Digital Cultures: Music Recommended Listening and Reading (Prof Andrew Hugill) The following long (but nowhere near long enough to cover everything) listening list not only illustrates some of the key ideas about modernism and postmodernism, structuralism and deconstruction, but also adds up to a mini-history of the evolution of electronic and electroacoustic music in the 20th Century. Some brief descriptive notes are included to indicate the salient features, but there is no substitute for careful and repeated listening, with perhaps some attempt to analyse what is heard. It should be remembered that Modernism and Postmodernism are not musical styles, nor words that artists and composers use to describe their work, but rather terms from critical and cultural theory that seem to sum up broad tendencies in art. In fact, all the pieces below will probably be heard to exhibit characteristics of both ‘isms’. Some useful questions to ask when listening are: what is the artist’s intention? How well is it realized? What is the cultural context for the work? What are its compositional techniques? What is the musical language? Pierre Schaeffer ‘Etude aux chemins de fer’ from ‘Cinq études de bruits’ (1948) on OHM: the early gurus of electronic music: 1948-1980. Roslyn, New York: Ellipsis Arts. This was the first time recorded sound was assembled into a musical composition. The sounds included steam engines, whistles and railway noises. Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950) on Pierre Schaeffer: l’oeuvre musicale EMF EM114. A 12-movement musical account of a man’s day using recorded sounds. This was performed live, and originally required real-time manipulation of many turntables and mixing desks. John Cage Imaginary Landscape no. 4 for 12 radios (1951) Hat Hut Records hatArt CD 6179 Two performers are stationed at each radio, one for dialling the radio-stations, the second performer controlling amplitude and ‘timbre’. Durations are written in conventional notation, using notes, placed on a five-line staff. The score gives notations for tuning (controlled by player 1) as well as volume and tone colour (controlled by the second player). Otto Luening Low Speed (1952) CRI CD 611 Luening and Ussachevsky worked in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center on tape composition. This piece explores slowed-down flute sounds. Vladimir Ussachevsky Sonic Contours (1952) CRI CD 611 Ussachevsky worked with tape feedback, looping, and echo effects in this piece that combines piano and varispeed vocals. John Cage ‘Williams Mix’ (1953) on OHM: the early gurus of electronic music: 1948-1980. Roslyn, New York: Ellipsis Arts. Tape fragments of various sounds are recombined in a random order (determined by coin tosses). Earle Brown Octet I for tape (1953) New World Records 80650 An early tape piece for eight loudspeakers surrounding an audience. Karlheinz Stockhausen Studie II (1954) Stockhausen Verlag CD3 Early example of Elektronische Musik (Electronic Music) which used sine tones superimposed in groups of five. Hugh Le Caine Dripsody (1955) EMF EM115 Created from the sound of a single water drop, and using splicing and speed control to make various rhythms and melodies. Karlheinz Stockhausen ‘Gesang der Jünglinge’ (1955-56) on Stockhausen: Elektronische Musik 1952-1960. Kürten, Germany: Stockhausen-Verlag This combines electronic sounds and a recording of a boy’s voice. It is a seriali composition, but with strong connections drawn between the sound of the sine wave oscillators and the timbre of the boy's voice. It not only serializes durations, loudness, and thickness of texture, but also the spatialization. Louis and Bébé Barron Forbidden Planet (1956) Planet Records This film was the first motion picture to feature an electronic music score. Edgard Varèse Poeme Electronique (1958) Decca 460208 Composed for the Philips Pavilion of the 1958 World's Fair, a massive multi-media environment featuring projected images, film, and multi-channel sound. As the listeners walk through the space, the sound moves around them. Luciano Berio Thema - Omaggio a Joyce (1958) RCA Victor Red Seal 09026- 68302-2 All the sounds are derived from a recording of Cathy Berberian reciting a passage from James Joyce's Ulysses. This is a compendium of tape splicing techniques. Iannis Xenakis ‘Concrète PH’ (1958) on Xenakis: Electronic Music, Electronic Music Foundation, EMF CD 003 A musique concrète piece made from the sound of burning charcoal. György Ligeti Artikulation (1958) Schotts Music Ltd. A very short, but highly virtuosic tape composition, made from small electronic sounds that are combined to resemble utterances. Karlheinz Stockhausen Kontakte (for piano, percussion and tape) (1959-1960) Wergo 6009 The ‘contact’ in the title is between the taped sounds and the acoustic sounds of piano and percussion. By adding the two together, a richer palette of sounds is discovered. Pierre Henry Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir (Variations for a door