Singing in the Machine

Transcription

Singing In The Machine
or
To what extent does intuition strongly relate to electronic music?
Victor Fischl
BA Fine Art
4D Pathway
Studio tutor
John Seth
Critical studies tutor
Paul O’Kane
Stockhausen, K. 1955-56. Gesang der
Jünglinge [Sound recording] Cologne: Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Singing in the machine or to what extent does intuition strongly relate to electronic music?
Throughout this dissertation, the term “electronic music” will refer to music that uses electricity
in order to be heard. This then includes music that makes use of electroacoustic and synthesised
sounds, but also any recorded music. But for the term music… well, we could get some help
from major composers of the 20th century.
Aphex Twin. 1999. Window Licker [Sound
recording] UK: Warp Records
Karlheinz Stockhausen, what is music? “Organised sounds, organised by another human being”.
Edgar Varese, why organised sounds? Pourquoi des sons organisés?
Stockhausen, K., Allied Artists London.
1972. Lecture 5 - Four Criteria of Electronic
Music (KONTAKTE) + Q&A (100 + 47 minutes). [Video online] Available at: <http://
www.ubu.com/film/stockhausen_lectures5.
html> [Accessed 16 January 2014].
“Bah quand je dis sons organisés, on sait ce que ça veux dire” Well, when I say organised sounds,
Varèse, E., Charbonnier, G., Laporte, A.
2005. Les mémorables d’edgar varèse (french
radio broadcasts) original recording 1955
[Download] Available at <http://www.ubu.
com/sound/varese.html> [Accessed 17
October 2014].
“et on sait ce que l’organisation est” and we know what organisation is
we knows what it means
“Après tout on sait ce qu’un son est” after all, we know what a sound is
“quand vous dites musique c’est très vague” when you say music it is very vague
The term intuition will be discussed soon, to be followed by an analysis of certain composing
and listening situations, and closed with thoughts on significant aspects of the relationship between intuition and sounds…
To what extent does intuition strongly relate to electronic music?
Discussing around this question will lead us to explore how sound links in space, time and
minds.
This is the reason behind choosing this sonic form, through which I will make an attempt to
have “die richtige mischung” the right composition of fragmented sounds.
This process was described metaphorically in the opening of a children radio programme produced by Walter Benjamin; it went as follow:
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Benjamin, W., Harald, W. 2002. Aufklärung
für Kinder 1929-1932 Radio Bremen
[Download] Available at: <http://www.ubu.
com/sound/benjamin.html> [Accessed 16
January 2014].
“Have you ever been waiting at the pharmacist and observed how he makes a drug?
On a scale, with very fine weights, he weighs all ingredients and substances gram for gram or
centigram for centigram, in order to produce the finished powder.
It is the same for me when I tell you something on the radio. My weights are the minutes and I
also have to weight precisely how much of this one, how much of each one, so that the mixture
turns out right.”
Intuition – Intuition –
Singing in the machine
Singing with the machine
Sit at the kitchen table and listen to our friend Sion Piough,
when he was listening to singings,
when waiting for the washing machine to finish its task one afternoon in October 2013.
“We’ve, you know, developed over centuries and centuries something that we think of as
correct almost with singing in particular and
Piough, S., Fischl, V. 2013. Sion at the kitchen table [Sound recording] 10 October 2013,
London.
like
to me that didn’t sound anything like that but
I can imagine that your appreciation for a singer is just completely different so instead of commanding somebody for being able to
kind of
hit the right notes or sound perfect in the way
that an opera singer in Europe might,
maybe for them you know they look for something
completely different and maybe it isn’t even about kind of other people’s interpretation at all I
don’t know it’s just
to me
that to me sounded good but if with my sort of western ear it
kind of sounds like somebody just making a bad nose really
4
5
mm but I hear so much more than that yeah
London.
feel some kind of expression as if they were
more worried about how the sounds they’re producing impact themselves rather than how it
sits within space
yeah that just
yeah I think maybe it’s kind of like an absence of even that thought perhaps
it’s a pure, it’s a moment where they get into a kind of
because of the drums and then whatever comes out of the mouth
trance-like state
isn’t really erm erm erm…
What happens if we compare singing with the making of electronic music?
Isn’t singing a characteristic trait of the human beings? Something that concerns our body only?
How could it relate to using electroacoustic instruments, computers or recording equipment?
Tomatis, A. 1991. The Conscious ear: my life
of transformation through listening Page 125
.Station Hill Press
Well, First of all, the otolaryngologist Alfred Tomatis outlines
in his autobiography
that the
oral cavity, the tongue, the soft palate and the larynx,.. are biologically not made for language or
singing, as they are digestive and respiratory organs that we, human beings, have learned to use
together as a sound modelling tool.
