierre Henry and Michel Colombier took a fairly optimistic approach to the musical interpretation of space-age innovation, the Cold War anxieties of United States citizens fueled much more apprehensive works. This sense of foreboding lingered from the detonation of the atom bombs at the end of World War II, as well as an anxiety about the possibilities implicit in soon-to-be explored outer space. As Taylor writes on page 87 of his book, Strange Sounds, “I’m describing this as a kind of drama because it is. It can be read as caputuring—even forecasting—the attitudes toward the technology of the era, attitudes that were somewhat playful and hopeful while at the same time concerned and anxious.” This cultural context is well-illustrated and incorporated in Louis and Bebe Barron’s track “Deceleration” from the soundtrack for “Forbidden Planet”.

“Deceleration” begins with slowly undulating waves of low-pitched sound, slowly rising to a crescendo of high-pitched noises with interspersed higher-pitched glitchy sounds. The electronic sounds emulate the movement of something rotating faster and faster, building up to ear-splitting screeches. Finally, the momentum breaks as the high-pitched screeches give way back to slowly undulating lower-pitched sounds. This track represents the descent of the spacecraft in one of the first sci-fi movies released in the 1950’s, Louis and Bebe Barron’s experimental approach succeeds in creating an eerie discomfort regarding the unknown of this “Forbidden Planet”. This track compares strongly against the musical creations of Pierre Henry and Michel Colombier, which convey a more upbeat, adventurous outlook on the future with compositions that employ some of the same abstract, glitchy electronic sounds, but also incorporate a quick, upbeat melody throughout songs such as “Psyche Rock”. Together, these two outlooks on the changing technologies of the Space Age create a strange duality of fear and excitement, foreboding and embrace.

DJ Spooky

2011-10-28T14:11:00.001-07:00

DJ as an interpreter of cultural memory resonated with me. Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid (2011) explains that sounds are tied to collective memory. What exactly does Miller mean by collective memory? No, this is not simply the top 100 songs that characterized a certain period of time, although that is certainly included. Rather, Miller is trying to ascertain the ubiquitous sounds that characterize the everyday. These include everything from the scratches, pops, hisses, and cracks of the city to the beeps, vibrations, and noises of our personal electronics. Each of these different sounds resonates (anamnesis). Sounds evoke different memories for different people. Take for example the Mario theme song. Listening to it, whether tied into a rap song, or randomly in the background of a space, I am immediately transported to elementary school sleep overs, staying up all night eating Pizza Hut and drinking diet coke. For others, this song may elicit other memories, such as being snowed in and playing video games. Hence, the sound, although collective, triggers individual responses. So, while we may all react to the same sounds, Brian Massumi (2005) explains, we all react differently. He writes, “jacked into the same modulation of feeling, bodies reacted in unison without necessarily acting alike.”(p. 32). The DJ, then, is able to take these little fragments of memory and remix them, putting them in conversations with other memories. This mixing and recoding of collective memory undermines the rudimentary categories of the subject. The DJ produces an experience that plays with time (exciting past memories), place (altering the space associated with that memory), culture (by placing different cultural referents next to one another), and identity (transforming the meaning of a sound). Miller explains that “any sound can be you. It is through the mix and all that it entails—the re-configuration of ethnic, national, and sexual identity—that humanity will hopefully, move into another era of social evolution”(p.354). In other words, the DJ’s goal is to interpret culture in such a way, as to invoke powerful memories and enable novel forms of subjectivity. Or, to put it in Deleuzian terms, he is concerned with shaping subjectivity trajectories.

In Pandemonium, Miller demonstrates a lot of these concepts, by taking and manipulating ordinary sounds to create a sonic experience. He is, in a sense, updating John Cage’s work. Instead of playing with just a radio landscape, Miller investigates the sounds that characterize the totality of our media environment. Within his short bricologue, Miller cites loops, video game noises, backward tape, songs from the radio, sounds from the telephone, sirens, as well as his DJ equipment. He then takes these noises and places them together in novel ways. For example he distorts the tempo and speed of a voice and then fades it on top of sharp laser sounds. Each of these different effects is meant to evoke different memories. The sounds of dialing a telephone, for example, may excite a number of memories, but how are we to make sense of that memory when it is juxtaposed with loud sirens? What about when chimes are entered into the equation? All of these different experiences produce an altered sense of subjectivity. Miller takes different memories and smacks them together, producing new ways of thinking about the world. Speaking strictly in the “untimely space” or the space of potential, this mix is able to create the potential for new lines of flight. If memory, as Massumi explains, is the medium of habit, remixing the way we understand the self creates the potential for novel forms of subjectivity. That is, if memories determine how we comport ourselves in the world, creating unique permutations of them opens the potentials for new ways of being in the world.

Massumi, B. (2005). Fear (the spectrum said), Positions 13, 31-48.

John Oswald: 'Pretender' (Dolly Parton)

2011-09-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

First sounds are like a reel of tape slipping and falling into a very echoey cavern. A chipmunk sounding Dolly Parton breaks through the noise and after a few words is at the speed we can recognize her voice. She sings over organ sounds. She's lonely but no one can tell. I don't notice the tape gradually slowing down at first but it becomes apparent when Dolly's high pitched voice starts to sounds like it belongs to a man. It continues to grow slower and slower and the question of her real gender arrises? Then with a last attempt she speeds up and I find myself back in a concert hall somewhere in Nashville. I had no idea there were so many sides to Ms. Parton. How was this track originally recorded?

Malcom McLaren And The World Famous Supreme Team...Late :/

2011-09-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

Sweaty lo-fi brooklyn pirate radio stations trying to drown out the summer afternoon with shade and hip hop come to mind. Brownsville, is that where DJ shadow is from? now i hear Big Boi samples, Marshal Mathers influence, all immediate realizations that this song is much bigger than it ever realized it would be. Gorgeous camelwalk stutter on the sample arrangement, and it cleans up the pace in a moments switchup, like seeing a funky robbery in progress to sober you out of your drunken August street wandering. Tight drum rhythms and ecstasy synth stabs to send it into the sky; sarcastic musings on american white person culture of the dance, a dance that we know to be the stiffest dancing of them all, the complete opposite of funky and hip hop, the complete opposite of soul and of breaking tradition, of chopping and screwing, taking a sample of this culture and throwing in an entirely different one on the same bar to make a third. Summer heat vibes or dry tundra evenings aside, how did i suddenly just get so sweaty?

Buffalo Gas

2011-09-26T20:56:00.000-07:00

The song is introduced by a DJ, which is layered over racing paced harmonics. As we transition from the DJ to the song, the last word of the DJ, “brown Phil,” starts skipping and the words begin to twist and contort so “brown” becomes “round.” A quick ascending percussion sequence with a slight hiss hijacks the beat. Different pitches, notes, and tones coalesce to create an interchanging musical dialogue. Blunt beats sizzle against open syllables. A sped up, high pitched voice that can only be described as “expressing shock” intersects with the back beat. The interplay between notes and beats is fused together by the DJ’s scratches. Having different durations and speeds, these tonal sutures give the song a degree of cohesion. The DJ changes the tempo and a baritone voice slowed down acts as a foil to sharp harmonics. Ephemeral breaks and loops texture the beat, while choruses of different vocal harmonies frame it. They increase speed, building toward anticipation—a hanging climax. Then an audible voice becomes the figure, in a figure/ground like configuration. The grain of the voice is lucid. It is played over a synthesized, sharp sound that punctuates the words. The beat cites rhythms introduced in the beginning of the song and mixes them with a cornucopia of new clips and loops. Words are deconstructed, reduced to their parts. The DJ fixates at the oration of a sound—he makes the words stutter. The DJ lets the record go and the song slows down. The tempo and beat quickly changes, a new set of samples is introduced laid against a new voice, slow enough to hear his words. The DJ then transitions to the earlier constellation of loops, as the song slows down again. The song start to speed up, the audible voice is being supplemented by sharp horns. Buffalo Gals is a sonic collage, gesturing and citing a number of different listening experiences. I wonder how many different songs (and sounds) were listened too in order to produce this one song? That is, this composition is the sedimentation many layers of noise, what was the invention process?

Jukebox Capriccio

2011-09-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

As the song starts out, I almost immediately feel irritated. The repeated high pitched scratches are grating on the ears to listen to, like someone pulled tape through the player too fast. Some of the noises are fairly regular for periods of time, almost like a clock ticking. The sound alternates between the left and right headphones sometimes, but is mostly played simultaneously. As it continues the song picks up with a more action-like feeling and it is clearer what instruments might be making the sounds. The noises are more of a "dah-dah, dah-dah, dahnana" as the action picks up, rather than scratching and little beeps. A solid beat develops for a moment, but then is just as quickly lost in another string of scratching noises. It becomes more frantic feeling at the end for a few seconds and then mellows out again into a fairly normal feeling beat, compare to the rest of the song. None of it felt particularly deep. I have to wonder, just what made the composer feel like these noises went well together?

Williams Mix - listened by Nicole Rende

2011-09-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

At the beginning there is a beep beep sound to start of the changing of the frequencies. Frequencies change rapidly from high to low. Between high to low frequencies there is a different sound. Some are familiar and some are foreign. These sounds pop up out of no where and make the track louder or not as loud. These sounds range from songs to talking to sounds you hear in everyday. The frequency change is very repetitive. A beep interrupts the frequency a few times. Frequency tends to be lower in general. There is a low froglike noise that repeats very often. The end is of a group of people clapping and as the track comes to an end the clapping is gradually louder and louder then it slows down then repeats this process. Then the clapping subsides for good. Why would someone write a song that sounds like it is on the radio, isn’t the point of recording a song because you want it to sound clean?

Metcalf Meets the Sonic Material of Christian Marclay's, Jukebox Capriccio

2011-09-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

Static ping pongs in sharp crackles from R -> L and back to center, giving way to a tonal slide that seems to fold in and back on itself. This with an underbelly of unrecognizable voices moving at high speed (and backwards?) introduce a loud but distant series of clangs that are interrupted by rough low tones. A single high frequency note sounds. A "ba-dum-doom" breaks in and sits at the bottom, repeating on a steady rhythm. Other beats rise up on top and float between my ears, punctuated by high pitch squeals that stretch and compress. Other notes glide through the frequency range in short bursts and gradually become more consistent until they reach a crescendo and then fall away. I can't help but think of 70's film grain and a slick black suit, skulking behind corners, partly concealed in thick puffs of cigar smoke. "Ba-dum-doom" becomes a "doot…-…doot-doot…-…dot"". The sloping and squealing high frequencies return with a renewed vigor, a cloud of fragments and shards swarming the upper register. The rhythm intensifies, speeding up with the cloud then drops off, spaces out, echoes across the left and gives a little air-- "ba-dop-da-dop-ba-dop-da-dop", the ba-dum-doom coming back, but now, "maudd-muuuud-mooooood", the familiar but in reverse, resting on a deep "waa-waa-waa-waa-waa-waa" awash in color and reverb. a descending melody plays as a rapid beat jumps on top for only a moment and leaves you mid phrase. The composition has an incredible gravity, each listen (out of 15 or so) revealing new complexity, despite the jagged and chaotic--at times even seemingly random--structure. Over repeat listens the disparate elements are united in my mind by an intangible familiarity, each calling up cinematic images from different genres, musical and visual, embodying an emotional and sometimes social essence of a time or place. Does the power of this piece (and perhaps many remixes) rely on familiarity with a cultural language of image and sound? By extension, is any chaotic system just a system that we lack the language to unravel?

