Category Archives: Electroacoustic

musica elettroacustica

Spazi Inabitabili

Posted on by

FRANCOIS BAYLE - Forced Exposure

François Bayle, french, born in Madagascar, student then assistant of Pierre Schaeffer (1958 to 62), director of INA/GRM musical research center from 1975 to 1997, can be seen as the founder of acousmatic music.
Acousmatic music is a specialised sub-set of electroacoustic music. It is created using non-acoustic technology, exists only in recorded form in a fixed medium, and is composed specifically to be heard over loudspeakers.
The term comes from the akusmatikoi, the outer circle of Pythagoras’ disciples who only heard their teacher speaking from behind a veil. In a similar way, one hears acousmatic music from behind the ‘veil’ of loudspeakers, without seeing the source of the sound.
Acousmatic composers use this invisibility of sound sources as a positive aspect of the creative process, in one of two ways. The first is to separate the listener from the visual and physical context of the sounds being used, in order to permit a more concentrated and abstract form of listening unencumbered by the real-world associations or ‘meaning’ of the sounds. This form of listening is known as reduced listening (a term coined by the acousmatic music pioneer Pierre Schaeffer), and it allows both acoustic and synthetic sounds to be used to create an abstract musical discourse the focus of which is the detail of individual sounds, and the evolution and interaction of these sounds. The second approach is to deliberately evoke real-world associations by using identifiable sounds (real world objects, voices, environments) to create mental images in sound.

Here you can listen to the Espaces inhabitables, d’après Bataille et Jules Vernes (1967)

Neptune

Posted on by

manouryPhilippe Manoury è attualmente uno dei più importanti ricercatori e compositori francesi. Attivo da anni nell’area della musica elettroacustica, avvalendosi della collaborazione di Miller Puckette, ha scritto alcuni dei primi lavori per strumento e elaborazione effettuata totalmente in tempo reale (Jupiter, 1987 e Pluton, 1988, entrambi inseriti nel ciclo Sonus ex Machina).

Qui vi presentiamo la parte 5 di Neptune (op. 21, 1991) per tre percussionisti ed elettronica. I percussionisti suonano 2 vibrafoni MIDI, tam-tam e marimba e sono elaborati e contrappuntati in tempo reale.

La chitarra nel 21° secolo

Posted on by

Spectra: guitar in the 21st century è una interessante compilation pubblicata dalla netlabel quietdesign.

I musicisti rappresentati sono in gran parte sconosciuti ai più, ma tutti sono impegnati ad estendere le possibilità di questo strumento spesso grazie anche all’inserimento dell’elettronica. E secondo me questo è uno dei casi in cui l’elettroacustica di confine supera nettamente la ricerca “accademica”. Mentre quest’ultima è ancora impegnata a porsi il problema dell’inserimento dell’elettronica in composizioni in gran parte acustiche, con relative problematiche come la standardizzazione della partitura, questi tipi, ai quali vanno sicuramente affiancati anche musicisti come l’Hans Reichel di qualche post fa e personaggi come Fred Frith, invece, agiscono.

Certo si può obiettare che forse il loro livello di progettualità è scarso, ma quando esiste la ricerca sonora, la progettualità la segue; è solo questione di elaborare delle idee a partire dai materiali sonori.

Gli artisti coinvolti sono:

  • tetuzi akiyama
  • cory allen
  • erdem helvacioglu
  • jandek
  • kim myhr
  • duane pitre
  • sebastien roux
  • keith rowe
  • mike vernusky

Alcuni estratti:

Mumma

Posted on by

mummaGordon Mumma è una figura storica della musica elettroacustica negli USA, Fondatore dell’Ann Arbor’s Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music con Robert Ashley, ha lavorato per la Merce Cunningham Dance Company (con John Cage e David Tudor) ed è stato membro della Sonic Arts Union con Ashley, Alvin Lucier e David Behrman.

Qui vi propongo il monumentale Megaton for William Burroughs del 1963, che meriterebbe di essere visto più che ascoltato, dato che gli esecutori (Robert Ashley, Harold Borkin, Milton Cohen, George Manupelli, Joseph Wehrer, Tony Dey e Gordon Mumma) sono alle prese con varie sculture sonore.

Megaton for Wm. Burroughs is a theatrical live-performance electronic-music composition with ten channels of sound. An ensemble of electro-acoustical sculpture, performed by five players, is heard from four of the channels. Six channels of composed tape are heard from the remaining loudspeakers. The performance takes place in the center of the space, with the audience surrounding the sculpture ensemble. All ten channels are heard from loudspeakers surrounding the audience.

“The thunderous four-minute introduction begins abruptly with a blackout. As the introduction fades, the sculpture gradually becomes visible, illuminated so that the performers are isolated from each other in the space. The performers communicate with each other by means of aircraft headsets. This communication coordinates the performance and is not heard by the audience.

“The live-performance section with the sculpture, which grows out of the fading introduction, occupies nearly half of the piece. The performers, isolated in space but communicating by their headsets, develop an increasingly complex sound montage with the electro-acoustical sculpture. Invisible taut-steel wires above the audience carry speeding, projectile-like flashing objects. The movement of these objects sets the overhead wires into vibrating resonances which, when amplified, become part of the sonic montage.

