Class #4 - A Stereophonic Sound Spec-tac-u-lar!
There is something unsettling about the sound of Electroacoustic music; something edgy and not completely finished. Blips and beats (or possible beats) that makes the listener ask the age old question: sound or music? The two examples of Stockhausen and Ussachevsky take a distinctively electronic sound which influences later electronic (i.e- techno, house, trance, IDM, etc...). What fascinates me is that all of a sudden in the 1950s electronic music burst onto the musical scene. Many electroacoustic labs were established and the study of electronic music was highly academic almost split down the middle of science and music. Now, of course with technological advances the electroacoustic labs have turned into laptops, programs, and code. Dartmouth Electroacoustic lab is a fine example of how this tradition has kept its place and has advanced. This leads me to pose the question: Why aren't there more academically centered electroacoustic labs? Is picking a laptop up with MAX/MSP, or C Sound or even Propellerhead software enough? A self-contained unit of musical ingenuity? Or has this period of innovation burned out its searchlight of discovery? Then again, why don't I just ask: where is music in today's modern society?! No, I don't need to go that far, point in being is that somehow electroacoustic music has mutated. I want to mark this change with the Moog synthesizer, but it could also be marked with Eno's early pioneering.
I was extremely taken with Eno's French Catalogues. This piece was on Eno's breakthrough Discreet Music album. I haven't gotten lost in a piece of music like that in quite a while. Something that is that beautiful and hits ones ears, like it did, really just took me for a ride into the atmospheric soundscapes of Eno-ness. Pachelbel's Canon in D Major is basically on the 'Classical Top 10' and here Eno presents it, more or less mangles it, into something that rivals, and in my perspective exceeds, the beauty of the original. In someway I can hear this being played at my wedding in the distant future, the thought scares me, instead of the original. I would also like to note on iTunes music store Eno's Discreet Music is classified as being Rock... Interesting choice of classification, once again the line is blurred between rock and classical. The debate will roll for decades!
Comparing Usshcaevsky's Wireless Fantasy and Stockhausen's Kontakte is extremely hard to do. Although quite close in general characteristics, when doing a listening analysis it becomes apparent that the two pieces are apples and oranges; both fruit, but entirely different. Wireless Fantasy is based on code signals which somehow in the mix of noise and musical excerpts mixes in Wagner's Parsifal. Wireless Fantasy is a constant blur of different radio signals all mixed up as if one was 'channel surfing' through the radio and somehow picked up all these different sounds. When I heard it in class I kind of chuckled to myself thinking thats sounds a bit like the opening to Radiohead's (somehow, they are finding their way into every facet of this class...) Climbing Up the Walls when they do it live. Johnny (the composer musical extraordinaire who I mentioned in the last post) sits on the stage with a radio and runs it through a row of effects pedals. He changes the stations frequencies, and usually programs the radio beforehand to only be set for talk radio stations. He effects the voice and the radio signal to create a haunting musical atmosphere that coincides with the dark subject matter of the song. I also made another Radiohead connection to the quote about the Beetles and Stockhausen (this connection is in personal opinion not fact). Stockhausen claims that the John Lennon was one of the "most important mediators between popular and serious music" in the past century. With all the connections to Radiohead and classical music, I like to think that Radiohead is bridging that gap as well in their own modern sense. Right now many scholarly publications are being published connecting Radiohead to classical music. For further reading (I have not read the book yet, but I have read the forward and it is engaging.): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0754639800/qid=1128662258/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3165768-1510528?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Back to Stockhausen, his work Kontakte is a little warmer and crosses the gaps between tonal and serial music. Stockhausen took serial music and pushed its boundaries a little further than his forefathers (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern - Second Viennese School) by serializing even pitches and rhythms. This was highly complex and organized music.