Listening to John Oswald's "Pretender (Dally Proton)"

2011-09-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

High pitched, fragmented sounds shift and change fancifully as they are sped up and slowed back down, dramatically lowering in pitch until Dolly Parton’s famous voice takes over the focus. Her voice is gradually altered, and the breaks make it seem as if she is stuttering on the ends of her words, slowly deepening her voice to a rich, soulful bass and eventually to masculine depths of pitch. As the frequency slows so does the speed of playback; the background music and singers lag operatically. About two and a half minutes in, the track reaches an pivotal point and begins to speed up again, rapidly, as the vocal layer returns at its original pitch and speed. Finally, three minutes in, Dolly’s voice is split, or doubled, in a schizoid alteration that allows her a concluding duet with her bass alter ego. Most of the final minute is a quiet and consistent vocal loop. What could be the intended meaning of this piece adapted from Dolly Parton’s already-distinct cover of the classic song from the 1950’s? Is there a self-referential play on words here between the content of the song and the changing vocal identity of the singer?

Imaginary Landscape No. 4 by John Cage- A Listen by Mali

2011-09-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

A tuning of building up noise starts off then almost immediately turns into an instant chaotic switching and changing of noises. The variety goes into stations of a calming beat to a foreign language station to news of the weather and even economic conditions. Some voices appear and disappear for just a second combined with clear and vague sounds. In between the chaos, there is a mix of incomprehensible noises, the sounds of the transitions being made. The volume changes from high to low and low to high after each station switching, just as fast as the stations are also changing. There is a a prolonged silence about two minutes in the recording, an uncomfortable feeling that tricks the mind to think the piece has ended, but in fact it has not. My mind, at this moment, seems to be lost and floating along this landscape of in and out of fragmented sounds and wanting to find the next sound, since the sudden noiseless spots are uncomfortable and interrupt the flow of the chaos. A prolonged period of white noise and static sounds and then a slight comprehensible stations of music and news reports appears. The stations start being changed faster and faster and stops abruptly to other stations, almost as if they were choreographed formulaically. There are instances where you hear only a note, a sound, a word, or just a noise. Towards the end, there seems to be another foreign language station with sounds and noises that go in and out of the background and sometimes even overlap. Every station change becomes a mystery because you are curious to what each station is, since each noise, sound, beat, voice, announcement is incomplete. The combination of empty spaces and variety of all these sounds and noises does not allow you to just stay on one station for longer than a few seconds to actually make out what is happening, what is enjoyable, and what is being said from one or a combination of two separate and competing sources. How can a piece of such chaos work and make the listener play the piece over and over and every time a new experience seems to come about? And would you ever be able to figure out the pattern, if there is in fact an order to the chaos of intersecting radio waves and airwaves?

John Cage - Williams Mix

2011-09-26T11:38:00.001-07:00

I hear high and low pitches of frequent switching of frequencies and rhythms. There are very few recognizable sounds but every once in awhile I hear a recognizable melody, like the cartoon-like music or the quiet talking sounds in the background. Everything sounds very electronic because of the frequent movement between channels. I hear deep tones of classical music (possibly) combined with the high sounds of reverberating noises. The sounds are very brief so there are few distinct words. The reverberating noise repeats. Again, there is a lot of movement from high to low pitches. I hear the sound of low croaking in the background and the same feminine voice with the reverberating sounds (laughing?). The voices and sounds are now getting faster and more chaotic. A brief break immediately after with small pauses between sounds. I hear the sound of low croaking in the background more frequently now. There are scratchy noises and a lot of clicking and movement between frequencies. I think I hear a recognizable melodic sound. Now it is a large break and then sounds of clapping and cheering from an audience. The rhythmic and low muffled sounds are layered with high pitched and random loud sounds.This continues for awhile and continues to get louder and louder as the break from the frequent changes continues. These sounds intensify. The crowd quiets as the track ends. How does a track that seems to be a collage of random sounds and songs end up coming together with chorus-like parts that help the track maintain a constant rhythm and cohesion?

Christian Marclay - Jukebox Capriccio, as heard by Phil Bain

2011-09-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

An amalgam of different noises and melodies, patched together and spliced apart. Ripped open and stuffed with off-beat rhythms and out of key notes. Tempo's shift on a dime, punctuated by high pitched wails, punch cuts, and wobbly repetitions. A slow, loping melody gives way to an anxious beat that echoes and reverberates from a seemingly far away place. In another moment, all is swept away by a sudden, but not quite abrasive cacophony of sound elements moving rapidly backwards and away from you. A low, thumping, and rich rhythm takes over and leads the way forward again. A familiar tone beeps itself into the foreground-- for a moment, the recognizable melody of "Tainted Love" can be heard. The sounds briefly coalesce, tricking the listener into thinking a cohesive song might emerge from this mess. Then as suddenly as it appeared, it is gone; whirled back in time and replaced by a sparse, paranoid selection. The noises continue to build and layer upon one another, soaring once again to a raging crescendo of patchwork sounds, culled from any number of indeterminate sources; they are as recognizable as they are foreign. As the crescendo reaches its peak the layers of sound are once again ripped away. A more calm melody brings us to the end of the track, giving an uplifting, yet strangely unwelcome finale. As if to say, "it was all a dream; you won't remember any of this when you wake up." How can a track with limited or no melodic or structural cohesion, such as this, be as intriguing as it is, and maintain my attention beyond the simple novelty of a noise collage?

The first minute of Jukebox Capriccio by Christian Marclay : a Listening by Andrew Edwards

2011-09-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Sounds crackle, an object emerges. Flickering and popping. It collapses and wiggles, then explodes outwards again, forming a recognizable representational image in my mind, though shrouded in more twisting and contortions. Its almost impossible for the landscape not to take on recognizable forms here. Higher brighter sharpness shoot out of the main form. They coalesce into a denser form and then collapse. One cycle emerges, repeating and folding back into itself while a second tries to form recognizable images but is continually exploding out of it. The whole field forms a jumble and then Breaks into a static screech. A cascading rhythm falls away then trickles in itself lower. Wiggles and thumps. A twisting blast and then hoarse wheezing honks loop. Melody tracks slips beneath moving honks wheezing. Recognizable rhythms attempt to emerge, but on top of them a twisting melding stream spirals around and then falls away. Three trains of motion, One: rhythms chomping away until they form another cascade that falls from high to low, while TWO; The wiggle melody is trying to squirm its way though, while THIRD: A steady chordal harmonic song is rising. Then as the First falls into cascade the Second twists and spirals in on itself, and the drumming rhythms take over the field. A honk emerges and folds itself to the right. The THREE forms battle for the stage as the rightward honking blasts one, two, three. It is growing with higher blips. Rhythm and shards of melody loop and continue… This work is dense, with multiple lines twisting alongside each other. The stage is never still, with new lines pushing down others continually. It is always changing.

Acoustic Ecologies - Microcosms of Sound

2010-03-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

This Faces Made for Radio podcast looks at the acoustic ecology movement and how it has developed since its original creation by the World Soundscape Project in the late Sixties. The podcast explores how different artists have taken field recordings in different directions and suggests why they have done so. Throughout the podcast there are rich recordings of soundscapes by such artists as Hildegard Westerkamp, Francisco Lopez, Annea Lockwood, and Barry Truax, just to name a few. Also featured are several interviews with these artists, who discuss their processes and the meanings behind their recordings. I compare the different lenses through which these artists see the soundscapes around them and what the artists are trying to accomplish with their work. Though R. Murray Schafer helped start the movement, today's soundscape artists have moved in directions Schafer never envisioned. This feature-length podcast chronicles these nuances with hopes that its listeners might start to hear the world around them with a more critical ear.

Download the "Acoustic Ecologies" podcast (25:47).

Dr. Cornwallis and the Hyphy Movement

2010-03-12T11:28:00.001-08:00

Come take a magical journey with Dr. Cornwallis as he answers one of the many unanswered questions of the universe. This episode’s special guest is Junior from Wichita Kansas, who asks Dr. Cornwallis about the Hyphy movement of the San Francisco Bay area and what kind of unique culture has arisen from this distinct style of music and dance. This feature-length podcast is chock full of audio samples from Hyphy music and interviews with the artists.

Download the "Hyphy Movement" podcast (21:33).

Suspending Disbelief: Inauthenticity in Modern Popular Music

2010-03-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

"Suspending Disbelief" approaches pop music with a critical eye, focusing on the production tool known as auto-tune, as well as the practice of lip-synching. While these may be the most obvious techniques which flag popular music as inauthentic, this podcast argues that criticizing artists for utilizing auto-tune is moot; pop music is and always has been inauthentic since the beginning. Although we're normally able to ignore the fabricated nature of popular music, auto-tune and lip-syncing are simply too overt for us to suspend disbelief. These ideas and more are explored through interviews and excerpts of popular songs ranging from Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" to T-Pain's "Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')".

Download the "Suspending Disbelief" podcast (14:16).

Ô Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misère!

2010-03-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

My podcast looks at the work of Diamanda Galas in the context of appropriation art, specifically Galas's use of poetry by Charles Baudelaire as a foundation for her vocal manipulations. Examining the relationship between language and sonic setting, or covering, and the radical turn Galas makes from other efforts to set Baudelaire to music, I turn to compositions of Baudelaire's poems by actress Yvette Mimieux, electronic composer Ruth White, and The Cure, analyzing the differences that animate these pieces.

Download the "Diamanda Galas" podcast (22:00).

Remixing Collective Memory: Low End Theory Sound

2010-03-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

This feature-length podcast, Remixing Collective Memory: Low End Theory Sound explores collective memory, remix, and genre melding from the epicenter of the Airliner’s Low End Theory Night. For the last few years, L.A.’s Airliner club has sponsored Low End Theory Night, which has exposed some of the most innovative and contemporary artists in hip-hop. One common thread amongst Low End Theory artists is a collective exploration of Eighties and Nineties youth culture, through their subject matter, aesthetic, and sample base. Other strong influences include science fiction, glam, crumping/pop and lock, and metal.

Remixing Collective Memory explores the Low End Theory scene and its artists through the lens of technonostalgia, collective memory/shared experience, and remix culture. Paul D. Miller writes that the phonograph and recording technology produced “a non-sequential form of text, one including associative trails, dynamic annotations, and cross references" (Miller, 349). This is juxtaposed against the writings of Jaron Lanier, who suggests that digital collectivism promotes mediocrity and that there is no unified pop aesthetic of our time. Exploring the musical aesthetics and artists of the Low End Theory scene will reveal that remix and recombinant music acts as a transmitter or instigator of collective memory because the samples involved create an external network of meaning and association that exists between the artists and club-goers. For instance, much of the aesthetics and samples of Future Blap are heavily reminiscent of Eighties and Nineties youth culture, especially as sonified through early video games, hip hop, punk, metal, cartoons, Sci-Fi, and Horror movies. While these elements are often embedded in the music, they act as a three dimensional mosaic for the listener familiar with that culture, connecting the DJ/Artists’ memory to that of the listeners’ via shared experience.

