Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education The Kids Want Noise How Sonic Mediations Change the Aesthetics of Music — Gaute Barlindhaug A dissertation for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor – April 2019 1 Abstract This dissertation seeks to discuss how new tools for mediating sounds have developed and changed our aesthetic evaluation and framing of musical sounds. The possibility to create and reproduce sounds has had a great impact on the aesthetic development of music and is a topic that can be approached from many angles. This dissertation focuses on three different technological tools that have been important in shaping music from the 1980s onwards. The first examples discussed are the use of Roland´s early drum machines, the TR-808 and TR-909. Here, the focus is on the synthesised kick drum sound and how it enabled the production of base heavy club music. The second example discusses the praxis of sampling as it developed from the samplers in the early 1980s to present day DAW software. The focus is on how different ways of defining the status and cultural purpose of sound recording facilitated different aesthetic approaches to using such recordings in an artistic creative process. The third example analyses cases where artists themselves use digital and electronic tools to create new sound producing devices; not so much to develop and commodify new instruments, but as a focal point in the actual artistic expression. In all three of the examples discussed, the focus is on how novel possibilities in mediating sounds become part of a renegotiation of existing aesthetic ideals in music. It is not so much the novelty of the different tools themselves that are important, but how the new possibilities these tools enable become interpreted as strengthening or diverging from established aesthetic concepts of music. 2 3 Content Introduction: ____________________________________________ 8 I. The kids want noise ___________________________________________________________ 8 II. Research question __________________________________________________________ 12 III. Scope and Limitations _______________________________________________________ 14 IV. Outline of dissertation ______________________________________________________ 17 1. Definitions and Background _____________________________ 19 1.1 Defining mediating technology __________________________________________ 19 1.2 Defining tools for musical creation, musical instruments and sonic tools ________ 24 1.3 Music, a fluid concept _________________________________________________ 27 1.4. Historical background - The legacy from the early 20th century ________________ 42 1.4.1 Recording enters the stage _________________________________________________ 44 1.4.2 The avant-gardes and experimental artists search for new sounds __________________ 57 1.4.3 Experimental art of the post war period _______________________________________ 64 1.4.4 Recording popular music___________________________________________________ 75 2. Beats that broke the law- Musical renewals through synthesized drum sounds ____________________________________________ 81 2.1 Music and technology in the 1980s ______________________________________ 83 2.1.1 The democratisation of technology __________________________________________ 84 2.1.2 Focusing on the use of tools ________________________________________________ 86 2.2 Technology and Musical Ideology ________________________________________ 89 2.2.1 Challenging the roles of instrumentalists ______________________________________ 90 2.2.2 Challenging authenticity ___________________________________________________ 92 2.3 The difficult “first phase” of the TR-808 and TR-909 _________________________ 94 2.4 The sound of subtractive synthesis _______________________________________ 98 2.4.1 Synthesizing sounds ______________________________________________________ 99 2.4.2 The practical appliance of the synthesized kick drum ___________________________ 106 4 2.5 The growing acceptance of synthetic drum sounds, second phase of the TR-808 and TR-909 _______________________________________________________________ 112 2.5.1 Club and dance music ____________________________________________________ 113 2.5.2 Reusing second hand technology ___________________________________________ 118 2.6 Broadening the horizon for sound: TR-808 and TR-909´s contemporary legacy __ 120 2.7 Conclusion _________________________________________________________ 126 3. Sampling - Mashing up quotes and found objects ___________ 128 3.1 Sampling: connecting artistic practice with commodification of technology _____ 133 3.1.1 Technical and cultural definitions of “sampling” _______________________________ 134 3.1.2 The development and packaging of sampling technology for musical creation________ 138 3.2 Sampling technology, musical ideologies and the ontological status of recorded sound ________________________________________________________________ 148 3.2.1 Sampling as musical quotation _____________________________________________ 150 3.2.2 DAWs, Mashups and digital technology as a critique of copyright legislation _________ 161 3.2.3 Mashing up found objects, diverging from musical appropriation in sampling praxis ___ 170 3.2.4 Ambient and European club music __________________________________________ 178 3.3 Returning to the DJ, A “new” Approach to sampling and Mashups ____________ 182 3.3.1 Sound Recordings and the DJ in Club Culture __________________________________ 184 3.3.2 DJing and the end of the musical work _______________________________________ 190 3.4 Conclusion _________________________________________________________ 196 4. Make some Noise – a critical reflection on hacking and post digital musical approaches _______________________________ 199 4.1 The Music-Hacker and Music-Maker Communities _________________________ 203 4.2 The legacy from earlier musical experiments______________________________ 211 4.2.1 Cage and his followers ___________________________________________________ 212 4.2.2 Circuit bending and DIY-culture ____________________________________________ 219 4.3 Creating sonic tools in the contemporary technological environment __________ 223 4.3.1 Cracked media – a tactical approach ________________________________________ 226 4.3.2 The Post Digital - a strategic approach _______________________________________ 229 5 4.3.3. The new flexible and digital tools __________________________________________ 232 4.4 The strategies of Music Makers and Music Hackers ________________________ 238 4.4.1 Hacking _______________________________________________________________ 238 4.4.2 Makers ________________________________________________________________ 243 4.4.3 A fluid approach to sonic tools _____________________________________________ 244 4.5 Making noise and Mediating music _____________________________________ 246 4.5.1 A new conception of noise ________________________________________________ 247 4.5.2 The limits of Noise as errors _______________________________________________ 252 4.5.3 Sound as object, not as sign _______________________________________________ 259 4.6 Summary of findings and prospects for future research _____________________ 265 5. Conclusion __________________________________________ 272 Bibliography ___________________________________________ 284 6 7 Introduction: I. The kids want noise Music has always evolved in relation to technological development. By the start of the 1980s, however, this development was speeding up significantly, radically affecting both how music was made and how music could sound. New tools emerged at a rate never seen before and enabled new artistic expressions that often sparked controversy amongst musicians and audiences alike. Michael Jonzun, a protégé of Arthur Baker and a renowned session musician in the late 1970s, recalls the changes in that period with mixed feelings: “Arthur and I did music together – real music. But we discovered great singers rarely made it. The kids in the clubs wanted noise” (Tompkins 2010, p. 109). Jonzun noted the changes, and by adapting to this new demand for “noise” amongst the younger generation, managed to make a name for himself within the 1980s Electro Funk scene. Working in this musical climate, Jonzun’s weapon of choice became the vocoder, originally a technology used for scrambling secret telephone calls which sonically transforms the human voice. By the late 1970s, the vocoder had been repurposed and repackaged into a musical “instrument”. By singing or speaking through the vocoder, the pitch of the voice could be controlled by a second sound-source, resulting in a strange metallic effect. In effect, the vocoder blends two sonic sources, typically using a voice as the modulator and a keyboard as a carrier1. The “instrument” sounded decisively uncanny, something in-between human and machine. Unlike anything heard before, it fitted the new musical climate like nothing else. Well-developed musical 1 Jonzun used the Roland SVC-350 Vocoder. This was a rack model that had two inputs for sound, one labelled “Microphone” and another labelled “Instrument”. The sound at the instrument input is set to define the pitch of the sound from the microphone input (Roland 1984, p. 4). 8 skills distilled from decades of musical traditions were no longer capturing the young crowd. As stated above: “the kids in the club wanted noise”. Many writers before me have analysed and described how technological developments —from the 20th century onwards – have brought about changes and new developments