“now let’s try to analyse what happens when a parrot imitates
thing.
Huxley, A. 1961. What a piece of work man
is, Aldous Huxley lecture at M.I.T. in September 1961 [Download]. Available at <http://
newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/weekend-gallimaufry-aldous-huxley-lect> [Accessed 23 October 2013].
a human voice saying some-
Presumably the parrot consciously hears the human voice repeating this phrase,
whatever it may be, and after hearing it some time and this evidently
mind, such as it is
and
penetrates into its
then something inside the parrot gets to work and proceeds to
organise a noise making apparatus, which in the bird is radically different from the human noise
apparatus noise making apparatus we have after all tongue, teeth, soft palate,
tongue of quite different shape,
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they have a
they have a beak, they have no soft palate, they have no teeth, and and yet the imitation the
parrot can give
Peau d’âne. 1970. [DVD] Demy, J. France:
Parc Film Marianne Productions.
is sometimes so good that dogs will be deceived by the
by the bird calling out
and they think it’s their master’s voice and even, occasionally, I think human beings can even be
deceived
by the parrot’s words and think that this is another human being speaking”
Perhaps Aldous Huxley has just explained, with the example of the parrot, the intuitive process
that Guillaume Apollinaire describes when defining his neologism: “surrealism” in the forewords of the opera “the Breasts of Tiresias”:
Risset, JC. 1969. Mutations. [Sound recording] Paris: INA-GRM
Evans, J., Fischl, V. 2013. Breakfast talks
[Sound recording] October 2013
Apollinaire, G. 1917. Les mamelles de tirésias.
Préface. Available at <http://wikilivres.ca/
wiki/Les_Mamelles_de_Tirésias/Préface>[Accessed 17 January 2014].
quote in French is (english in the text is my
translation): “Quand l’homme a voulu imiter
la marche, il a créé la roue qui ne ressemble
pas à une jambe. Il a fait ainsi du surréalisme
sans le savor.”
“When man has tried to imitate walking, he has created the wheel which does not resemble a
leg. Thus he has done surrealism without noticing.”
So, Humans using sound modelling tools may well be
surrealist parrots…
“erm the interesting thing for me about electronic music is that it doesn’t
‘cause music
classical music up until whenever you know modernism or something
though it changes kind of uses a similar structure of
of
scale
things
it doesn’t
of
rhythm of just
even
especially western music it has an idea
things to confine it, so you have four four you have and
even if they break that convention they still have that to break. Erm and I think there’s
something something of that nature does exist with electronic music but it’s it’s not it doesn’t
it’s more the idea of sound as opposed to the idea of
ly
erm sound itself you know the the real-
ermm so it’s not about relationships between notes and then which is kind of more like
it’s based on piano but if you’d based it on a speaker for example
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you have relationships
of frequency that are kind of similar to scale and stuff but are just
more experiential”
“The supernatural world as far as I’m concerned is in effect the genuinely natural world, which
is the world of immediate without all these concepts imposed upon it”
Huxley, A. 1961. Aldous huxley 1961 london
interview, Psychedelic Salon. [podcast].
January 2010. Available at <http://www.
matrixmasters.net/salon/?p=248> [Accessed
16 January 2014].
Intuitive electronic music making and listening may well be a gateway to what Huxley has just
defined as the world of immediate experience.
In an essay about computer music Pierre Schaeffer agrees with this by placing this connection
between intuition and composition in opposition to a mathematical way of making music, like
the methods used in Iannis Xenakis’s music research.
So in 1970, Schaeffer puts forth that
“The real question concerns neither musical data processing nor computers for making music.
Here is the real question: what is the relationship between music and computation? Can music
be resolved by numbers?
Schaeffer, P. 1970. Computer music. UNESCO/
La revue Musicale, Stockholm & Paris Page
58. [PDF] Available at <http://www.ubu.com/
emr/books.html> [Accessed 17 January 2014].
If so, then it is obviously intended for computer processing. If not,
then computers are going to put music research on to the wrong road for a long time to come.
Finally, a still better question: What, in music, can be reduced to computation? As soon as this
question can be answered, then it will be possible to know what should be given to computers
and what should be left to intuitive Human beings.”
Oh, Stockhausen, has got something to say:
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“New means change the method, new method change the experience and new experiences
change man, in particularly in the field of music because the sound waves penetrate very deep
into the molecular and atomic layers of ourselves, whenever we hear sounds, we are changed, we
are no longer the same”
So you agree with Marshall Mcluhan, when he wrote in the Medium is the Massage:
McLuhan, M., Simon, J., Fiore, Q., & Agel,
J. 1968. The Medium is the Massage; with
Marshall McLuhan [Download]. Available
at <http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/
mcluhan_marshall/Mcluhan-Marshall_TheMedium-Is-The-Massage_02-Stereo.mp3,
http://www.ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html>
[Accessed 16 January 2014].