Reflecting back upon our Metal Presentation, I find it hard to believe we actually all talked for a total of an hour and a half solidly on Metal. At the end of the presentations it hit me that Metal could be its own genre of music completely separate from Rock. Metals roots are in Rock, but Metal is such an expansive musical category and there are so many different forms and styles contained in the genre that sets it apart. I was overall impressed with the groups efforts, we covered a great chunk of what metal is. I really enjoyed researching art metal, I had no ideas there were so many parallels with my favorite rock genres and metal. This research makes metal a little more accessible to my general musical understanding (Even though metal wasn't that far of a reach in the first place. Like anything different it has its 'adaptation nuances.') In later research I found a great Metal database:
http://www.metalstorm.ee/
I also found a good online Metal Radio station:
http://www.gargoyledawn.com/msr/playing.php
I was extremely taken with Eno's French Catalogues. This piece was on Eno's breakthrough Discreet Music album. I haven't gotten lost in a piece of music like that in quite a while. Something that is that beautiful and hits ones ears, like it did, really just took me for a ride into the atmospheric soundscapes of Eno-ness. Pachelbel's Canon in D Major is basically on the 'Classical Top 10' and here Eno presents it, more or less mangles it, into something that rivals, and in my perspective exceeds, the beauty of the original. In someway I can hear this being played at my wedding in the distant future, the thought scares me, instead of the original. I would also like to note on iTunes music store Eno's Discreet Music is classified as being Rock... Interesting choice of classification, once again the line is blurred between rock and classical. The debate will roll for decades!
Comparing Usshcaevsky's Wireless Fantasy and Stockhausen's Kontakte is extremely hard to do. Although quite close in general characteristics, when doing a listening analysis it becomes apparent that the two pieces are apples and oranges; both fruit, but entirely different. Wireless Fantasy is based on code signals which somehow in the mix of noise and musical excerpts mixes in Wagner's Parsifal. Wireless Fantasy is a constant blur of different radio signals all mixed up as if one was 'channel surfing' through the radio and somehow picked up all these different sounds. When I heard it in class I kind of chuckled to myself thinking thats sounds a bit like the opening to Radiohead's (somehow, they are finding their way into every facet of this class...) Climbing Up the Walls when they do it live. Johnny (the composer musical extraordinaire who I mentioned in the last post) sits on the stage with a radio and runs it through a row of effects pedals. He changes the stations frequencies, and usually programs the radio beforehand to only be set for talk radio stations. He effects the voice and the radio signal to create a haunting musical atmosphere that coincides with the dark subject matter of the song. I also made another Radiohead connection to the quote about the Beetles and Stockhausen (this connection is in personal opinion not fact). Stockhausen claims that the John Lennon was one of the "most important mediators between popular and serious music" in the past century. With all the connections to Radiohead and classical music, I like to think that Radiohead is bridging that gap as well in their own modern sense. Right now many scholarly publications are being published connecting Radiohead to classical music. For further reading (I have not read the book yet, but I have read the forward and it is engaging.): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0754639800/qid=1128662258/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3165768-1510528?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Back to Stockhausen, his work Kontakte is a little warmer and crosses the gaps between tonal and serial music. Stockhausen took serial music and pushed its boundaries a little further than his forefathers (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern - Second Viennese School) by serializing even pitches and rhythms. This was highly complex and organized music.
Reflecting back upon our Metal Presentation, I find it hard to believe we actually all talked for a total of an hour and a half solidly on Metal. At the end of the presentations it hit me that Metal could be its own genre of music completely separate from Rock. Metals roots are in Rock, but Metal is such an expansive musical category and there are so many different forms and styles contained in the genre that sets it apart. I was overall impressed with the groups efforts, we covered a great chunk of what metal is. I really enjoyed researching art metal, I had no ideas there were so many parallels with my favorite rock genres and metal. This research makes metal a little more accessible to my general musical understanding (Even though metal wasn't that far of a reach in the first place. Like anything different it has its 'adaptation nuances.') In later research I found a great Metal database:
http://www.metalstorm.ee/
I also found a good online Metal Radio station:
http://www.gargoyledawn.com/msr/playing.php
| Permalink | E-mail this post 