Special thanks to Lunice, Daedelus and Daddy Kev. I appreciate your willingness to help a fan.

Download the "Low End Theory" podcast (32:45).

Improvisational Identity and Sound Tribe Sector Nine (STS9)

2010-03-12T10:07:00.001-08:00

For my podcast, I focus on STS9's authentic sound and their style of instrumental music. Most people refer to Sound Tribe as a jam band, but in this instance the band members themselves do not place or categorize themselves into one specific genre. The authentic improvisational style of STS9 encourages a new way to think and listen to music, partly because STS9 uses every type of music style. Not just repetitive of past sounds, though, Sound Tribe brings a new element to the music scene today and shows a lot of growth and development through their on and off stage appearances. Take it or leave it, this instrumental band show no signs of stopping or being placed into any kind of genre other than the genre of "STS9"!

Download the "STS9" podcast (14:05).

Retaliation Vibration: Thievery Corporation, War & World Hunger

2010-03-11T20:45:00.000-08:00

My podcast focuses on the band Thievery Corporation and how they use music to promote political awareness, particularly about war and world hunger. The album Radio Retaliation includes songs like "El Pueblo Unido" and "Sound the Alarm." Unique to this album are Thievery Corporation's collaborations with international artists and their incorporation of instrumental sounds and musical styles from around the world, which contrast significantly to the noisy music of Muslimgauze and the idea of Project Peace on Earth. In the case of Project Peace on Earth, Michael Kang of the String Cheese Incident and yoga teacher Gurmukh help me bring out the purpose of the Project in order to show how the concepts of sound vibrations differ from ideas of sonic retaliation.

Download the "Retaliation Vibration" podcast (16:19).

The Clever Children play ... Stockhowzen VS The Technocrats

2010-02-14T12:30:00.000-08:00

Students of the "Digital Sound Cultures" (Winter 2010) class responded to a dialogue between two generations of electronic and digital sound producers by making short mashups. The resulting audio work highlighted or resolved tensions evident in The Wire magazine's "Advice to/from Clever Children" (Nov. 1995), which pitted the father of electronic music, Karlheinz Stockhausen, against a younger generation of electronica represented by Aphex Twin, Plastikman, Scanner, and Dan Pemberton. The Clever Children album extends this dialogue into additional works by Grandmaster Flash, Brian Eno, Janet Cardiff, Francisco Lopez, Bjork, Christian Marclay, and many more.

Track List
1. Brad Ginsburg - "criticalmashup" (3:27)
2. Andrew Baldwin - "Technocrats" (5:05)
3. Angela Malley - "Critical Mashup" (3:15)
4. Roxi Carter - "critical maship" (3:04)
5. Leo Kacenjar - "Hunter's Down" (4:49)
6. Kanoa James - "kanoa remix" (4:42)
7. Eric Peterson - "Critical Mush" (3:38)

Download The Clever Children at the Internet Archive.

Click's and Cuts an expression of Minimalism

2010-02-12T15:48:00.000-08:00

Kyle Gann attempts to quantify and clarify what it means to be minimalist when reviewing or discussing a piece of music through a set of twelve descriptions of minimalism's process. In looking at Thomas Brinkman's piece, 011, on the album, Clicks & Cuts Vol 2. it is easy to identify how much this work has been influenced by previous minimalist's works and the processes that those works used to create their sound. Minimalism as an art movement avoided decorative trappings or accouterments. In the same way minimalists stuck to very simple tones through the use of static harmony or keeping the harmony related to a specific scale or part of a scale. Though Brinkman's work is hard to place as specific notes on a scale, as a sonorous object there does seem to be a range of clicks, pops, and other sounds that are at different pitches on a progressive scale. In the same way minimalism uses the processes of addition and repetition 0100 also relies on the repetition of certain beat cycles of clicks creating new sounds by combining several cycles of beats on top of one another. Gann explains that this use of repetition and addition brought the idea that minimalism was more of a process than anything else, an idea I don't necessarily agree with.

Brinkman's piece certainly doesn't fall under all of the categories that Gann describes, but then neither does every minimalist piece. "This is hardly a complete list of techniques and features of minimalist music, but it does constitute a family of character traits. No minimalist piece uses all of these, but I could hardly imagine calling a piece minimalist that didn't use at least a few of them." The trouble with Brinkman's piece in describing it as minimalist is that in part it uses the techniques of minimalism while using sounds I would describe as post-minimalist. Its taking these clicks and cuts and putting them into minimalist processes. In part that may be because Brinkman's music came after minimalism and thus was influenced by these other artist's works. Another artist's work that I would posit, might have influenced Brinkmann might be Steve Reich's, Drumming Pt. 1. Many of the processes seem similar and later on in Reich's piece the phase shifting seems similar to Brinkman's, the offsetting of beats to slightly different tempos helps bring the addition and repetitive processes to a culmination. Lastly I would point towards the fact that in both pieces the audible structure is easily apparent, by revealing their structure to all those that listen closely it makes the music both easy to comprehend yet it forces the listener to focus on it.

Works cited

Brinkman, Thomas. 0100. Clicks & Cuts, Vol. 2. 2001

Gann, Kyle. "Thankless Attempts at a Definition of Minimalism." Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. Ed. Cristpoph Cox and Daniel Warner. New York: Continuum, 2008.

Reich, Steve. Drumming, Pt. 1.

The Studio as Composition Vis à Vis MBV

2010-02-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

Brian Eno talks about the studio as a compositional tool, representing the shift from "composer" or "musician" to "producer." He writes,

"You're working directly with sound, and there's no transmission loss between you and the sound--you handle it. It puts the composer in the identical position of the painter... He always retains the options to chop and change, to paint a bit out, to add a piece, etc."

I can't think of a more illuminating example of this than My Bloody Valentine's Only Shallow from their 1991 release Loveless. Using the painting metaphor, if a composer's palette consists of the instruments he is arranging, MBV's palette is typical of any other rock band (guitars, a bass, and drums), but the sounds it produces are anything but. The track explodes with a shrieking, spinning, siren only remotely resembling anything a guitar would produce. That sound and most others produced on the record are a product of hundreds of hours of studio time, spent meticulously experimenting: tapes reversed and affected, guitar amplifiers faced directly at each other with a microphone between them capturing the wave phase behavior, etc. It's difficult to imagine the band producing a song as sonically adventurous and dense without the ability to work with sounds in a tangible form in the studio. And indeed, having had the opportunity to see the band perform Only Shallow at the Fillmore last April, I can attest to the fact that the live sound, though powerful in its own way, is distinct from the recording, due in large part to the fact that some of the recorded sounds are simply impossible to reproduce live.

Eno also makes light of the fact that, prior to the availability of recording technologies, people like him couldn't have dreamed of composing music because they weren't technically proficient enough or had little knowledge of its written representations. Wind on Water, a piece which Eno produced in collaboration with guitarist Robert Fripp, is a piece that is sonically, surprisingly similar to Only Shallow, if the latter were stripped of its rock influences. Though produced in a wholly different manner using tape loops, the pieces share more than tonal similarity: they are both likely impossible to recreate perfectly in a live situation, and they were both produced by self-taught musicians. Kevin Shields has gone from (at least compared to guitar virtuosos like Hendrix or Page) a fairly run-of-the-mill guitarist to 95th greatest in the world, due in large part to the sonic creativity afforded to him by the studio used as a compositional tool.

Hi-Fi transformation: Stereolab

2010-02-12T13:53:00.001-08:00

If during the time of space age music created optimism over technology in the late 1950’s and 1960’s in France as well as created anxiety or ambivalence in America, then towards the early 1990’s the progression of space age music has taken shape. Stereolab’s, “Stars to our Destination” uses the progression of French and American influence to drive its space pop rock to the next level. Taylor states, “To understand space-age pop music-jazz influenced popular music of the late 50’s and 60’s that thematized the exotic, whether terrestrial or in space, and was intended to be played on hi-fis….” These hi-fi systems were supposed to be played in the home during the postwar era that brought about new technologies that progressed the future. Stereolab revived that influence of previously fringe music of the 60’s rock and used many methods of recording such has hi-fi’s and analog synthesizers to invoke the succession of the space age pop to the 90’s.

Although many saw the hi-fi system a masculine object of desire, women made the transition as well as to adjust to future technologies for the home. With the new technology scares in the 50’s eluding to the fact of the atom bomb many were frightened with the idea of space and the unknown as well as these new technologies given in stride. The mix between men and women and the use of technologies was quite far fetched and as in the present time the work of Stereolab combines the nature of space rock with a touch of both men and women in collaboration. Although the clash of masculinity reeks through the technologies of the 50’s the main stay have feminized relations in the 90’s. “If the federal government’s plan for massive expenditures of income tax dollars on nuclear energy and weapons and later the space race were to be justified, this technology thus had to be made acceptable to everyone, not just men.” The work of Stereolab’s album Mars Audiac Quintet provides the generational gap between the power that both men and women can make new technologies (synthesizers) as well as older technologies (hi-fis) create a sound in which can generate new age space rock with a touch of the older influences to absorbed the space age unknown.

Staying Out the Time

2010-02-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

Steve Reich's Drumming, Pt.1 employs the technique of phasing, a kind of collaboration or transmission between two players (or a player paired with a recording) where one player preserves a static beat and the other follows along - miming, transcending and undermining the metronomic rhythm. A structure is generated from the first moment which expands, unwinding throughout the track, the two drums conversing in an exchange of time and action. Through this call and response, Reich maintains a consistent pattern for several minutes and then it breaks down, fragmenting the reply, withdrawing radically from established sound. "The underlying structure operates according to an additive process rather than either a traditional mode of representation or... abstraction" (McClary 295). One drum rolls up ahead up the beat, collapses on itself, and then returns and slows down, finally culminating in an ecstatic clamor. Reich's composition illustrates the divide between repetition and "the formalist excesses of High Modernism" (McClary 295) by providing a framework in which repetition and structural innovation can comment on each other, arriving at a kind of utopian trance in which all difference or disagreement is relieved.

To transmit - "to convey or communicate (usually something immaterial) to another or others... Also, to convey (force or movement) from one part of a body, or of mechanism, to another" (OED). Joy Division's Transmission implores us to "Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio," invoking the electromagnetic wave of wireless telephony as well as the body's desire to reach another body through physical action. Transmission reproduces through language the commentary on repetition and the new which Drumming, Pt.1 performs -

And we would go on as though nothing was wrong.
And hide from these days we remained all alone.
Staying in the same place, just staying out the time.
Touching from a distance,
Further all the time.

The song presents dancing and listening to the radio as methods through which human interaction can become possible - the repetition of the mandate to "dance" acting as a reification of the "ecstatic structure of time in our moment" (McClary 295). Yet, unlike the visionary fervor which ends Reich's Drumming, Pt.1, Transmission laments the distance and loneliness embedded in the act of dancing to the radio, a kind of isolation which leads to abjection despite the possibilities which repetition opens up. The longing to connect is what animates both of these tracks, whether they are negotiated and absolved through rapture or resisted while still aching to close the gap.