“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”
He did not say “we create” our tools, but we “shape them”.
And this links back to the analogy we’ve made earlier when stating that we have shaped our digestive and respiratory system to enable Singing and Language. Well the fact that that Language,
this new tool, has shaped “us” is quite obvious.
Similarly, contemporary man has associated electrical current, metals and minerals in order to
make music; and so, these new instruments, these new tools, inevitably shape us.
The question that arises is How?
There are no straight answers. Electronic music composer Maryanne Amacher proposes to learn
Amacher, M. 1980. Living Sound, SoundJoined Room series [Sound recording]
about dimensions in sounds by composing experientially:
“It was really these situations in my studio, both in Boston and in New York when I had
Amacher, M. 1989. Maryanne Amacher
speaking at Ars Electronica 1989 - Linz
Austria [Video online]. Available at <http://
vimeo.com/30955464> [Accessed 16 January 2014].
sound coming in and I could analyse it
and experience it and learn about dimension in
sound”.
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the
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How do these new tools shape us?
Amacher, M. 1980. Living Sound, SoundJoined Room series [Sound recording]
Maybe we simply cannot say how, or as Jean-Claude Risset will say, we just cannot talk about it.
“Talking about music is somehow like talking about the taste of orange as compared to tangerine, it’s of course proof of the cake is in the eating as they say, not in the recipe and this is
Risset, JC. 2011. Music is meant to be heard:
Perception is central in (my) computer music
[Video online]. Available at <http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=nOv30rHV7Ds>
very true for computer synthesis”
Listen!
Listening to electronic music is then key to grasping how it may shape us. However there are
multitudes of ways of listening to music.
It has been argued, up until now, that listeners can access intuitive dimensions when they try to
imitate or organise sounds. But they are other ways of sonically entering the world of immediate
experience. Let’s sit by my kitchen table once again with Sion Piough, when he tells the story of
one of his deep listening experience:
Sun O))). 2009. Alice, Monoliths & Dimensions [Sound recording] Southern Lord.
“it was they you know people said that they were the loudest band in the world at different
times and stuff so I was
London.
I went there you know with a sort of
it was like a blind date
almost I didn’t really know what I was going to until they came out like dressed in hooded
cloaks and stuff like this there’s no drums in it and there’s just like five guitarists who is it fifty
amps what band is it Sun O))) and
yeah
yeah
At one point I clo I just close my eyes
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‘cause I do that in gigs anyway but at this one seemed particularly appropriate and I found this
Sun O))). 2009. Alice, Monoliths & Dimensions [Sound recording] Southern Lord.
place where I could sort of lean and just be like this and the internal the journey that they
took me on
my mind
London.
control
thing
was
but
it felt almost like it was completely out of my hands you know it was
it was like a mushroom trip almost it sort of feels as if
somebody else is in
somebody something else is in control of of the thoughts that the sort of
and
ments what
yeah I was like walking through these
really
sort of
internal
cold horrible environ-
you might sort of describe as like hell you know walking into hell , but it wasn’t
bad, it was quite exciting
I didn’t want to stay there but I wasn’t scared or anything you
know it wasn’t like oh no
it was just kind of like
oh this is fucking weird”
Sion proposes there to deprive oneself from other senses than hearing, such as sight, and let the
body at rest when listening to this type of amplified music, with long sounds that distort the
Eloy, JC. 1973. Son de Méditation, Shanti
[Sound recording] France: Hors Territoires
perception of time, sometimes called drones.
I have had a similar experience in a concert by Jean-Claude Eloy back in June 2013, where the
lights were turned off and the seats comfortable.
These accounts are clearly highly subjective. It is perfectly acceptable not to experience any of
these symptoms when in the same position and at the same place. For example my girlfriend,
who was sitting next to me at this concert got extremely bored.
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Eloy, JC. 1973. Son de Méditation, Shanti
[Sound recording] France: Hors Territoires
Actual quote is: “Truly, one is obliged to accept the inevitable, which amounts to paraphrasing Pascal: “ The ear has its reasons that
physics does not understand…””
Schaeffer, P. 1970. Computer music. UNESCO/
La revue Musicale, Stockholm & Paris Page
79. [PDF] Available at <http://www.ubu.com/
emr/books.html> [Accessed 17 January 2014].
