C’è del fascino nella poetica degli oggetti trovati…

DbN take old cassette tapes found on flea markets and thrift stores and use them as raw material in fully live improvised electronic music performances.

The found tapes are sampled, manipulated, processed and ”physically played” using granular synthesis and other techniques, to create obscure rhythmical structures, noises and drones.

For each and every concert DbN use only cassette tapes found locally within the city or the area of the specific concert venue, making the raw material for every performance totally unique.

The audience is encouraged to bring their own cassette tapes to the venue for use in the performance.

DbN – The Found Tapes Project 2014 from DA BOOK on Vimeo.

Blue Gene Tyranny – The Transforms (1972 – 1992)

Within the environmental sounds were small events – rhythms, quasi-melodic inflections, ringing harmonics – a fine, sub-rosa level brought out by electronic scans called transforms’. Heard through small-band “windows”, the two channels cross-modulate each other, creating a simple field in which everything affects everything, like the body’s perceptors transducting an outside sound. The sensation of a transform is like the feeling left after a sound has ended, or a concert is over.

The transforms heard here are

• A Dream Without Images
  The feeling behind the action. A telegraphic ringing relaxes into cascades of harmonics, acetylcholine neurons flash in the brain, calcium deposits from exploding stars leave traces in the synapses, and we dream of being helpful for no reason at all, while sferics sweep the atmosphere.
• X Marks The Spot (Daydream)
  This music occurs simultaneously in both forward, historical time and backward, daydream time. This is analogous to interior imagination and visual perception physically sharing the same pathways only moving in opposite directions (in the occipital parietal temporal lobes). Background and foreground positions gradually cross from one world to the next, and curious illusions occur at the exact midpoint of this crossing (‘X’). “X Marks The Spot” at which the inside and the outside meet.

AGGIORNAMENTO 15/02

La particolarità di questi brani risiede nel fatto che derivano da registrazioni di suoni ambientali derivati da comuni attività giornaliere. I suoni della vita di tutti i giorni vengono isolati, trattati, a volte utilizzati come sorgenti di controllo per altri suoni. È questo modo di trovare la musica nei suoni di tutti i giorni che trovo degno di nota.

From High Zero Festival: Tomoko Sauvage And M.C. Schmidt In Concert

Surrounded by porcelain bowls, a mixer, effects pedals and bottles of Perrier, we sat rapt with curiosity as Tomoko Sauvage took the stage of the Theatre Project with Matmos member M.C. Schmidt. Sauvage poured carbonated water into the bowl closest to her, and she manipulated and looped the movements of the water itself, accented by the tranquil clinks of porcelain. Suspended above her mic stands were paper cups filled with water; she tore them ever so slightly, periodically releasing drips into the bowls below. It was an elegant (and more palatable) solution to John Cage’s chance operations, responding to random droplets with loops and delays through a mixer.

Listen to Tomoko Sauvage

More on High Zero Festival site

A new release from Test Tube.

Italian musician David Fungi returns to test tube with an old and curious recording. ‘Lost Lands’ was recorded nearly 10 years ago in an unusual place for doing so: a cave. Valganna, in Italy, has a series of caves well known for its acoustics, but David chose to record there not only because of that but also because a cave is a mystical an mythological place, believed to be a passage to unknown words, or unknown universes… Jules Verne, the science fiction pioneer, dreamed of it and wrote about it.

Essentially, ‘Lost Lands’ is an experimental piece which travels between a handful of different ‘ambiances’, from drone to calm and meditative based sequences, and near its end you can even feel a short sprout of soft clicks and cuts. This an excellent piece of great experimental music.

Pedro Leitão

Download page is here.

Listen to Lost Lands

A funny realization of Alvin Lucier’s “I am Sitting in a Room”, made by Christopher Penrose using the following text:

“I am standing in a long line at a crowded urban supermarket holding a bright yellow fly-swatter. I feel judged and mistrusted by many in the store as if I were brandishing a high-caliber firearm. There is even a dog here in the store barking at me. He knows that I am a premeditated killer of flies.”