Works Cited
Joy Division. Transmission. Factory, 1979.

McClary, Susan. "Rap, Minimalism, and Structures of Time in Late Twentieth-Century Culture." Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. Ed. Cristpoph Cox and Daniel Warner. New York: Continuum, 2008.

Reich, Steve. Drumming, Pt. 1.

"transmit, v." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 12 Feb. 2010 .

Dub, Studio, and Additive Vs. Subtractive Process

2010-02-12T13:29:00.000-08:00

Brian Eno suggests that recording technology, the multi-track tape, seminally influenced music production by allowing sound to leave the constraints of temporality. The recording practices that emerged transformed the musician and studio into painter and palette. Dense forms of music like heavy metal, dub, and some of Eno’s own tape music assume the studio as instrument paradigm. For Eno, this technological evolution meant an additive process where tape systems would build layers like sediment. In Jamaica the arrival of recording technology was harold to the birth of dub. David Toop writes about King Tubby’s early experimentation, “[Tubby] discovered the thrill of stripping a vocal from its backing track and then manipulating the instrumental arrangement with techniques and effects…for the dubmaster they can displace time, shift the beat, heighten the mood, suspend a moment.” (Toop, 356) Toop highlights a process of pairing down recordings and adding effects that would become common throughout Dub production. The resulting aural phenomenon is rich and cavernous, bearing a nimbus of reverberation and decay. This subtractive effect driven process activates the producer and studio as Eno suggests, but differs in audio aesthetic through its initial act of disassemblage.

Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Guiding Star Dub (1996-1997) and Eno’s Lizard Point (1982) are illustrative of both the studio as instrument, and the differences in primarily subtractive and additive processes. Guiding Star Dub opens with a shattering splash of drums, heavy on reverb and characteristically stripped down rhythm of trumpets. These elements feel almost disparate in their juxtaposition, as though their harmonizing element had been removed. Then a downtrodden voice, undoubtedly sampled and reduced from pop-reggae, appears on top. The aegis of horns suddenly fragment, ring, and dissipate echoing from left to right, leaving nothing but emptiness. The voice returns, but the instrumental track continually falls out from beneath him, creating a space of despair that seems to trail on indefinitely. Perry achieves this feel through chopping up and reducing his sources. Perhaps he subtracted from a previous cut until nothing but drums, bass, and horns remained, removing all binding elements, which formerly rendered the source cohesive. As a sculptor he would then use the tools of the studio, echo and reverb to stretch and bend the shards into a landscape of fluctuation. Oppositional in approach are Eno’s use of tape systems. Lizard Point almost feels cyclic at points. There is a more apparent layering going on. The deep and swelling tones pile up on top of each other forming a tightly joined stratum. The feel of this piece is directly related to Eno’s additive process of recording in which the tape continually records over itself, compiling a new band. Both of these pieces are generated through the studio, with the control panel as the main instrument. However, their aesthetic separation is drastic, and this stems from the difference in subtractive and additive processes.

Works Cited

Toop, David. “Replicant: On Dub.” Audio Culture Readings In Modern Music. Ed. Cox, Christolph and Daniel Warner. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008.

Space Age Masculinity

2010-02-12T13:21:00.001-08:00

Taylor discusses how during the 1950s men used their high powered and complicated Hi-Fis to play music in their home environment as an attempt to reassure their dominance. This came about after the war because of the overflow of new technologies available to women. Suddenly the home of everyman was littered with push button technologies, vacuums, blenders and microwaves. To take back some sort of dominance in the home environment, men purchased Hi-Fis. These, machines reeked of masculinity and heterosexuality, reassuring the male of the 1950s that he was still the keeper of his castle. The ideas behind these machines were, like most complicated technologies, men could only use them properly; therefore women lacked the mental capacity to operate such machines.

“The point is, though, not that women were untechnological but that complex technology was defined as the proper domain of the man."

"Moon Moods," a track from the classic album, Music of the Moon, is a perfect example of this. Right from the beginning you are introduced to a melody sung in harmony by men. The atmosphere created is relaxed but sophisticated at the same time. Harps, Xylophones and trumpets lay down jazz influenced riffs, while drums resonate somewhat of a simplified exotic beat. Electronic instruments such as an electric guitar take points in the song to play short solos redefining the melody. Finally the Theremin chimes in and out sporadically carrying the same tune proliferated throughout the piece, but when played with the Theremin it is given an otherworldly feel. This exotic theme plays directly to the male listener. In a sense he is exploring the intricacies of sound, listening to the beats of other worlds and incorporating them into his music library. Other songs in this Space-Age Music genra such as "How High the Moon" by Bobby Christian have a very different feel but still address the concept of masculinity. "Moon Moods" would be a song played by a man who wants to assert his dominance over his household, while "How High the Moon" falls under the category of mood music. A symphony of sound is heard, as whimsical melodies from violins, cellos and bells lull the listener into a relaxed state. Echoed bells give an illusion of space and create the feel of mysticism. ,“…the bachelor could seduce his date with his fancy hi-fi by playing mood music,” says Taylor. Being able to seduce a woman with an “intellectually demanding” device such as the hi-fi must have been a major ego boost to the space age bachelor.

By playing his music, the man’s presence fills the house beyond just the room he occupies. This asserts an overbearing dominance, a reminder to all who hears the exotic tunes and beats, that this house is ruled by a man, and no one has the power to play music like this but him.

Water Creatures of Astra and the Space Age

2010-02-12T07:58:00.001-08:00

When Space Age came about in the late 1940s and 50s, it brought curiosity as well as apprehension, and some music sought to reflect the time in an exaggerated way. The song “Water Creatures of Astra” by Russ Garcia illustrates this concept with its buildups and peaks. Even though the sounds of the song are mostly recognizable like musique concrète, the way they are placed together creates mystery and prospect as well as nervousness. The song sounds like melodies tiptoeing across the tape until they approach the ending cut where they spike in surprise. During the space age people became very intrigued by what the future may hold, but fear also came with this interest. In Strange Sounds, Timothy Taylor wrote, “Even though the allure and anxiety over technology and the future were real, many of these albums coped by making fun of it, perhaps attempting to skewer some of the more hyperbolic predictions” (p. 90). The song by Garcia may use some of the ideas of the exaggerated predictions of the future because of the way the instruments vibrate in ambiguity and jump into unexpected revelations.

Like Garcia’s “Water Creatures of Astra,” Louis and Bebe Barron’s “Battle with the Invisible Monster” from the move Forbidden Planet also coincides with Taylor’s concept of the Space Age. This combination of sounds travels through a mysterious atmosphere and stumbles upon unanticipated occurrences. Taylor talks about Forbidden Planet and explains how it represented the anxiety of the time through its plot (p. 93). Even with all the advancement of technology, a civilization was not guaranteed to survive. These songs illustrate the curiosity as well as fear that the future holds.

Bloom

2010-02-03T09:51:00.000-08:00

So I was back at the mac store recently getting some more things fixed on my computer when I happened across this Iphone/ipod touch app. Its called Bloom by Brian Eno In thinking about how those that experiment with music seem to eventually turn their creative process into one that can replicated well this is Brian Eno's version. Now you too can create ambient music with the touch of your finger.

Actually I found it pretty cool as it takes your touch and turns it into a note, it repeats your touches in the exact order you did them in or it can randomize them. It cycles as well so it plays and you can insert new touches throughout the piece. Considering this isn't being done on a computer but a peripheral, its fun rather than technical. It has a feel to it and though it isn't for those that are extremely serious about composing it is almost like a casual gaming but casual composing. The songs you create can be saved and shared. Definitely something to check out. ~~Andrew

Ted Riederer

2010-01-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

i figured out the name of that artist i was talking about who smashed up the instruments and then played them - Ted Riederer & the piece is called "the Resurrectionists."

Evolving West Coast Hip Hop Microcosms

2010-01-26T16:17:00.000-08:00

It was requested by Trace that I include some of the hip hop I mentioned in class the other day. I'm really into a hip hop scene on the West coast that suggests strong influences by DIY electronics, Electronica, Dub, 70's/80's glam, science fiction, pop and lock/krumping, and remix/mashup. I've also included a lot of samples if you've never heard any of this before.

To my understanding most of this music culminates in and around Low End Theory night at the Airliner, a bar in LA. Here is a really interesting documentary project (someone beat me to it) where Daedalus (Alfred Darlington) talks about the fusion of rock, electronic aesthetic and hip-hop in this specific club scene. The resulting music is complex and sophisticated, melding earth pounding bass with throwback funk and punk sensibilities. Here is a brief tour de force of some of the artists breaking ground:

LazerSword:
http://www.myspace.com/lazersword

Low Limit:
http://www.myspace.com/lowestlayer

Nobody:
http://www.myspace.com/nobodyelvin

The Gas Lamp Killer:
http://www.myspace.com/thegaslampkiller

Samiyam:
http://www.myspace.com/samiyambeats

Robot Koch (from Berlin):
http://www.myspace.com/robotkoch
Mixtape:
http://soundcloud.com/robot-koch/robot-koch-robots-dont-sleep

Lunice (from Toronto all of his albums are free there are links on his Myspace):
http://www.myspace.com/Lunice

Slightly Different scene but also involved:

Flying Lotus:
http://www.myspace.com/flyinglotus

Many Low End Theory Podcasts:
http://www.lowendtheoryclub.com/podcast/

Finally, on another note I thought I'd share what came to mind in reading about the space age bachelor pad music. Fat Jon takes on the nom de plume Maurice Galactica for Humanoid Erotica, science fiction imbued, headphone hip-hop. Here are two nice tracks from the album as well as the very "Heavenly Bodies" like album cover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyTPiLTMDKk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDkTAWSYXjk

Mainstreaming the Mashup

2010-01-25T23:25:00.000-08:00

The tagline says it all: "(CNN) -- Some great songs were released in 2009 and thanks to a mashup master named DJ Earworm you can listen to the top 25 releases from the year in just under six minutes."

CNN coverage of DJ Earworm's year-end Billboard Top 25 mashup:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/01/25/dj.earworm/index.html

Acousmatic listening

2010-01-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

Location: Driscoll Lounge

A low beat, consistent, accentuated by a higher pitched humanoid forced exhalation.
Intermittent high pitched beats, short bursts of them then fading away.
A short sucking high pitched sound.

Soft clicking noises interspersed with a short intake or sucking sound.

A low thrum, constant..

Highly pitched beat muddled by mid to low range sounds, in the background behind the other noises. Further away.

Lower pitched humanoid sounds, punctuated by higher pitched ones, alternating.

Low pitched exhalation, distorted and forced.

A High pitched clatter in the distance.

A new low thumping, regularly spaced, disappears then reappears as it gets louder. Eventually it too fades.

Similar noises but higher pitched with a thumping beat.

Slower this time with longer pauses, a rhythmic beat.
Two beats at a time, same pattern as before, louder,
off beat but close together.

Several humanoid voices in seeming competition.
All in pairs, in a 1-2 progression or a 1-2-2-1 progression.

