Writing
An Introduction To Sound Art
“A sound has no legs to stand on” - John Cage Sound is very strange stuff. In fact, it’s not ‘stuff’ at all because it has no discernable substance or mass. It’s actually a process, a complicated process - of particles moving, of objects moving, of air moving and, sometimes, liquids moving. You cannot get hold of it, you cannot touch it, you cannot feel it in your hand. It’s not a ‘thing’. Things make sounds, and things have to move to produce sound, but sounds are definitely not things. When a sound has gone there’s nothing left but a memory. It’s like the complex gestures made by a calligrapher’s hand, wrist and arm; there are movements, time passes, something happens. But where a calligrapher’s gestures leave a mark on paper, a physical residue that can be seen, sound moves...
Richard Aphex, John Cage and the Prepared Piano
There’s a lot of piano on the Aphex Twin's album 'Drukqs'. Often referred to as the Ambient tracks or even the Classical tracks. Extremely pleasant, often slow, with lots of harmonies. Some of the tracks are straight piano – strotha tynhe, avril 14th, father – and some have the piano sound altered, offering metallic rattles, woody clunks and textured thwacks. These are the classic sounds of the ‘Prepared Piano’, an instrument invented, in 1940, by the American Experimental composer John Cage. A piano is 'prepared' by placing small, everyday objects in the strings. When Cage first did this the objects were screws, bolts and pieces of 'weather stripping' (short strips of felt covered plastic used for draught-proofing windows). Most of the strings of a grand piano are usually grouped in threes, the exception to this are the bass notes, where...
Listening to Stockhausen
Bach - Haydn - Mozart - Beethoven - Brahms - Wagner - Schoenberg - Webern - Stockhausen. As the story of Western music unfolds and the history books are written we find Stockhausen's name written in the most recent chapters. A direct linear thread traces out the Post Renaissance tradition and when we get to the turn of the 21st century ..... there is Stockhausen writ large. His name first appears in the middle of the 20th century, just after the Second World War and around about that time several other elements in this story also appear - the tape recorder, vinyl records, the teenager and commercial pop music. Stockhausen's career runs almost parallel to that of pop music but whereas the latter has remained essentially rooted in the essence of its origins Stockhausen's music has transformed, developed and has...
Notes About Composing Without Notes
Composing is about putting sounds together. There are only two ways to put sounds together: 1) Horizontally - one after the other and 2) Vertically - one on top of the other. Sounds exist in time (horizontally) and they can exist simultaneously (vertically). This is all that composers have ever done, put sounds together, and some composers have done it very well! Many people might divide sounds into two broad categories: 1) Musical sounds and 2) Non-musical sounds (There are of course lots of other categories: loud/quiet, high/low, interesting/boring, pleasant/unpleasant etc). All sounds, no matter how they are categorised, have five, measurable, physical characteristics: 1. They exist on a continuum that extends from pitch to noise. (This characteristic is usually articulated through pitch, the notes of conventional music.) 2. They have duration (They exist in time. Sounds stop. In conventional...
The Sound of One Sine Waving – What Is Electroacoustic Music?
It's funny stuff sound. Here one moment, gone the next. It unfolds in its own time and then disappears. Gone. Forever. Never to return. Every sound is a unique event. In fact, it's not stuff at all, it's a process, a very complex process. We have a tendency to give names to complex processes; names that make us perceive the processes as objects or things. Rain is a good example. Rain is a very complex process but by calling it 'rain' we turn it into a thing. We do the same with sound. Most of the sound we hear comes through the air. A sound is fast moving air; it's a rich, complex phenomenon but we give it a simple name - trumpet, violin, voice, crash, door slam etc - and turn it into a thing. Quite often the name...
Loudspeakers and Music
What have loudspeakers done for music? The question may seem ridiculous because the obvious answer is so apparent - without them there would certainly be a lot less music in our lives. But this palpable observation hides many less apparent influences of these ubiquitous pedlars of noise. Today, most people's experience of music comes via a loudspeaker, whether they're listening on headphones, in the car, at home, in a club, a rock concert, wherever. Only a tiny percentage of the population of the developed world hear music played on acoustic instruments, without amplification. Yet, up until recent times, this was the only way anyone could hear music. The listener and the performer had to be within earshot of each other, sharing the same space and time. The invention of sound recording changed all that. Loudspeakers, of course, are part of...
Notes on For Philip Guston by Morton Feldman
The music is slow and quiet. Very, very, very quiet. And, it's very, very long. Three performers coax the sounds from their instruments. Wooden beaters barely touch the cold, steely surface of a vibraphone. Piano keys are depressed so softly that the player can almost feel the hammer move under his fingers. A bass flute whispers darkly - warm breath only just becomes a note. These sounds appear to be sourceless and the piece is four hours long. Soft, gentle chords for four hours. Piano and celeste, flutes and tuned percussion. No sweeping melody, no catchy rhythm, no arresting drama, no gushing emotion. Just soft gentle chords - floating, colliding, disappearing. Notes at the threshold of hearing. For four hours. This is For Philip Guston, composed in 1984 by Morton Feldman and it is receiving its British premiere, as part...
Notes on Stockhausen’s Kontakte and Oktophonie
Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the few, true musical pioneers. Right from the beginning of his composing career he has forged paths that others have followed. He’s a musical inventor, explorer and messenger. He has visited the outer reaches of music and reported back. He has been doing this since the early 1950s – for half a century – and he is still doing it today. He knows exactly where the outer reaches of music are located because, more often than not, he established them. He is one of the composers who completely rewrote the rule book of western music after the Second World War, opening up the possibilities of composing with all kinds of sounds not just notes played on conventional instruments. Long established ideas about musical structure, melody, harmony, and rhythm, and the boundaries between what was music...