and a sigh) (1963) Harmonia Mundi This is a tour-de-force of tape splicing and editing techniques. Ornette Coleman Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1961) Atlantic Two independent jazz quartets play opposite each other (one on each stereo channel), improvising on a limited selection of directions, without harmonic structure, driven by melodic and rhythmic concerns, and each musician contributing according to own style. Highly influential in subsequent jazz improvisational technique. Left channel: Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone), Don Cherry (pocket trumpet), Scott LaFaro (bass), Billy Higgins (drums); right channel: Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), Eric Dolphy (bass clarinet), Charlie Haden (bass), Ed Blackwell (drum)s. Steve Reich Come Out (1965) Steve Reich: Early Works, 1987, Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79169-2 An early piece using phasing: looped tape recordings of speech (the phrase “Come Out to show them”) gradually move out of synchronisation. This process is then repeated and repeated until the multiple layerings remove the meaning of the words. The Righteous Brothers You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (1965) Polydor An example of the celebrated ‘wall of sound’ studio treatment (rich vocals and orchestral accompaniment) characteristic of Phil Spector. The Beach Boys Good Vibrations (1966) EMI CDEMTVD 51 Brian Wilson's production was highly advanced for its time, reflected in the fact that it took six months to record this single. It involves unusual instrumentation for a pop song, including an electro-theremin. The mix is mono, but all parts are still clearly audible. The Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows (1966) Capitol/EMI Early psychedelia, heavily influenced by Indian music and Eastern philosophy. The Beatles’ first experiments with tape loops. Frank Zappa Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention: We're Only In It For The Money (1968) Ryco RCD 40024 This album features radical audio editing and production techniques. The album was highly virtuosic and satirical of contemporary cultural fashions (flower-power and hippie-dom). There also seem to be some tonque-in-cheek references to "serious" electronic music. Can ‘Father Cannot Yell’ (1969) on Cannibalism (released in 1980) Spoon CD 004 Can was a German rock group who had considerable influence on electronic and experimental music. Alvin Lucier I am sitting in a room (1970) Lovely Music CD 1013 “Several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated. The space acts as a filter; the speech is transformed into pure sound. All the recorded segments are spliced together in the order in which they were made and constitute the work.”ii Miles Davis Bitches Brew (1970) Columbia C2K 65774 The Bitches Brew album was not only a landmark in the establishment of “fusion” jazz, but also important in its pioneering use of studio technology, led by Teo Macero. Luc Ferrari ‘Presque Rien No. 1’ (Almost Nothing) (1970) on OHM: the early gurus of electronic music: 1948-1980 Roslyn, New York: Ellipsis Arts. This documents a day on a beach. Ferrari's sound diary includes the sounds of insects and other animals, traffic, and human voices. He referred to this genre of his work, characterized by the use of sounds to tell a story, as 'anecdotal music'. In his words, "The problem is to try to express ideas, feelings, passing intuitions by different means to observe everyday life in all its realities, whether they are social, psychological or sentimental."iii Wendy Carlos Timesteps (1972) East Side Digital This was composed for Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange and used a vocoder to create "synthesized speech". Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon (1973) Harvest/Capitol Classic concept album that sits between electronic music and blues rock. Employs many musique concrète techniques alongside double-tracking, flanging, panning and reverb effects. “To this day, audiophiles use The Dark Side of the Moon as a reference standard to test the fidelity of audio equipment despite the fact that it was originally mixed from third-generation tape with Dolby noise reduction.”iv Kraftwerk Autobahn (1974) EMI CDP 7 46153 2 Influential German electronic music group, particularly known for their 1970s work which has had a broad impact on popular music. The Residents The Third Reich and Roll (1976) Torso CD 405 Long-standing American underground avant garde group, who consistently maintain their anonymity. Many of their works are cultural commentaries utilizing samples and media hi-jinks. John Chowning Stria (1977) Wergo This is a classic of FM synthesis and localization, using the Golden Mean (the ratio 1: 1.618…) to determine pitch and duration. Brian Eno Ambient 1/Music For Airports (1978) Virgin Records EEGCD 17 Influential English composer, producer, engineer, writer, and visual artist. He is known as the father of "ambient" music.