Humanoid sounds low pitched or just further away, too hard to make out.

Music / Noise / Sound / Silence

2010-01-21T13:09:00.000-08:00

The timing couldn't be any more perfect with this upcoming performance from DU's own experimental music group, The Playground Ensemble:

Music / Noise / Sound / Silence
When: Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 7:30pm
Where: Hamilton Recital Hall, Newman Center for the Performing Arts
2344 E. Iliff Ave, Denver CO (303) 871-6412
Tickets: $18 adults, $16 seniors, and free for students from any school and DU/ID
Web: www.playgroundensemble.org

What is music? When is sound just noise? The attempts of 20th-century composers to grapple with these questions generated some of the most important musical innovations of the era. In this concert, the Playground presents music that redefines these terms and examines the boundaries between them.

The performance will include:
Profilo Sintetico-Musicale di Marinetti by Silvio Mix
Suite for Percussion by Lou Harrison
4'33" by John Cage
Sound Patterns by Pauline Oliveros
Clapping Music by Steve Reich
Dots, Lines, Zigzags by Sofia Gubaidulina
The Dead Man by John Zorn
Tabula Rasa by Einstürzende Neubauten

Artists-in-Residence at DU's Lamont School of Music, The Playground Enemble is a force for new music in the Rocky Mountain region. The group strives to provide stimulating performances, expand common perceptions of both contemporary music and the chamber ensemble, and nurture a community around this music that we love.

Brian Eno's "2/2"

2010-01-15T15:39:00.000-08:00

A low murmur is joined by two higher, yet still subdued wails from opposite sides. Even more wails join in, but further apart, and seemingly at random. The sounds are elongated and seem to trail on forever, imperceptibly fading out behind even more moans. The moans are harmonious, rarely breaking out of fifths, thirds, and octaves. There is an occasional augmented third in the chaos that sporadically resolves into a major third. The structure of each moan becomes clearer as the sound continues: they fade in quickly from nothing and peak before fading back out into infinity. This chaotic pattern continues until only the slightest hint of a unified, orchestrated rising progression makes its way to the fore before quickly being lost in the infinite, subdued, harmonious disorder. How can such a contained, orderly harmonious sound simultaneously be perceived to be so chaotic and disorderly?

Brian Eno's "Lizard Point"

2010-01-15T14:41:00.000-08:00

An eerie whisper. A constant background noise, its volume and pitch rising and falling. Slowly a melody/rhythm forms in the foreground, yet so soft it easily falls into the background. The sounds move backwards, unintelligibly, almost a groaning. As that fades a rhythmic mid-toned sound emerges punctuated by drips and a drop they quickly come in, then out. They deteriorate into digital/metallic sounds and fade. Sounds never quite heard fade in then out. Mid tones sweep in and out like labored breath following a distinct rhythm. A building in the distance, machinery thrumming as it slows. Going down into the basement or down a dark alley, the groans of something left behind. A small sound whips around, barely heard above the original background noise and the soft melody. Everything fades. Why should my hair stand on end, these soft sounds and rhythms bring little peace but the flavor of forgotten things, perhaps best forgotten?

Daniel Pemberton's "Voices"

2010-01-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

Ears awaken to a monochrome train station, purgatory. Several sharp and composed tones guide the amplification of a choral roar. Voices in the form of an indistinguishable tide pulsate, forming a low pitch drone, which begins to pan from left to right growing in amplitude. A slow sighing whoosh follows the pattern making the voices recede to a dull hum. Low oscillating tones emerge hypnotically, following the same slow, steady pan. The remnant voices ebb and flow in presence and tempo. The ears are lost in a hazy labyrinth, left then right then left. Several metallic jetties arrive, grinding from low to high volume. Then it’s over. How could anyone escape Pemberton’s space, dreamed into ambience, built from loops and directional nuance?

Brian Eno’s "Lantern Marsh"

2010-01-15T13:32:00.000-08:00

It starts with resonating harmonies and ghostlike screams from far in the distance. “Other-worldly Calls” are made, reverberating with the harmonies of the background growls. Echoing and a slow drone give the feeling of being on a strange planet. High pitched vocals and moans surge forward and back accompanied by clangs of movement. Deep drones of bass hum to balance the piece. Then the volume increases and surges only to die back down, awaiting the next wave of sounds. Repetition of change creates the illusion of familiarity. The fact that the sounds are undistinguishable creates the air of mystery, and fear. This leaves me with the question, “Why is it that I’m calmed in this dark world created by Mr. Eno; when I feel afraid?”

Pauline Oliveros's "Beautiful soop"

2010-01-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

the beautiful - here it is a disruption of harmony and proportion. the elderly warble of a woman - her sentiment cuffed by a flip, a reversal - widening and branching out, a man's voice with a flange trailing after it, spreading out, increasing his original words. a story, a narrative arc interrupted by a high-pitched tone swelling and dropping; a cloak of squeals amplifying, obscuring the melodrama which struggles for awhile and then reasserts itself. a kind of patter, switching back and forth, to and fro: a conversation enacted between the past moment of utterance and the presence of process in a time that is not now. this juxtoposition elevates language to a position of excess and disproportion, refuses to repair the rupture, refuses and continues to send the word farther into a decadent canopy of noise. nonsense and response; the commentary of a fluttering, electric pulse on human language. finally, the voices liquefy into a synthetic soup, the surge of a dominant electric whine. if articulation cannot, will not join the dance, is speech still a means for locating new possibilities, new potentials for embodying experience?

Dan Pemberton's "Phoenix"

2010-01-15T12:48:00.000-08:00

Sounds like an opening into an infinite wormhole swirling around and growling at a high-pitched bell. It speeds up, spinning faster and expanding the space. The resonance creeps closer and progressively becomes louder. It morphs into a shadowy creature demanding an escape before a mellow peace sweeps across to take its place. The melody showers downs, erasing the memory of darkness. All that remains is a pulsating euphoria. Suddenly the song plummets back into the wormhole and swirls to a quick end. How can such a mixture of warped noise create an emanating fear while also releasing an unwinding peacefulness?

Plastikman's "Koma"

2010-01-15T12:32:00.000-08:00

Sounds begin to form dense altered noise, as if it is descending into a spiral that speeds up to a recognizable sequence. This beat maintains the melody with a slow fade that brings up a cult beat that makes the objectives of the piece a fluid motion. The up-tempo spiral of beats becomes almost harmonious, perpetuating a stacking of sounds. The mid-range level of the sequence moves with a longer piece that becomes more rhythmic, and the tone becomes a bit louder. The strange rhythm opens one's ears to the hallucinatory, altered state that could bring about a dream state. Does this composition provide a key to our dreams or does it become something more?

The Qualities of Sonorous Objects

2010-01-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

Writing reviews based on Pierre Schaeffer's article on "acousmatics" and the "sonorous objects" is not easy, and hardly what we're used to when reading music reviews. Few reviewers describe sounds, describe individual audio tracks or whole albums based on the sound alone, without falling into more poetic descriptions and analogies ("this sounds like a person standing lost in a crowded train station"). Many frequently describe music in terms of their emotional elements. Many reviews also tend to compare to other songs, albums, artists (e.g., "On his new album, Julian Casablancas sounds like Lou Reed fronting the Electric Light Orchestra") or entire genres.

So how do we go about writing in ways that describe sound objects on their own terms, without relying on analogies, emotional evaluators, or comparisons as a way to describe the sound? These terms might help, pulled out of Schaeffer's writings and our discussion, as general descriptors that can become specific based on the individual track you choose:

* Duration of sounds: long, short, alternated, sequenced into rhythms.
* Repetition of sounds: tempos, beats, regularity, irregularity.
* Frequency: high, low, and/ or mid-range tones/pitches, or specific mixtures of those into melodies (tones arranged one after the other) or harmonies (tones stacked or layered at one time).
* Amplitude: loud, soft, foreground, background.

Constant Noise

2010-01-15T09:18:00.001-08:00

• Short clanging “tsstsstssts”
• Mechanical, medium to high, “ME”
o Its constant
• High ear piercing grind going up and down as if straining at different parts
• Vocal “Hua” hum of vocal tones, high and nasal.
• Crinkle sounds as someone eats, like a cricket almost rhythmic.
• High sexy undulation saxophone lout to soft, romantic and passionate to high strain and climax to soft flutter.
• Drone of gurgling, repetitive and pulsing
• “SCREECH” 1 pause 2 pause 3 pause 4 pause, “SCREECH!” sharp to fade, “EEE” “EEE” “EEE” “EEE” “EEE”
• “BEEP” high, very high pitch about the duration of someone’s foot touching the ground while sprinting
• “Saw” sound of machine, non tonal, almost percussion like, constant cracking “REE” “REE” “REE” always in bursts of three.
• Cough
• Knock of high heels, rhythmic like, “clock clock clock clock” making the third clock the highest in tone. 1 2 3 4. Reverberates and echoes with acoustics making it fill the entire room. No one notices but me as the voices start to compete and get louder as well. The sound dies down and gets softer, the voices remain the same.
• Girl sings
o Vocal is high pitched. Almost full of air and wispy. Almost super sonic, higher pitch than when your ears ring after a concert. Very raspy and annoying. Probably what a dog hears when you blow a dog whistle.

environmental sound object

2010-01-13T00:12:00.000-08:00

short, intermittent scrapes from behind. sh-SHH-sh.... ch-SHHH-sh...sh-SHHHH-sh..... barely audible, high-pitch fade in / fade out. clop Clop CLOP Clop clop. low murmur............ mmmmmMmmMMMmmmmmmmm. in front of me ssSSSSSSsssssss. TAP TAP TAP Tap tap tap tap. huammmmmnnnnnssssss. CLANG! (Muffled, rhythmic, periodic) Bbbb--Kkk--Bbbbb-Kkkk. clop clop clop.

PLTSS.

claptinkleClopclopJangletinkleclopClopCLOPClopclop. low murmur, echo clap YEEEEAAHHhhhh........ Ckkkkkkkshhhhh. tap !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmclopmmmmClopmmmmCLOPmmmmmsqueakCLOPmmmmsqueakCLOPmmmmmmmm

PLTSS.

PL-PLTSS.

clop....clop...clop....clop...clop........ clopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopclopClopCLOP!

PLTSS....PLTSS. P-PLTSS.........PLTSSS.....PLTSS.PLTSS. CLPSS...CLPSS.

hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Sound Walk

2010-01-12T22:13:00.000-08:00

Here is the link to my sound walk: http://drop.io/amalley.

I had to attach it because the coloring, sizing, and spacing did not show up when I copy and pasted it. It is under documents and named Sound Walk.

