A concrete nische

So in studying today for the first exam for the class, I think I finally understand the difference between Musique Concrete and Elektronische. Despite all our conversation in class, the difference between recorded and generated sounds didn't mean much to to me until I was able to sit down and spend time listening to several examples of each. I really resonated with Elektronische, I thought the ambient sounds they were able to produce were beautiful to listen to and imagine as a series of sound waves. To my ears though, Musique Concrete felt very much like amateur mixing. I know it was not at the time, but it still felt like it was not as advanced or as difficult to produce as the music from WDR.

Phat Beats

So we turned in our beats today. I really enjoyed the process of making my beats. I thought it was fun to go through songs and sound clips, trying to identify and isolate single percussive hits of sound that could be used to make something rhythmic. It was also fun to distort these sounds then to a state that was unrecognizeable to those who were unaware of its original sound.

Here are my notes for the beats I created. I will update later with the beats and my composition as linked files:

Beat 1 - Acoustic Guitar, lowered pitch, added whammy and inverted sound
Beat 2 - second half of guncock, made the noise wet and deep
Beat 3 - a human kiss, shortened the noise, raised the pitch, reversed the sound
beat 4 - a tennis racket, shortened to only the first hit, then slowed down
beat 5 - clipped the first half second of a plane talking off
beat 6 - took a slow digital beat, sped it up and lowered the pitch - from "too long" by daft punk
beat 7 - heavily produced electric guitar, isolated the reverb and reversed it to make a growing noise, instead of falling
beat 8 - took a heavily produced drum hit and isolated it without the reverb, raised the pitch until it sounded only like the produced sound - from "holiday inn" by chingy
beat 9 - took a clapping sound from a song, and increased the reverb and the pitch until it was unintelligible as being organic
beat 10 - took a sustained note from "y control" by the yeah,yeah,yeahs and made it into a beat by making it escalate, and then copying and reversing the secondhalf.

Theremin-Fever

The Theremin looks crazy, both in its method and its difficulty. After learning about the instrument in class I decided to do some research on the Theremin, which is apparently still played by enthusiasts, but mostly ignored by the public. The sound of the Theremin is incredible, one of the most unique sounds produced by any instrument I have heard.

Theremin and Moog (another electronic instrument) being used to play Crazy, by Gnarls Barkley



Thomas Grillo - Theremin Lesson


The second video was interesting because it was a brief introduction to the actual method of playing the Theremin, which I was interested to see looked easier than I expected, although still difficult, especially without tactile feedback.

Jordan

New Historics

Two developments in music that we learned about this week changed my impression of historical "electronic" music.

The first was Arnold Schoenburg's break with Tonality in 1907 and the continuation of this in 1913 with the "emancipation of dissonance." I played trumpet and piano as a child and I know play guitar, so thinking of music outside of the traditional scale system seems difficult to comprehend for me. However, I can definitely understand how limiting the scale system is. Music and tone are truly a spectrum, going from 15Hz to 20,000Hz for humans. Any division we overlay upon this spectrum is arbitrary, and it is amazing that one system of divisions by 7 has been maintained as the only system by which we can write or transcode music. It is also incredibly limiting, that a middle "c" for example always has to be 440Hz, and is used to tune every orchestra in the world, without variation.

The other was the music device called the teleharmonium. It sounds ridiculous in retrospect, now that we have complex electronic circuits that allow for an amplifier to exist in the palm of my hand. But to imagine a 60 foot wide, 200 ton organ is difficult, but is a good example of what it meant to look forward a century ago.