DAY 4

• MUSIC CONCRèTE
• EDM vs. Electroacoustic
• fundamentals of music –
• cohesion
• point of saturation
• contrast
• layers
• * tension/release
• “Does it need a pulse?”
• “What is music?”
• Music concrete: a type of music composition that uses recorded sounds as raw material
• originally developd by Pierre Schaeffer beginning of 1940's.
• sounds are modified through audio effects and tape manipulation
• sounds can be recordings of musical instruments, human voice, and the natural
environment, as well as thouse created using synthesizers and computer based digital
signal processing
• not restricted by normal musical rules o melody, harmony, rhythm, meter
• acousmatic listening
• sound identities disconnected from their original source
• contrasted with “pure” elektronische Musik, based on manipulation of electronically
produced sounds
• acousmatic music
• early development
• 1942 Schaeffer

!
• began his exploration of “radiophony” when he founded Studio d'Essai at
• Radiodiffusion Nationale.
• Studio orginally functioned as radio for the French resistance WWII,
 • 1944 responsible for the first broadcasts in free Paris
• at first used voice actors, microphone usage, and radiophonic art.
• 1946 Studio d'Essai renamed Club d'Essai de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF)
• discussed, in writing, the question surrounding the transformation of time perceived
through recording
• 1948 concert in Paris of initial experiments: Cinq études de bruits
• including Etude violette (Study in Purple) and Etude aux chemins de fer
• became publicly known as musique concrète
• According to Pierre Henry,
• "musique concrète was not a study of timbre, it is focused on envelopes, forms. It must
be presented by means of non-traditional characteristics, you see … one might say that
the origin of this music is also found in the interest in 'plastifying' music, of rendering it
plastic like sculpture…musique concrète, in my opinion … led to a manner of
composing, indeed, a new mental framework of composing" (James 1981, 79)
• The aesthetic also emphasized the importance of play (jeu) in the practice of sound
based composition. Schaeffer's use of the word jeu, from the verb jouer, carries the same
double meaning as the English verb play: 'to enjoy oneself by interacting with one's
surroundings', as well as 'to operate a musical instrument' (Dack 2002).

Etude aux chemins de fer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9pOq8u6-bA&t=20s

• 1951 GRMC (Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète) established (Schaeffer,