Leo's Acousmatic Walk

2010-01-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

Here is a chronological transcript of my walk:

scuff-riff-tear: low frequency, low amplitude, loosely period, reoccurring, but brief
humanoid rumble: mixed frequency, low amplitude, droning, continuous duration
low fuzz: mid-low frequency, low amplitude, droning, continuous duration
oscillating abrupt tone: alternating high-mid frequency, low amplitude, filtered, brief
high pitch jingle: high frequency, crescendo to med. amplitude decrescendo low, brief
low rumble: low, very low frequency, low amplitude, filtered, drone, continuous duration
clop-clop-clop: rhythmic low frequency, low amplitude, resonant
mid pulsing fuzz: rhythmic, slowly oscillating frequency, medium amplitude, drone, continuous duration

Major change in acoustic density.

ting-ting-ting: quick staccato pulse yet resonant, high frequency, low amplitude, very short duration
thud and bang: quick though randomly reoccurring resonant, low frequency, medium amplitude varying duration
internal pop: quick pop, low frequency, low amplitude, not resonant
brief resonant tones: distinct, deliberate pitches, short, very resonant, varying frequency, medium amplitude, short duration
cyclic hiss: low frequency, rhythmic amplitude, not resonant
deep-to-high gurgle: low to med frequency pulse, med amplitude, couple minutes duration
sharp clop: much more percussive than before
delicate jingle: very delicate ting, high frequency, light amplitude, very brief
soft clatter: percussive, organized, deliberate, filtered, changing frequency low amplitude, very brief
high frequency fuzz: slightly pulsing, high frequency, medium amplitude, continuous duration
muted tones: muted tones composing a deliberate melody, low amplitude, very brief
stereophonic hum-varying frequency, high amplitude, drone, continuous duration

She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags..her load

2010-01-12T16:16:00.000-08:00

sudden heaving: the response of surface to weight. a complaint thrown towards the box, a blunder. some iron sparking, a collection pocketed in cotton - layering of fabric, flesh. singing split end and then loud mouthed hooves on this unsteady hallway.

a rush of air disrupting the troublesome business of a grumble. some contamination meeting with a wall and one laugh - a signal without answer. guided by the rest, then falling; something caught and spit up: wads of tinsel, shredded. there is an impulse to stop, to make a revision: a hand moving through a flock of bubbles, shattering blood. a kind of gasp, release for awhile. nothing eerie about faded light, this prolonged drone.

insects sucked through a wet tube, tongued. the suture of a threshing edge, unsettled snow dark with roars. let go and quick: bound back, snapping radiance against the air. everything must be a result. from the lips a wail not yet ready, embarrassing admissions poised and unwelcome. the beast withdrawing, layering it's unwholesome self against the road, a chugging of all at once: rubber and the belly. without pause, a piston.

"Stockhausen vs. the Technocrats" (plus Björk!)

2010-01-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

Here are music videos and performance footage for works by Stockhausen, Aphex Twin, Plastikman, Scanner, and Björk, plus lectures, interviews, and documentary footage of the artists.

To jump to individual chapters of the video program, here's a direct link to the playlist.

Next, here is Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Advice to clever children," an article from The Wire, November 1995.

And here is Björk's interview with Stockhausen, "Compose Yourself," from "Dazed and Confused" (#23 1996).

Former Beatle John Lennon is Dead (he remains alive in my conciousness)

2009-03-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

There is undoubtedly a strong connection between human speech and music. This podcast considers the implications of how new sound and recording technology has changed the way we hear voices, and connect with their singer, as listeners. In particular it focuses on John Lennon whose split from the Beatles in 1969 and murder in 1980 both stand as symbolic events which occurred at the crossroads of broader cultural change.

Creative Sampling

2009-03-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

My podcast explores how the changing technology has pushed musical composition from classical techniques to the current sampling / mashup culture, and the impacts of this trend on our established ideas of individuality, creativity, and innovation. Sampling John Oswald, Cornelius, Girl Talk and RJD2 as well as authors Chris Cutler, Daphne Keller and Paul D. Miller, I explain how the recycling of old music is a natural response to recording and how this “plagiarism” can be seen as a truly novel creative work in two ways: first, the art of the collage, and secondly, close examination of a small segment of sound to find a new meaning, arriving at the conclusion that “the sum created from audio collage leaves its original elements far behind.”

Recyclation: A New Aural Collage

2009-03-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

I chose to talk about recycling within music. It happens all the time, but some pieces are more specifically geared to or created out of that idea of recycling. This podcast looks at the idea of some music being either abstract or figurative. The aural collage created by the work of men like Pierre Schaeffer and John Oswald take the pre-existing and morph it into something new, arguing that their works are new pieces despite being created from what already existed. Dub artists like Prince Jammy and King Tubby reuse and recycle base tracks, showcasing the interest of vocal and instrumental art, for versioning is a common practice in the dub genre. The podcast also suggests that mash-ups of songs like that of Danger Mouse and the Legion of Doom are created not to create something different, but perhaps help listeners discover a new way of listening to what they've heard time and time again.

http://www.archive.org/details/PodcastRecyclation

Spatial Effects of Dub vs other Genres

2009-03-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

My podcast describes how the use of different production techniques give Dub a spatial effect, specifically focuses on the techniques of reverberation and layering. I was really interested in how the reverb effects made the Dub songs sound as if they were drifting off into the distance or were being heard from a another room, or big concert hall. In order to demonstrate this, I take samples of Dub, and compare them to other songs of different genres where reverberation is used, but not in the same way that it is in Dub. I also briefly discuss how the use of vocals contributes to this spatial, or tangible difference.

Link: http://www.archive.org/details/SpatialEffectsOfDubVsOtherGenres

Augustus Pablo & King Tubby - "King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown"

2009-02-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

Michael Veal explains in his book Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae that “the most important understanding of the dub mix is as a deconstructive, B-side remix of a 45 rpm single; the remix engineer draws on various strategies to manipulate the listener’s anticipation of musical events, and defamiliarize the vocal song on the A-side” (64). Some “various strategies” commonly employed by engineers and producers of dub music are the effects of fragmentation, reverberation and delay. Fragmentation, which refers to the technique of cutting out vocals of the remixed tracks to create a more poignant and interpretive lyrical content, was used to “create abrupt shifts in ensemble texture” (64). Then, sound engineers used delay to create rhythmic effects, which gives the dub track its characteristic echo; the reverberation technique then takes the delay effects and creates an environment in which one hears the song. Veal describes the function and relationship of these techniques in the genre of dub mixing: fragmentation creates the tension, and reverb connects it all back together. In the track “King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown,” from a collaborative dub album with the same name by Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, we see these techniques demonstrated by some of the earliest in the dub scene: the vocals in the song are simply “Baby I’ve… that love,” and at the very end “Baby I love you so,” a grossly fragmented and deconstructed version of the original “Baby I Love You So” by Jacob Miller. The lack of much vocal content makes the few words heard carry a stronger message. The instrumental portion of the mix is punctuated with delay echo effects and reverberation techniques such as panning to give the track a sense of movement within the sound space, and a laid-back rhythmical cohesion. The strategies used in this track are not exclusive to the pioneers of dub: they continue to be used in more recent dub remixes, such as “Radiation Ruling the Nation [Protection],” Mad Professor’s dub remix of Massive Attack’s track. The same fragmentation of lyrical content can be heard, as well as frequent use of delay and reverberation.

The Poetry of Dub

2009-02-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

In Michael E. Veals book Dub he states that “although dub music is largely an instrumental medium, one of the most immediately recognizable sonic features of the dub mix is the way song lyrics are omitted and/or fragmented…”(P.64) along with “the interplay of echo and equalization enabled engineers to make simulated sound spaces as if they were continually morphing in dimension and texture”. (P.73) With in the first ten seconds of the song “A Rougher Version” by King Tubby featuring The Aggrovators we hear song lyrics but it is only about a 20 second clip of an echoing voice talking about being oppressed and humbling yourself, which is slowly being smothered by underlying rhythm of trumpets or horns that is coming forward. At the end of the snippet of lyrics the voice trails off in an eco that morphs into the underlying rhythm that is smothering it. The voice echoes back into existence about half way through the song. Stating only time will tell and not to end badly. Which the words are accented by the rhythm of random horns or trumpets that can be heard through out the song. The voice echoes back one more time towards the end of the song but the lyrics are sung and the echoing effect makes the words non distinguishing from one another and eco into each other making there own beat on top of the already slow and methodical tempo. Because of the use of the eco effect on every note in the song the beat is very jerky and almost gives you the feeling of walking around with something weighing you down. Which would make since that the feeling of the song matches the topic of being oppressed.

Les Baxter - Celestial Nocturne

2009-02-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

"Celestial Nocturne" by Harry Revel represents what was contemporarily a "new" direction of music more in thought than in terms of what music actually shipped on the album. Timothy Taylor writes of Revel's music that it "Pushed the envelope in ways that weren't strictly technical." (Strange sounds, 73). Essentially, the music heard on the album is an almost fundamentally generic easy listening sound from its era. Taylor, however points out that this album did in fact make two firsts in musical history. The first, indeed, was not musical at all: the cover of the record was the first to ship with a color LP cover. The second is central to the music's theme but not structure: the use of a theramin. This instrument is used on the album, but it is backseat to lounge piano and choirs, and even to trumpets and other traditional band music. Nonetheless, "celestial Nocturne" and and "lunar Rhapsody" are among a host of other tracks on Revel's Music out of the moon that tie themselves to outer space to grant legitamacy and freshness to what would, without its minor use of new technology in production and packaging, have been an altogether unremarkable album. Nor was Revel alone. He was, in fact, indicative of a trend that would follow of similar easy listening albums like Ron Goodman's music in orbit that would market a technological progress rather than a music one with space imagery.

Drum & Bass - Dub

2009-02-06T16:57:00.001-08:00

Within the pages of Michael Veal’s book Dub, he remarks on the concept of the drum and bass as an emphasis for the tracks. Rather than being all about the horns, lyrics, other instruments, etc, mixes with a “drum and bass” focus would be primarily stripped of the rest of the traditional dub pieces: “A typical drum & bass mix would focus on the propulsive motion of those to instruments throughout, with the chordal instruments only occasionally filtering through” (Veal 57). An example of this would be King Tubby’s “Silver Bullet – The Observer All Stars,” which is primarily a bass-driven track, with rhythm from other instruments coming through, but the bass is what is coming through the most, even though horns come in occasionally. This was not always a trend in Dub, even King Tubby’s work reveals that. For example, his song “The Aggrovators” is not focused on the bass or drum rhythm at all. In fact, the vocals and the other instruments, like the horns, outweigh the bass in the mix.

King Tubby - Fittest of the Fittest Dub

2009-02-06T16:22:00.000-08:00

“In fact, although dub is certainly a genre of Jamaican music, it might be most accurate to think of it as such a process: a process of a song remixing or, more accurately, song re-composition. The fact that the dub mix is a version of a preexisting song that allows fragments of its prior incarnations to remain audible as an obvious part of the final product, makes it conducive to such conceptualizing; it can be linked with similar technology—based processes in other artistic media such as the serial reuse of images, collage manipulations of texture, and compositional procedures based on chance. An excerpt from Michael Veal’s book Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae. When listening to King Tubby’s track Fittest of the Fittest Dub, you can really hear the process of dub. For instance the underlying bass takes you through this track, then hits the ears with vocals and keyboards that have reverberation attached to them, which first draws you in. Following is some lighter beats that take you in and out of a mixture of horns, vocals and the overlapping beat, and then right back into it again. This track reiterates the aspect of dub being a process of dissecting a variety of material and generating a completely different sound. Another track that has similar qualities to King Tubby’s and gives a good example for dub being a process is Marcus Garvey’s track Marcus Garvey. Both tracks open with a heavy beat however with Marcus Garvey the opening beat is much heavier as well as vocals do not have a reverb connected to it. In continuing to compare the two tracks Marcus Garvey has a constant flow of vocals overlapping the beat a bit more than Tubby’s, but both do show how dub is a process of taking different fragments and creating a new collage.