16 iterations + original “spoken” text

Gerd Kühr: Trans, from Revue instrumentale et electronique (2004/5 according to the composer’s site, not 2007 as stated in the video)

Austrian composer Gerd Kühr is a professor of composition at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz; he also works as a conductor and once studied with Sergiu Celibidache. Kühr has also taken composition with Hans Werner Henze.

Kühr’s piece Revue instrumentale et electronique is divided into six sections. It is scored for nine spatially divided instrumental groups and electronics.

The transitions between the electronics and live sections is seamless; you are listening and you gradually realize “we are hearing electronic music now” as opposed to the live instruments. Kühr is very effective at devising novel instrumental timbres, such as the palpitating percussion and fleeting winds in the opening “Intro” and in the alien atmosphere of sustained notes in “Trans.”

“Construction in Space” (2000) by Olga Neuwirth for 4 orchestra groups, 4 solists and live electronics (excerpt).

Chaya Czernowin è una compositrice israeliana nata nel 1957. Vive in Austria.
Vi faccio ascoltare Ina, un buon brano con sonorità particolari, per flauto basso e 6 altri flauti (basso e ottavino) preregistrati.

Ulteriori informazioni su di lei si trovano nella sua pagina.

Chaya Czernowin – Ina, per flauto basso e 6 flauti preregistrati

“Written in 2003, On a Windy Day was inspired by wind chimes in Buddhist temples set deep in the mountains of Korea, where I used to visit as a child. I vaguely remember one afternoon hearing the chimes start to ring so softly and randomly that at first I didn’t even notice them. Then the wind got gustier and gustier, and the chimes got louder and faster along with the sound of leaves on the trees surrounding the temple, eventually creating this mass of loud, intense, intricate sound. Then, as soon as the wind calmed down, everything went back to its serene surroundings, yet left me with all those tingling sounds lasting in my ears.

“To emulate this experience, I wrote a descriptive score for metallic percussion and had it performed live a few times by various players; the end result was never satisfactory. However, as soon as I heard John Hollenbeck’s incredible interpretation of this score in a studio, I was more than ecstatic. An idea came to me to add Ikue Mori’s unique electronic sounds and bring even more depth and surrealism to the piece. The final recording is better than I’d ever imagined and feels just like revisiting that windy day from my long-gone childhood.”

[Okkyung Lee]

Okkyung Lee (b. 1975) is a composer and cellist whose music fuses her classical training with improvisation, jazz, traditional Korean music, and noise. Lee was born and raised in Daejon, Korea, and attended arts schools in Seoul. In 1993 she moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where she studied at Berklee College of Music and with Hankus Netsky at the New England Conservatory of Music. Since relocating to New York City in 2000, Lee has been very active in the downtown music scene, performing and recording with artists such as Derek Bailey, Nels Cline, Anthony Coleman, Shelley Hirsch, Eyvind Kang, Christian Marclay, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, Jim O’Rourke, Zeena Parkins, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, and John Zorn, among others.

• Okkyung Lee – On a Windy Day (2003), for percussion and electronics

Chris Brown‘s (b. 1953) music stems from the intersection of many different musical traditions and styles, including classical music, traditional Indonesian, Indian, Afro-American, and Cuban musics, and contemporary American experimental music. He has worked extensively with electronics, from amplified acoustic devices and analog sound modification to custom-made interactive computer systems. Collaboration and improvisation have played a significant role in the development of his work.

This [Retroscan] is the final section of a larger solo work Retrospectacles, in which the whole range of sounds possible from the piano, including sounds made directly on the strings, the frame, as well as the keyboard, provide sources for live electronic transformation by an interactive computer program. The music is a narrative about memory: each sound evolving out of the last, each playback with constantly varying pitch/time of sounds that have recently passed.
[Chris Brown]

 

• Chris Brown – Retroscan (2003), for piano & live electronics
  Chris Brown, piano, live electronics

Un software realizzato in PureData (pd su linux, il software simile a Max/MSP) controlla 8 solenoidi che picchiano su diversi oggetti producendo una ritmica. Il finale rivela la scarsa attitudine compositiva dell’autore, ma è comunque una applicazione che mostra le infinite possibilità del mezzo.

A software-sequencer  controls 8 solenoids, that knock on different things and therefore produce some rhythmic noise. Made with PureData, an arduino board and a selfmade relayboard to control the solenoids.