Philip Henry(composer), and Jacques Poullin (sound engineer)
• established the first electroacoustic music studio
• attracted many composers including Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Jean
Barraqué, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, Michel Philippot,
and Arthur Honegger.
• 1951 to 1953 comprised Étude I (1951) and Étude II (1951) by Boulez, Timbres-
durées (1952) by Messiaen, Konkrete Etüde (1952) by Stockhausen, Le
microphone bien tempéré (1952) and La voile d'Orphée (1953) by Henry, Étude I
(1953) by Philippot, Étude (1953) by Barraqué, the mixed pieces Toute la lyre
(1951) and Orphée 53 (1953) by Schaeffer/Henry, and the film music
Masquerage (1952) by Schaeffer and Astrologie (1953) by Henry. In 1954
Varèse and Honegger visited to work on the tape parts of Déserts and La rivière
endormie (Palombini 1999).
• early mid 1950's official RTF business required Schaeffer to make many trips away from
the studios.
• Phillipe Arthuys led GRMC in Schaeffer's absence, with Pierre Henry as Director of
Works worked with experimental filmmakers such as Max de Haas, Jean Grémillon,
Enrico Fulchignoni, and Jean Rouch, and with choreographers including Dick
Sanders and Maurice Béjart
• 1957 Schaeffer returned and was unhappy, and made a proposal to to "renew completely
the spirit, the methods and the personnel of the Group, with a view to undertake research
and to offer a much needed welcome to young composers"
 • 1958 due to the emergence of differences within the GRMC Pierre Henry and Phillip
Arthuys resigned in April 1958 and created a new collective called: Group de
Recherches Musicales
•
•
•
• (GRM) GROUP DE RECHERCHES MUSICALES
•
• 1958 Pierre Schaeffer created Groupe do Recherches Musicales (GRM)
• Luc Ferrari, Beatriz Ferreyra, François-Bernard Mâche, Iannis Xenakis, Bernard
Parmegiani, and Mireille Chamass-Kyrou. Later arrivals included Ivo Malec, Philippe
Carson, Romuald Vandelle, Edgardo Canton and François Bayle
• worked under the ORTF
• GRM was one of several experimental groups –
• 1960-1974 in the Service de la Recherche at ORTF
• three other experimental groups (Group de Recherches Image, Group de Recherches
Technologiques, and Group de Recherches Language)
• researched “how who says what to whom?”
• -research into into audiovisual communication and mass media, audible phenomena,
and music in general
• teaching based on practice : do and listen
• GRMC countinues...
• – Traite d'es object musicaux
• Schaeffer had borrowed the term acousmatic from Pythagoras and defined it as:
"Acousmatic, adjective: referring to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes
behind it"
• Schaeffer's book Traite d'es object musicaux (Treatise on Musical Objects) published in
1966 reperesented the culmination of twenty years of research.
•
• TECHNOLOGY
• 1939 creation of magnetic tape recorders
• 1952 acquired by Schaeffer's Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète
• association of GRMC with RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française)
• opportunity to experiment with recording technology and tape manipulation
• Initial tools of musique concrète[edit]
• In 1948, a typical radio studio consisted of a series of shellac record players, a shellac
record recorder, a mixing desk with rotating potentiometers, mechanical reverberation,
filters, and microphones. This technology made a number of limited operations available to
a composer (Teruggi 2007,[page needed]):
• Shellac record players: could read a sound normally and in reverse mode, could change speed
at fixed ratios thus permitting octave transposition.
• Shellac recorder: would record any result coming out of the mixing desk.
• Mixing desk: would permit several sources to be mixed together with an independent control of
the gain or volume of the sound. The result of the mixing was sent to the recorder and to the monitoring
loudspeakers. Signals could be sent to the filters or the reverberation unit.
• Mechanical reverberation: made of a metal plate or a series of springs that created the
reverberation effect, indispensable to force sounds to "fuse" together.
• Filters: two kinds of filters, 1/3 octave filters and high and low-pass filters. They allow the
elimination or enhancement of selected frequencies.
• Microphones: essential tool for capturing sound.
• The application of the above technologies in the creation of musique concrète led to the
development of a number of sound manipulation techniques including (Teruggi 2007,
[page needed]):
• Sound transposition: reading a sound at a different speed than the one at which it was
recorded.
• Sound looping: composers developed a skilled technique in order to create loops at specific
locations within a recording.
• Sound-sample extraction: a hand-controlled method that required delicate
manipulation to get a clean sample of sound. It entailed letting the stylus read a small
segment of a record. Used in the Symphonie pour un homme seul.
• Filtering: by eliminating most of the central frequencies of a signal, the remains would
keep some trace of the original sound but without making it recognisable.
• Magnetic tape
• began arriving 1949, but were unreliable
• 1950 functionality was reliable
• techniques were expanded
• speed variation
• “axe-cut”
• “micro-editing”
• three track tape recorder
• Phonogene – keyboard with tape loops (THE FIRST SAMPLER?)