“As the illumination fades near the end of this live-performance section, a drone emerges and becomes recognizable as that of an aircraft squadron. The isolated images of the performed sculpture evolve through the drone into the sounds of World War II bomber crews communicating with each other from isolated parts of their aircraft during the course of a raid.

“The piece has evolved gradually but directly from its thunderous, abstract beginning through the electro-acoustical montage and into a cinema-real air raid. A brief burst of heroic movie music introduces the closing sequence: in an entirely different part of the space, in an isolated pool of light a lone drummer quietly rides his traps.”

Ode Machine

Posted on by

k. roweKeith Rowe, forse il prototipo dei chitarristi improvvisatori di scuola anglosassone, esegue un brano di Cornelius Cardew tratto dall’album “A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality” del 1990.

Solo prepared guitar recording from the AMM member who pioneered the table-top guitar technique in his free improvisations back in the ’60s and thus influenced everyone from Syd Barrett through to Fred Frith and Jim O’Rourke. A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality is a live recording of Rowe solo outside of the AMM context he shares with percussionist Eddie Prevost and pianist John Tilbury. The array of sounds that the Englishman coaxes from the mere six string instrument is phenomenal, and his art is to extend upon the prepared piano techniques pioneered by John Cage and apply them to the electric guitar. As ecstatic as Derek Bailey, the comparison stops there as Rowe scarcely even puts his fingers on the string, instead opting for radio feedback, arco, and any number of kitchen implements to attack the guitar. To the uninitiated this may sound like clattering mess of noise. A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality is certainly far from it, as the dexterity with which he approache…s abstraction is prodigal. It is no doubt then that everyone from Sonic Youth, Henry Kaiser, and even Frank Zappa could accredit Rowe as inspirational. His activities on recordings increased dramatically in the year 2000, with the proto-noise artist directing MIMEO and collaborating with improv mainstay Evan Parker on numerous recordings. This CD is a great document of one of his scarce solo performances.
[Martin Walters, All Music Guide]

 

Cornelius Cardew (Arr. K. Rowe) – Ode Machine No. 2
K. Rowe prepared guitar, voice
Recorded at the Holywell Music Room, Oxford on 5 July 1989

Fall

Posted on by

Kaija Saariaho – Fall – for harp and live electronics

Sanya Eng – Harp Adam Scime – Electronics

Moorer Interview

Posted on by

Gli amici di USO Project pubblicano una intervista in tre parti con James Andy Moorer, uno dei pionieri della computer music, che potete trovare sul loro blog.

Lohn

Posted on by

Extracts of a performance of Lohn, a piece for soprano and electronics by Kaija Saariaho, performed by Valérie Gabail, visual part conceived by Jean-Baptiste Barrière & realized by Pierre-Jean Bouyer, video by Isabelle Barrière.
More info on http://www.saariaho.org & http://www.barriere.org.

Duetto per un pianista

Posted on by

Susanne Achilles performs the Duet for One Pianist by Jean Claude Risset, an important name in computer music.

This piece, composed at MIT in 1989, is for disklavier and computer. The disklavier is a grand piano made by Yamaha, whose mechanics are motorized and can be controlled via MIDI. So the disklavier can play pieces on its own, but, more interestingly, a pianist’s performance data (pitches, dynamics, durations) can be sent, in real time, to a computer which can react by driving the disklavier according to rules formalized in software by the composer.

This is what happens in Duet for One Pianist, hence the title. The piece is divided into eight sketches in which the computer manipulates and sends back the material performed by the performer based on the principles cited in the title of each movement: Double, Mirror, Extensions, Fractals, Stretch, Resonances, Up Down and Metronome.

The pianist is accompanied, like a shadow, by a second, invisible performer, who plays his own piano with lowering keys.

En écho

Posted on by

Un estratto da un brano di Philippe Manoury (En écho, 1993-1994, testo di Emmanuel Hocquart) in cui il computer genera suoni in tempo reale seguendo l’esecuzione del soprano. In pratica il computer è in grado di ascoltare l’interprete e a fronte della partitura, riesce a seguirlo nonostante eventuali rallentando o accelerando.

In questo caso tutto è reso più semplice dal fatto che l’esecutore è un solista e non un ensemble, quindi si deve seguire una sola voce, ma anche così non si tratta di una faccenda banale.

Written in collaboration with programmer Miller Puckette, “En Echo” uses real time score-following software which responds to the singer’s voice. In Emille Hocquart’s text, a young woman recollects a heated affair.

“The computer is automatically following the voice,” Mr. Manoury explained. “It functions as what we call a ‘score-follower.’ The singer sings in tempo, or with an acceleration, and the computer synchronizes to make synthetic sounds that are deduced from alterations in the voice — not precalculated, but produced in real time. If the voice modifies the vowels, for example, it modifies the electronics.” Messrs. Manoury and Puckette have worked since the latter moved from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989 and joined Mr. Manoury at the famous studios at IRCAM (l’Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique), which Pierre Boulez founded in Paris.