The Process of Dub

2009-02-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

In Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae, Michael Veal explains that Dub music is best described as a process. Dub music is a version of re-mixing and recomposing pre-existing songs and creating something new in which bits and pieces of the original recording can still be heard. Similar to the idea of collaging and overlapping images and textures. (pg 21-22) One example of the is "Beam Down" by Scientist. The majority of the song is filled with heavy repetitive beats, but softer, more abstract sounds can still be heard in the background creating an overlapping effect. As th song progresses more beats and consistent sounds are added in and out throughout the track. Again, this is an example of combining pre-existing tracks and sounds. Prince Jammy's "Jammin' for Survival" is a little more dynamic in that there is more overlap between the variations of sounds and doesn't produce as much as a distant feel as "Beam Down."

Jools Holland Interviews Lee Scratch Perry

2009-02-03T10:21:00.000-08:00

Here's an excerpt from the 1985 film, "Jools in Jamaica":

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte

2009-01-21T11:16:00.000-08:00

Kontakte starts with a scattered series of chiming. Then proceeds to produce a shaking back and forth. The volume and tempos change sporadically in no obvious pattern or logical matter. Then a rough scratching and distant grumbling. Followed by a series of squawaking and more chiming. The noise slowing begins to speed up with a variation of more high-pitched chiming, shaking and pitter-pattter. A quick crescendo and decrescendo repeated several times and then a few dramatic notes played. The song then repeats more quiet chimes and is followed by a dramatic change of volume, tempo and a deep lowering of pitch. Then a circling variation of pitch which accelerates and decelerates. Then the volume fades out to the end of the piece. How can a piece contain such sounds that when standing alone are rough to the ear, but when put together seem to flow quite well?

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Hymnen Region 1

2009-01-17T00:32:00.000-08:00

Region 1 of Stockhausen's Hymnan starts with a series of bright chirps and squeals, oscillating in pitch and descellerating to paint a sonic backdrop for the introduction organic sounds and splashes of color descending from a pallette of white noise. As familiar, human sounding features enter the mix it becomes strangely unsettling: the familiarity of these tones is too sharp a contrast from the randomized naturalism of the wholely original static. When the peace finally cuts out after some minutes of this it reenters with a short, level vocal rhythm that gives way to enthusiastic, nationalistic anthems that almost orient the listener into a realm of percieving our own world, a mix of prideful congregations of humans. However, as glistening twinkles of distorted tones and playful static reinvade, they pull us suddenly away from this familiar territory and into a spacey, futuristic disorientation in audio space. When the sound work eventually returns to human sounds around minute eleven it is no longer recognizable and the layers of humanity have been reversed and layered so as to render the commonality of human speech foriegn and unnatural, ultimately stacking into a sort of audio babble the finally climbs to a culmination of more nationalistic melodies. These melodies, this time around, have an added audio context due to the material that reintroduced them that grants the listener perspective to percieve them as if from afar, a physical notion reinforced by the reintroduction of spacey sounds that just before minute fifteen begin to scratch and then tear us, seperating us as listeners from the human-like sounds across an audio gulf of gurgling robotic signals. These gain strength while the anthems fade away until the reintroduction of a familiar radio scan from silence, for the fourth time, leaves the listener with the question of why the set of sounds we consider language can be percieved to render so much meaning. After all, if the essential qualities and tambor of it can be maintained while perverting it so far that it meshes more with random intersteller tones, how much more poignently comforting is the meaning encapsulated in the familiar symphonies of human speech?

Dan Pemberton - Phoenix

2009-01-16T23:04:00.000-08:00

The sonorous form starts quietly with a deep, metallic sound; it begins to rotate and oscillate with increasing fervor. As it progresses the sound crescendos and swells, folding back on itself and growing with each added reverberation. A sharp, breathy exhale punctuates the hollow metal swelling, which now begins to grow darker and thicker; some barely audible ascending sound bytes trickle into the mix. The metal reverberation suddenly catches on itself and stutters, pounding and throbbing inside the piece with the discomfort of a hangover. Gradually the pulsing fades out to allow an uplifting electric organ to take its place. The tranquil tones gently glide in and float upwards, playing a soft, slow melody and allowing itself, much like the disconcerting metal in the beginning of the track, to vibrate and fold back into itself, creating a chorus of ethereal voices. Eventually each voice decrescendos to silence one at a time, allowing the metal oscillations a small resurrection before fading out completely. The title of this track is Phoenix: does this piece aurally simulate the life cycle of this mythological creature?

Kraftwerk - The Man Machine

2009-01-16T18:19:00.000-08:00

A taping starts to play with a rapid, hollow, crispness. But is quickly interrupted by the start of some great classical symphony only being played by electrical instruments out of a Mario brothers video game and the tapping is layered into the background. Flowing at a constant speed each section of the electronic Mario brothers orchestra getting its chance to play its own part and layer itself on top of its neighbor beat by beat patter by patter. Each section of the orchestra interacting with each other and playing off each other, building the structure of the beat in a monophony than homophony than polyphony type of way. Only to be slightly broken up by an unrecognizable at first synthesized, chopped, and stretched voice that comes out of the back ground and from underneath all the layers of the electronic orchestra playing to announce its dominance over all the different layers of the electronic Mario brothers orchestra.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel

2009-01-16T17:58:00.000-08:00

The entrance of the song is very recognizable, through out the entire track the beat of Queens “Another One Bites the Dust” comes back when you think that the track is going into a different direction switching the rhythm and the beat it still reverts back. When it changes the tempo speeds up into something unrecognizable in the rest of the track with voices and beats unlike previously heard. The tempo is played around with and controlled sourly through the turntables, with a delay here and there. Clicks and clacks are heard in certain sections of the Grand Master verse. How can someone take turntables and a few sound bites from various artists and create something that sounds completely different from anything that was used in creating the track.

John Oswald - Dont

2009-01-16T17:15:00.000-08:00

The easily recognizable sounds of Elvis fill the start of the song, but something is off about the background. The surroundings of the voice click and crackle; start and sputter off with a disjointed rhythm. Now Elvis is interrupting himself, with an echoing embrace of his words. The background is becoming stronger now, both in volume and constancy. And then it tempers off quickly to almost complete stillness and silence. A single, strong pitch wavers in the air for a moment before Elvis resumes, but quickly the different pitches and influxes in volume of the background smacks and clicks overwhelm the voice and my ears, toying with the original rhythm, but quickly losing its rhythm in the excitement. Then the barrage heightens, with overbearing timbre and ever-increasing tempo and volume, fighting with the Elvis’ voice, eventually winning the struggle and fading off into silence. How do the sounds of one of the most recognizable voices in history become drowned out by its own self in a chaotic battle of rhythm and volume?

Marvin Gaye - What's Happening Brother?

2009-01-16T16:28:00.000-08:00

A well-worn rhythmic mechanism—effortlessly equalized, synchronized and syncopated—impels the sound forward with a self-assured, steady gait. There are luminous voices hovering above that seem impossibly distant. They are garnished with exuberant swells of horns, strings, and a tiny precious bell, almost overpoweringly effusive, for a centerpiece. Marvin’s lead vocal is imbued with a tender determination; its coarseness is charmed into clarity and its straining is seduced into something much sweeter. His voice is bound to the rhythm beneath by chains of cacophonous consonants, but stretches nobly, tonally upward toward the heavenly hosts singing “ooh” and “aah” above. The rising and falling of Marvin’s voice functions in a frustrated teeter-totter with these untouchably close singing sirens. It seems just as Marvin relinquishes his side of the struggle, cascading back into a tired sigh, the sonorous objects of his affection take notice and reach down towards him. The rhythm, meanwhile, remains indifferent to this antagonism and continues chugging along below it. Ultimately, it seems the consistency, between the song's words and sonic illustrations, is what serves it well in articulating a case for listeners to stop and consider 'what's happening?'

The Music of Mario - Time, Space, and Nostalgia

2007-11-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

“All games have unique rhythms.” - Koji Kondo

The notion of progress is built into the Super Mario series, also the notion of resolution. That music needs to resolve implies that it is problematized to begin with, and we can relate that problem back to the motivation to complete a videogame, and the fact that the “rhythm of the game” is something complex that we all (players, composers, and designers of games) feel. Videogames are often spoken of in a way that relates their value (either in dollars or whether they are worth a player's time) to the amount of gameplay they offer, given in units of time. Fifty hours of gameplay is widely considered a good value. Part of this can be attributed to the high cost of videogames, but I think another reason for this is that the sense of progress built into them is satisfying, and the Super Mario series represents this progress by collecting items, defeating enemies, and moving through spaces, each action having a specific associated sound. The quote above, from the sound designer for almost all of the Super Mario series, relates to the entire soundscape of a game but for the purposes of this paper I am interested in the musical themes (the background music, or BGM) of certain levels and items, how these relate to time and progress, and how the simple themes of the Super Mario series mixed with the interactivity of the videogame medium create such a strong nostalgia for players and encourage the remixes that are featured as part of my audio mix. Specifically, I review the classic “Main Theme,” the “Underground Theme,” “Starman,” “Overworld 2 Theme” (from Super Mario Bros. 3), and “Ragtime Theme” (my title, from Super Mario World).

Here's a link to a big zip of everything: get it.

Gendered Sounds -vs- Gendered Scene

2007-11-19T06:06:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to hear gender in music? By exploring sonic dimensions of electronic music by six composers, I locate and describe what could be considered stereotypically feminine and masculine sounds. I also detail electronica that lacks explicit gendered sounds. In these instances, I discuss the gender neutrality of the compositions in relation to their gendered composers. Complicating matters further, I discuss gender-bending in electronica, where gendered sounds do not match their composer’s gender. Lastly, I consider the artistic and political ramifications of classifying electronica by gender, as in the case of music compilations presented specifically as “women’s music.” I explore the possibilities of gendered sounds, but also its politics. I will post this paper on my blog.

Slowed and Thowed: Pharmacomusical Meditation

2007-11-19T01:47:00.000-08:00

Michael Veal traces dub's influence on other forms of music in different geographic locations at the end of his book Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae. While he quickly glosses over the well-documented emergence of the hip-hop scene in New York, it is important to note that many of dub's production techniques and cultural production happen in other African diasporas. The South has contributed to the development of American music by injecting the blues, jazz, gospel and other styles produced by African-American communities. Of specific interest to me is screwed and chopped music, which has evolved out of Houston Texas, which has corollaries in memory, fragmentation, pharmacology, and consumption. In my examination, I take a look at “Servin a duce” by DJ Screw, “Still Tippin'” featuring Mike Jones, Slim Thug, and Paul Wall, “Cadillac on 22's (screwed and chopped)” by David Banner, “Love and Happiness (Al Green screwed and chopped),” and Kid606's “Robitussin Motherfucker (DJ Screw RIP).” I conclude by noting screwed and chopped's ability through pharmaceuticals and production methods to create a meditation space for resolving some issues I have with Southern rap culture.