Aauuttooppooiieessiis è un brano dello sperimentatore austriaco Arno Steinacher pubblicato per la netlabel LuvSound.

Nei suoi lavori Steinacher cerca di tradurre modelli e idee scientifiche in musica. In questo caso l’idea alla base del brano è l’autopoiesi, termine coniato nel 1972 da Humberto Maturana a partire dalla parola greca auto, ovvero se stesso, e poiesis, ovverosia creazione. In pratica un sistema autopoietico è un sistema che ridefinisce continuamente sé stesso ed al proprio interno si sostiene e si riproduce. Un sistema autopoietico può quindi essere rappresentato come una rete di processi di creazione, trasformazione e distruzione di componenti che, interagendo fra loro, sostengono e rigenerano in continuazione lo stesso sistema [wikipedia].

Ne esce una musica piuttosto affascinante, minimale nella sua essenza, ma in continua trasformazione, dando l’idea di evoluzione automatica e spontanea.

Note dell’autore:

The basic idea of this work was to explore the term autopoiesis, which means selfcreation. In the context of theoretical life science, autopoiesis is often said to be the most fundamental principle of living systems.

To a certain extent autopoietic processes consist of repeated cycles of self-recurrance: glycolysis for instance, photosynthesis or autocatalytic RNA reactions. These processes are organized modular, forming a regulation network. As self-recurrance never happens exactly, there is space for errors and individuality, which in many systems causes something new on another level. This is one of life’s attributes: to create new dimensions spontaneously, another may be unrepeatablility.

“Aauuttooppooiieessiiss” reflects on and plays with these ideas. It consists of several loops with two main origins: instruments and machines, which stand for organic versus anorganic matter. The instrumental parts were all produced with electric guitar, the machine parts were for some part recorded in a factory near Vienna in 1999. Some loops run in parallel in many copies, but each copy differs in tempo and starting point. No situation in this work is repeated, every rhythm that emerges is ephemeric and takes place just one time, although it may be very similar to its neighboured ones, before and after. This ephemeric patterns that just arise at some times in this piece were my focus during the composition process.

One of the surprising results for me was that self-recurrence of machine sounds caused a more organic situation than the guitar-loops, which merely seemed to transform their sonic quality.

Arno Steinache – Aauuttooppooiieessiiss – mp3
pagina presso Internet archive da cui è possibile scaricare il brano anche in altri formati (FLAC, OGG).

“a pressure triggering dreams” (1996-1997) è un brano del compositore americano David Felder (b.1953), per orchestra ed elettroacustica dal vivo nella forma di campioni di flauto elaborati elettronicamente e affidati a un campionatore per l’esecuzione. Completano la parte elettrica un basso elettrico e una amplificazione selettiva di alcuni strumenti.

Concettualmente ho qualche riserva (i.e. perché proprio suoni di flauto?), ma il risultato sonoro non è male, frenetico e ad alta energia, anche se gli interventi elettronici si sentono solo in particolari punti e a volte si fatica a discernerli nella massa orchestrale.

Ma forse questo è proprio quello che il compositore voleva. Comunque ognuno può farsi la propria opinione. Ecco le note di programma e il brano

“The work a pressure triggering dreams was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra for Carnegie Hall, for a premiere in May 1997 … [It] was to be a work that included electronics. I elected to respond to this request by incorporating a companion ‘orchestra’ consisting entirely of computer-processed flute sounds within the orchestral tapestry and to expand the orchestra by using live sampler keyboard, electric bass, and by selectively amplifying solo instruments. […]

“The title is a rough translation of some remarks made by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy (1870-1871) when he is speaking of the effect of Richard Wagner’s musical language upon the listener — this remark characterized my subjective response to the piece I was then composing and therefore serves as a kind of emblem for the composition. A wide variety of materials (extracted from my series of ‘Crossfire’ pieces — soloists, electronics, video, and computer processing of acoustic materials made by the individual musicians) is deliberately compressed in the attempt to create an atmosphere of saturation somehow related to the experience of persistent musical afterimages suggested by Nietzsche’s brilliant observations. […]”

David Felder – a pressure triggering dreams (1996-1997), per orchestra e elettronica
Buffalo Festival Orchestra, Harvey Sollberger, conductor

Un’orchestra di gamelan campionati è quanto esce dalle mani di Evan Ziporyn, compositore americano nato nel 1959, che si dice fortemente influenzato dalla cultura balinese.