“the ear has its reasons that physics does not understand”
mm it’s quite interesting
it’s Schaeffer
I’d say the
yeah ok I see what he’s saying but
it’s the ear-mind”
This last approach leads us to believe, that these musical situations put emphasis on the listener’s own mind-set.
“you know as well I think I told you La Monte Young ‘cause I’ve got this compilation of
yeah La Motte Young so he plays two
Young, LM. 1969. Drift Study 31 I 69
12:17:30 - 12:49:58 PM NYC [Sound recording]. United States.
something
I think it must be two slightly different frequencies or
through one through the left channel one through the right channel and you
think it’s a constant drone until you turn your head and kind of you’re leaning towards the left
speaker for example and then it becomes a different tone and when you change it that way it
becomes a different tone
so you are creating the
the music”
You are creating the music. It is now time to read from Max Neuhaus’s Notes On Place and Moment, as he writes about one of his sound installation entitled “Three to One”:
“There is a wonderful contradiction in Three to One that not many people see, although they all
Neuhaus, M. 1993. Notes on Place and Moment
[PDF]. Available at <http://ubumexico.centro.
org.mx/text/emr/articles/neuhaus_notes.pdf>
hear it without realizing it. The three spaces, although visually distinct, are for the ear one large
space because of the opening for the stairway connecting them in their centers. Yet when you
first encounter these spaces you you hear separate sounds on each floor, three distinct layers in
what is acoustically one space. […] After you’ve heard these common components in their three
different contexts, your memory comes into play. The sounds of the three floors fuse into one
whole with many variations – the perceiver’s perception of the unity.”
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When memory links space and time…
hey Jo, could you tell us about your rather peculiar relationship with one of the Shangri Las’s
songs?
“well like you know the song
The Sangri-Las. 1964. Remember (walking in
the sand) [Sound Recording]
incidence of
Remember walking in the sand by the Shangri Las yeah so yeah the first time
I experienced that
Barett, F., Doyle, M., Dobble, S. 2013. The
drowned man: a hollywood fable Punchdrunk
[Live performance]. 1 October 2013, London.
was Sion playing it to me and I really loved the song, listened to it a
couple more times and then experienced it the first time watching Punchdrunk
memory of it
Light Eye Mind. 2013. Lucia No. 3 Public
neuro-simulator lamp in Lucid Light Salon
[Performance]. 18 October 2013, London.
I think we’ve played it here and I think I spoke about the co-
it was
and I really enjoyed it
so then my
because I remember it through you know it was a shared experience
with Sion
I kind of was linking it to that memory and the next
time I listened to it after the Drowned Man which was in
the Light Eye Mind I was imme-
diately taken back to that and I was just linking these two moments together and it was changing my whole frame of how I was acting in this new moment even though I was still responding
to the song and the space and the next time I went to see Punchdrunk then I didn’t
experi-
ence it for the entirely thing ‘cause they’ve changed it they changed the musical score and maybe I was just in a different place I didn’t see it until the very last scene that I saw
and it was it was acted out differently so a character was miming the song to a whole group
of people and I just wondered in drawn to the you know the swell of the sound watching two
characters dancing
and then I was taken back to Light Eye Mind I was like there’s
I’ve got
this tapestry of of a history of a song that is neither it’s not in any place now know what I mean
‘cause the song was recording in the sixties I wasn’t around then
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but I’ve still got this
The Sangri-Las. 1964. Remember (walking in the sand) [Sound Recording]
there’s something that doesn’t really exist in time
think it’s no I you know we, as listeners always bring it
when you are listening to music that
music I don’t
to the present it’s not just about
or to a sound that you are experiencing the sound it’s
not that idea of the present being a millisecond of acoustic sound
at all
it can be years later
erm you know.”
Sion’s trip to hell, the concert I went to, Max Neuhaus’s notes or Jo’s story, all tell us how important is, to the listening experience of electronic music, where it is being played, to whom and
how it sits within the listener’s memory.
“there’s a famous piece by
Stockhausen called Telemusik, which which is only
which is composed for record so it’s only being performed
every time you play it
through your
being played
but he sees it as a performance
yeah”
or at least, this is what I thought when I’ve said that a few months ago, I thought it was a great
way of outlining the latter point about the importance of where electronic music is being played,
to whom and how it sits within the listener’s memory, but when verifying my source, I have realised that I had over time somewhat distorted what Stockhausen meant:
1972. Lecture 6- Telemusik. [Video online]
Available at: <http://www.ubu.com/film/
stockhausen_lectures6.html> [Accessed 16
January 2014].
“Telemusic is music which exists only on tape and can only be heard through means of the reproduction of a tape recorder and loud speakers”
However, any record fulfils my imagined performative work of art.