Download
Here's a YouTube playlist for a sampling of some screw videos and videos of DJ Screw and DJ Kralos producing screw tracks:

Helios: A Showcase of Nostalgic Production

2007-11-18T23:15:00.000-08:00

Helios: A Showcase of Nostalgic Production

Nostalgia has always been a very prominent emotion evoked by Ambient music. Since the genre rarely utilizes lyrical content to bring about emotions like this, it has always been interesting to me to figure out exactly what aspect of the sonic qualities of Ambient music bring about the feeling of nostalgia. In this essay, I attempt to tap into the sonic qualities via production techniques of five different songs by Ambient/Electronic artist, Helios, who has always been a strong communicator of nostalgic emotion to me, personally. The essay explores the tie that reverb – among other production techniques – has with the creation of mind-space, allowing the mind to fill the space with memories that consequently evoke a sense of nostalgia. Additionally, the concept of “technostalgia” and specific production techniques that represent it are explored as possible contributors to the overall nostalgic phenomenon of Helios’ music. Overall, through exploiting the aural experience of Helios’ work, I hope to provide insight into why it causes such a longing for the past.

The Multiplicity of Noise

2007-11-18T21:01:00.000-08:00

The Multiplicity of Noise

The advent of audio recording and playback technologies greatly facilitated the increased use of noise as a compositional element in the 20th century. As this phenomenon progressed, the idea of noise itself began to rupture into multiple strings of conceptions and possibilities. In this paper I show some of the ways that noise has been used as an element of modern audio composition. This is accomplished through discussions of works by Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage, Brian Eno, John Zorn, and Merzbow. Though all of these works are radically different, they all make use of noise to accomplish their goal. As noise compositions, these works illustrate the multiplicity and plasticity inherent in the concept of noise.

Lolspace.org Call for submission

2007-11-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

Josh and I have recently started a project in response to some of our readings, discussions and our interest in Lolcat memes. I just wanted to point you guys to our blog, and let you know that we'd love to have some images created by you all on the blog. You can email them to Josh (josh.fishburn [at] gmail.com) or I (hebert.sara [at] gmail.com), and if you're interested in contributing on a regular basis, we can set up an account on the blog for you.

kthnxbai!

Diplo Talks About Jamaica, Dancehall

2007-11-13T12:31:00.000-08:00

Here's the video I mentioned in class, with Hollertronix and Mad Decent founder Diplo (Wes Pentz) talking his recent trip to Jamaica with Switch (Dubsided). He gives some really nice insight into what's going on there now, and what its like to produce with Dancehall artists.

Some thoughts on radio...

2007-11-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

I had some thoughts on radio after our discussion on Monday that I wanted to share here. My experience with radio has not been one of ephemerality, but of intentional listening and archiving. I don't believe that ephemerality is a necessary byproduct of the medium of radio, but a willful creation of circumstances that invoke such a feeling (not unlike the willful suspension of disbelief engaged in by an audience and participant in hypnosis). The detailed archives that I assume most radio stations keep would show the opportunity to repeat what happened in the studio at any point, much like the storage space on our computers lets us store and listen to podcasts.

I understand the collective experience of listeners to a radio program, but this is also a largely unidentifiable phenomenon with the exception of listening in the same physical space with a group and again requires a sort of suspension of disbelief. Internet radio stations give us real-time statistics (the number of simultaneous listeners to a station) that quantify the collective experience, but a collective listening experience is present in physical space or in the imagination.

The transmission of particular information via radio waves requires a physical infrastructure that eventually sends information wirelessly, which at this point is also the way that many of us receive the information that arrives on our computers. If radio stations have not made their archives available, on demand, to the listening public in the past, today's technology makes that kind of framework possible.

Sounds from Saturn

2007-11-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

Via BoingBoing and NASA:

The Eerie, Bizarre Sounds of the Saturnian System

Sounds from outer space are weird, if not downright spooky.

Be ready for a goosebump or two as you feast your ears on some of the greatest sounds gathered during the exploration of the Saturnian system.

Link

2007-10-23T19:51:00.000-07:00

Concepts: ‘keep them guessing’ (Scientist, quoted by Veal 79); ‘a dub mix works upon a listener’s desire for completion, a desire based on their memory of a preexisting song’ (Veal 79); ‘a dynamic of surprise and delayed gratification. The engineer continuously tantalizes the listener with glimpses of what they are familiar with, only to keep them out of reach, out of completion’ (Veal 78).

Audio: ‘New Dawn’ (8:15, Beat Pharmacy)

Allusions, comparisons: ‘Watergate Rock’ (2:50, King Tubby, 1974*); ‘Psalms of Dub’ (3:00, King Tubby, 1974*) *According to xraymusic.co.uk.

Playback architecture: I call it Desk-A-Phonic™ and it consists of a small 4’ wide desk, simple squared arc of wood with no frills, and inside the leg space on the carpet are two robust computer speakers in the far-most corners (good bass, ‘dem). Playing dub vibrates the desk, vibrates my hands on the mouse, and gives me the hint of a dub party – even if my puny bass-a-rockin’ is merely functioning as an audio symbol (nevertheless it reminds me of the dub context).

Beat Pharmacy’s ‘New Dawn’ flirts with the listener for 1:11 until the anticipated beat, a house beat, drops into the sound image; for that minute or so, the dubby guitar licks and bass harmony, and echo effects, are all calling out to us, it seems – or else they call out to the missing beat. At 1:11 the anticipated beat pummels the listener.

At 1:53 the beat forgets itself again in a dub oblivion until 2:23 (30 seconds). 2:55 – 3:02, another break-down. And at 4:00 a break. 4:32, a break which really gets down to bear bones. At around 4:50 the beat disintegrates noticeably before the break. In the fifth minute we hear effects, and more echo washing out and slapping around the beat, and a prominent bass harmony which is rather low and dark. The middle is the densest sound image. From about 6:40 to the end at 8:15, there is no beat.

The dub production strategy, if not theme, of sonic differance, if we may apply this Derridean term to the dub ‘surprise’, and to dub’s deferring the satisfaction of hearing resolutions to one’s aural expectations (namely, the bass line, beat, or vocals), has figured into house music albeit in a distilled and formalized way.

Dance musics like house (which grew largely out of club settings, and underground) have the dub differance usually toward the middle, where the track’s layers decompose, often revealing a spacious inner chamber, if you will. The dancers are enticed into this space (or must earn it by dancing), and after the break-down there is a moment to dub-out, a mini-oblivion, a clearing of the aural slate. When the party is hovering in that place of differance, perhaps not even dancing anymore, but simply swaying and tripping out, there is a level of expectation that arises about when and how the beat will flood the floor again.

Classic dubplates like ‘Watergate Rock’ (2:50, King Tubby, 1974) or ‘Psalms of Dub’ (3:00, King Tubby, 1974) – I have a theory that these two tracks are using the same riddim, but inversed – are not only using differance within the song’s own elements, but also playing with the listener’s expectations toward completing sound pictures from shards of previous songs. With dub differance the anticipatory climate is upheld or is completely freestyle throughout.

The Beat Pharmacy song complicates the expectation for the familiar house track’s middle break-down into oblivion. It does not occur. In keeping with the track’s dub inflections, ‘New Dawn’ instead goes the route of continuous differance melded with the stylings of house, and in this way it achieves a sonorous fusion whilst indicating the genetic ties between house and dub.

Joy Division Movie

2007-10-23T08:21:00.001-07:00

Hey guys,
heres a trailer I just saw of a movie about the band Joy Division.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/weinstein/control/trailer1/

Enjoy

Building Dub

2007-10-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

In discussing the absence of literally preserved or documented institutions in Jamaica, Michael Veal highlights the complication of the merging of cultures that willfully neglect their creations with those that place a high value on works as completed artifacts and privilege the archive over the process. Veal quotes Chinua Achebe's observations on the Igbo mbari houses in Nigeria: "Process is motion while product is rest. When the product is preserved or venerated, the impulse to repeat the process is compromised." (Veal 92) Building these houses through the available material "samples" in the environment has an analogy in dub, where the producers are sampling the available recordings to construct a variation on their original structure. Mikey Dread's "Pre-dawn Dub" and King Tubby's "Psalm of Dubs" work from apparently the same recorded tracks with substantially different results. The signature of Dread's version is the production of animal and human noises layered on top of the sometimes subtracted dub mix in a treble yell. We hear a consistent drum and bass loop, while the wavering keyboard and guitar move in and out of the mix (always on that reggae offbeat). Tubby's version is sonically heavier with deep, resonating bass and chunky guitar; it also features the guitar and keyboard moving in and out of the mix (there's that offbeat again). Here are two different constructions from a similar, but always changing, sample base. Richard Pinhas uses a similar technique in his Dextro track, but unlike the Dub producers, the samples come from the studio and from the live performance of his work. Returning to the mbari houses, one might want to know: who owns the materials from which they were built?

transformation through reverb and equalization

2007-10-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

The cultural and technological influences on dub music are centered in the Jamaican culture and political turmoil of the 70’s and 80’s. One use of technology that stands out is the use of reverb and the use of equalization and filtering devices. In King Tubby’s “Black Lash” The light and upbeat sounds of the horns playing drastically transform to a more desperate and even spooky feeling to the song as the use of reverb is applied to the horns. With the sound of the box reverb in the back transformed into a bubbling almost flapping sound I can feel the heat of the Jamaican sun. In contrast to the low tones of the horns Tubby uses equalization to bring out the higher and sharper tones of the symbols and guitar. “Equalization could also be used to help craft the ambient aspects of a performance. In particular, the interplay of echo and equalization enabled engineers to make simulated sound spaces sound as if they were continually morphing in dimension and texture. Lee “Scratch” Perry’s song “Upsetting Dub” is very similar in the way it uses reverb and equalization. The songs feels so heavy and drawn out. I can feel the tension and despair in the heat of the Jamaican ghetto.

Tubby Dub

2007-10-22T17:39:00.001-07:00

As I listen to "Tubby's Dubs", I cannot help but notice the repetitive nature of all of the works. Using both the repetitive beat of reggae, as well as the consistent use of echo's; the Dub style manages to create an enjoyable tune with the use of only a few sounds. I believe that this style is successful because of the meaningful use of these techniques. The echos, pitch changes, volume changes, and added sounds made dub something to be listened to half a century ago as well as something to listen to today. By turning the reggae genre electronic, dub became the popular type of music to enjoy in Jamaica. When I listen to some of these tracks I can still see the ghost of Stockhausen, as well as other artists from the first unit. In Lee Perry's "The Tackro", Perry has all of the classic characteristics of dub music, but he incorporates screams of different pitches. Not quite as random as the work we listened to during the first unit, but still incorporating different sounds and noises of life into his work. The feeling of reggae has always been a very upbeat feeling, the use of the echo as well as some of the other electronic techniques can completely change the feeling of the original song. I believe that dub was effective because of the way it could influence such a straight forward genre.