Il brano, in 6 movimenti, si intitola Amok! ed è del 1997. L’autore scrive

[Amok!] uses sample technology and the incredible virtuosity and dedication of the musicians to create an impossible musical landscape, a virtual gamelan and then some. Our voracious sampler eats up the whole gamelan and spits it out again, with chromatic gong scales, gigantic gangsa chord-clusters, six reong sections in different keys. Robert Black’s effect boxes and triggering devices allow his bass to match the 25-piece gamelan blow for blow. Melodies begin in the gamelan and find themselves someplace else; simple bass melodies, transformed by delay and harmonization, find their way to Bali and end up sounding almost traditional. The technology makes anything possible with enough megabytes of memory, and the exhiliration this creates is matched only by the terror of figuring out what to do with it. As soon as one abandons the safety of traditional form, western or Balinese, what is to be done? Nothing but to run amok and see what’s left standing when the smoke clears

 

• Evan Ziporyn – Amok! in una playlist che comprende i 6 movimenti + Trial Fire in 5 mov.

Robert Black, double bass
Gamelan Galak Tika
Evan Ziporyn, director, kendang (barrel drum)
with
Dan Schmidt, sampler
Alex Rigopulos, gamelan sampling

Questo brano di Costin Miereanu (Bucarest 1943, naturalizzato francese dal 77) è stato registrato al 9° Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea di Torino nel 1986 ed è scritto per clarinetto in Sib, corno, violino, violoncello, 2 perc., 3 synth DX7.

Costin, relativamente noto in Italia, avendo avuto anche un disco edito nella storica serie Cramps (Luna Cinese), è sempre stato un creatore di atmosfere raffinate e si conferma tale anche in questo brano che potete scaricare in flac da AGP o ascoltare qui sotto.

Costin Miereanu – Ombres lumineuses (1986)
Ensemble Antidogma, Daniel Tosi cond.

Niente a che fare con l’omonimo poema di Lautréamont. È un brano di musica elettronica composto da Rainer Riehn nel 1965/66 (revisione 1968/69) che ascoltavo spesso quando ero piccolo (16/17 anni).

Si tratta di un collage di materiali molto eterogenei, a tratti molto vicini al rumore, che sembrano derivare da fenomeni di interferenza, accostati spesso brutalmente, senza nessuna evoluzione.

Non posso dire che mi piacesse, ma mi affascinava perché era formalmente agli antipodi di quello che mi piaceva a quei tempi, cioè la stasi più totale: un solo suono che cambia lentamente in un tempo infinitamente lungo. Devo dire che, a distanza di tanti anni, mi affascina ancora. Comunque non ho ancora afferrato il collegamento con il poema di Lautréamont.

Rainer Riehn – Les Chants de Maldoror (1965/66 – 1968/69)

Acouasm si può tradurre con “acufene”.

Per acufene (tinnitus in latino e inglese) si intende quel disturbo costituito da rumori che, sotto diversa forma (fischi, ronzii, fruscii, crepitii, soffi, pulsazioni ecc.) vengono percepiti in un orecchio, in entrambi o in generale nella testa e che possono risultare fastidiosi a tal punto da influire sulla qualità della vita di chi ne soffre. Si originano all’interno dell’ apparato uditivo ma, alla loro prima comparsa vengono illusoriamente percepiti come suoni provenienti dall’ambiente esterno. [wikipedia]

Tuttavia il termine inglese “acouasm” ha una marcata connotazione allucinatoria. Indica, infatti, “a nonverbal auditory hallucination, as a ringing or hissing” [Random House Unabridged Dictionary].

Qui, Robert Scott Thompson, californiano, nato nel 1959, lo usa come titolo di un brano elettroacustico evocativo e soffuso:

…a musical essay on auditory memory, this work emphasizes sonic resonances, reverberating metallic timbres, and similar sounds in order to create an aural image of the psychological condition. A central sonic element is created by vocal simulation synthesis. The chant-like melodies of the synthetic singers are a thread of continuity which frames the overall work providing harmonic coherence and also helping to articulate formal structure.