• !
• morphophone -
 • !
• This machine was conceived to build complex forms through repetition, and
accumulation of events through delays, filtering and feedback. It consisted of a large
rotating disk, 50 cm in diameter, on which was stuck a tape with its magnetic side facing
outward. A series of twelve movable magnetic heads (one each recording head and
erasing head, and ten playback heads) were positioned around the disk, in contact with
the tape. A sound up to four seconds long could be recorded on the looped tape and the
ten playback heads would then read the information with different delays, according to
their (adjustable) positions around the disk.
• spatialisation tools – monophonic sound played back over multiple speakers
• acousmonium

!
• Listen to :

!
− shaeffer at a mixing desk (adjusting a moog)

• RADIOPHONIC workshop
• setup to satisfy the growing demand of “radiophonic” sounds at the BBC
• 1957 – setup by in rooms 13 and 14 at the BBC's Maida Vale studios with a budget £2,000 by
Daphne Oram and Desmond Briscoe.
• 1959 Oram left to setup her own studio (Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition
• developed “Oramics” technique of electronics sound creation...
• George Martin (Beatles producer) – under pseudonym “Ray Cathode"
• Quatermass and the Pit and sounds for The Goon Show (play excerpts?)
•
•
• 1963 approached by Ron Grainer to record theme song for Doctor Who
• Delia Derbyshire presented with the task of "realising" Grainer's score, complete with its
descriptions of "sweeps", "swoops", "wind clouds" and "wind bubbles",
•
• (play Dr. Who theme music)
•
• Over the next quarter-century the Workshop contributed greatly to the programme providing its
vast range of unusual sound-effects, from the TARDIS dematerialisation to the Sonic
screwdriver, as well as much of the programme's distinctive electronic incidental music,
including every score from 1980 to 1985.
• also produced Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

• Techniques[edit]
• This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by
• adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged
and removed. (September 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this
! template message)

• !
• Tape manipulation tools:
tape recorder, tape splicer, and mending tapes.
• !
• Sine wave oscillator
• The techniques initially used by the Radiophonic Workshop were closely related to those used
in musique concrète; new sounds for programs were created by using recordings of everyday
sounds such as voices, bells or gravel as raw material for "radiophonic" manipulations. In these
manipulations, audio tape could be played back at different speeds (altering a sound's pitch),
reversed, cut and joined, or processed using reverb or equalisation. The most famous of the
Workshop's creations using 'radiophonic' techniques include the Doctor Who theme music,
which Delia Derbyshire created using a plucked string, 12 oscillators and a lot of tape
manipulation; and the sound of the TARDIS (the Doctor's time machine) materialising and
dematerialising, which was created by Brian Hodgson running his keys along the rusty bass
strings of a broken piano, with the recording slowed down to make an even lower sound.
• POP influences:
• ritish psychedelic rock group Pink Floyd made a memorable trip to the workshop in 1967.
•
• Delia Derbyshire: British 1937-2001

• ! (accepted at Oxford and Cambridge) scholarship to study

mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge
• after one year in math switched to music; specialized in medieval and modern music history,
also received an “LRAM” in piano. After approaching the careers office with interest in sound,
music and acoustics, she was recommended a career in deaf aids. She applied for a position at
Decca Records and was told they didn't hire women in their recording studios. She taught piano
and math at the UN to children of the Britsh Consul-General and South American diplomats.
Worked as assistant at the International Telecommunications Union, then returned to Coventry
to teach at a primary s hool. In 1960 worked for a few months as assistant in the promotion
department at Boosey & Hawkes. November 1960 joined BBC as trainee assistant studio
manager. She worked on Record Review, magazine programme for reviewing classical music
recordings. "Some people thought I had a kind of second sight. One of the music critics would
say, "I don't know where it is, but it's where the trombones come in" and I'd hold it up to the
light and see the trombones and put the needle down exactly where it was. And they thought it
was magic."
• heard about Radiophonic Workshop, decided she wanted to work there and was assigned
 there in April 1962
• August 1962 assisted composer Luciano Berio
• (maybe play Laborintus II, the computer solo)
• White Noise (band)
• four Inventions for Radio
• 1966 Million Volt Light and Sound Rave (also Beatles “Carnvial of Light”) was shown
• 1975 - stopped publicly making music – died of renal failure, late life plagued by th e
chaos of chronic alcoholism...
• posthumous – The Delian Mode
• An Electric Storm