Robert Scott Thompson – Acouasm (2001)
Nota: acouasm e acousma sono considerati sinonimi in inglese.

Alvin Lucier – Music for Solo Performer

The first work in history to use brain waves to generate sound. It was composed during the Winter of 1964-65, with the technical assistance of physicist Edmond Dewan, and was first performed on May 5, 1965, at the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University with the encouragement and participation of composer John Cage. Since then it has been performed many times by Alvin Lucier, in solo concerts and on tour in Europe and America with the Sonic Arts Union.
Electrodes are attached to the performer’s head to detect his alpha brain waves. His alpha brain waves are then transmitted by amplifiers to loudspeakers that are used to resonate percussion instruments placed around a concert hall.
Lucier wrote:

I realized the value of the EEG situation as a theater element … I was also touched by the image of the immobile if not paralyzed human being who, by merely changing states of visual attention, can activate … a large battery of percussion instruments including cymbals, gongs, bass drums, timpani, and other …

Performance realized by course members of Space, Environment & Context taught by Anne Wellmer – Generative Arts class Udk Berlin spring of 2018

MAKI ISHII was born in 1936 into an artistic family. In 1958 he settled in Germany, studying at the National Musical Academy in Berlin. He has written orchestral music (“Transition”), chamber works (“Aphorisms”), and electro-acoustic music.

KYOO was composed in 1968 and won an award at the National Arts Festival. The title, which means “echoes,” refers to the formal concept of the work: one sound giving rise to a family of sounds which in their turn engender other families, etc. There are various sound sources: piano, brass, percussion, and electronic devices. The instrumental sounds are heard sometimes in their original form and sometimes transformed electronically. The piano in particular is treated in a variety of ways: played normally, played according to the techniques of the “prepared piano,” and finally amplified and transformed instantaneously through microphones installed inside the frame.

KYOO è stato composto nel 1968 da MAKI ISHII (1936).
Il titolo significa echi ed è collegato alla forma del brano: ogni suono dà vita a una famiglia di suoni simili e da uno di qusti si parte per creare un nuovo insieme sonoro in una catena in continua mutazione sul filo delle analogie acustiche.
Le sorgenti sonore sono sia elettroniche che strumentali, queste ultime in forma sia strumentale che elaborata elettronicamente. Il pianoforte, in particolare, è trattato in molti modi: preparato, ampificato e elaborato in tempo reale tramite dei microfoni inseriti nella sua struttura.

Maki Ishii – Kyoo (1968)

Ilhan Mimaroglu è un compositore turco, nato nel 1926 ed emigrato negli USA, che ha prodotto parecchia musica elettronica analogica negli anni ’60.
Ora l’etichetta EARLabs ha ripubblicato i suoi lavori rendendoli accessibili qui.
Fra i brani disponibili, ho scelto il “Prelude for magnetic tape XI”, curioso in quanto l’unica sorgente sonora è un elastico di gomma le cui vibrazioni sono sotto la soglia udibile, ma possono essere incise da un apposito microfono e rese udibili con amplificazione e trasposizione.

Ilhan Mimaroglu – Prelude for magnetic tape XI
Att.ne: EARLabs usa ftp invece del solito http per il trasferimento dei file audio. Se il player del vostro sistema non funziona, scaricate il file con il tasto destro, salvatelo e poi ascoltatelo.

Un cofanetto di 4 dischi, Electronic Panorama, pubblicato da Philips negli anni ’70 e ormai fuori catalogo viene ora distribuito gratuitamente in formato digitale dal sito Earlabs.
Si tratta di materiale storico, rappresentativo di scuole diverse, prodotto dalle avanguardie elettroniche degli anni ’50 e ’60 negli studi di Parigi, Utrecht, Varsavia e Tokyo.
Come esempio ascoltate Screen di Jaap Vink (Utrecht), uno di quei brani stile grande fascia in auge alla fine degli anni ’60.

La pagine da cui scaricare sono

• Utrecht
• Warsaw
• Tokyo
• Paris