And in fact, playing records or any form recordings,
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repeatedly seems to lead to some form of acceptance, of familiarity with the music.
“we can listen to it over and over again it’s being
even make your dad listen to Jungle
it’s being spread on the radio now you can
because he heard it loads of time on watch on TV
listen to radio wherever that he’s not gonna be
shocked he’s just gonna say yeah ok yeah
good this is a “
“Also because the popular music you know proliferated through these weird you know these
group of machines you know wind up gramophones in-car stereos transistor radios ipads
ipods sorry walkman there’s a kind of there’s there’s a lovely kind of love affair anyway between
O’Kane, P. 2013. Dissertation group tutorial
on 17 October 2013 [Sound recording].
the popular songs that people used to just sing to each other or play on the piano it becomes
quickly technologised and they almost sort of drive each other in a way the popularity of music
drives the need for technologies to
like can I get it in the car can I get it walking down the
street can I have on the bus this sort of desire but but at the base of that desire it’s something
like folk you know the idea of popular pop
“yeah that’s such a good point because
the radio or whatever
music that I
music is important to people”
I grew up listening to music that was kind of
kind of despise now
having you know
about it what what it means and the message and the recording techniques and
still can’t help to sing it mm
because it’s been engrained on me
on
really thinking
and but I
so there is a familiarity to it
that takes me to a place that is maybe comfortable”
Through which technology, where and in what set of mind one is listening to electronic music,
what associations of memories we each make,
all these aspects define and direct the listener’s
access to intuitive dimensions.
These dimensions however are so subjective, so down to each other’s perception and whatever
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arguably, ego dimensions, or, thought-driven-dimensions.
Let us now explore the extreme opposite: the do-not-think dimensions.
Stockhausen has composed a piece that relies entirely on the performers’ lack of thoughts. It is
called “it”. The score, part of his Intuitive music series, goes as follow:
“Think nothing
1972. Lecture 4 - Intuitive Music (IT) + Q&A
(34 + 49 minutes). [Video online] Available
at: <http://www.ubu.com/film/stockhausen_
lectures4.html> [Accessed 16 January 2014].
gin to play
ing
Stockhausen, K., PTYX. 2011. Es [Video
online]. Available at <http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=ILDk5UP3MDc> [Accessed
16 January 2014].
wait until it is absolutely still within you
as soon as you start to think
then continue
“it’s interesting it’s
that is
playing
stop
when you have attained this
be-
and try to re-attain the state of non-think-
that’s all”
intellectually it makes you think on a conceptual level about something
away from that is
that is that is about the the lack of concept so in some ways it’s
pretty it’s a pretty interesting piece of work yeah but that’s in that respect I think that ‘s why it’s
a tex it’s a score yeah yeah he doesn’t like give you a video of someone doing it no I mean it’s
not for the it’s not for a spectator it is for the person doing it mm it’s an instruction it’s not
a
it’s kind of a performance but it’s not intended for an audience I don’t think well they did it
though really I’ve well for me I think interpreting that work it is like what you’ve just said
then it’s way more interesting for the yeah the active person.
In composition itself I find intuition very very important
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but yet when you push it so far
that you you do whatever Stockhausen piece then the result is not a
intuition catalyst
erm for the listener or maybe you know you know what I mean by intuition catalyst maybe
Stockhausen, K., PTYX. 2011. Es [Video
com/watch?v=ILDk5UP3MDc> [Accessed
16 January 2014].
something that helps you remove your normal stream of consciousness norsthream stream of
thought”
Chan S. 2006. Liturgical theology : the church
as worshiping community Page 95. Downers
Grove, III. :IVP Academic
book quotes Evagrius the Solitary
“But you can also act now now now now now and stop the thinking and as soon as you start
thinking Oh I just did it I must stop”
“I just think I mean got a
be careful like what do you mean by thinking”
“what what what we call thinking”
“I’m not gonna think about you know for example what I’m gonna cook for tea or whatever
you know I’m but that’s a different kind of thought to conscious rational thoughts”
1972. Lecture 4 - Intuitive Music (IT) + Q&A
(34 + 49 minutes). [Video online] Available
at: <http://www.ubu.com/film/stockhausen_
lectures4.html> [Accessed 16 January 2014].
“Now I come to the
pianist he said it’s impossible I think all the time he said what you’re
asking for is absolutely impossible well I well I said erm
can’t you stop he said no no I I
can’t stop thinking that’s ridiculous when I’m not here then I think of my next concert or I’m
rehearse rehearsing the tenth piano piece in my memory I’m always thinking
well I said stop
it “
In many old religions, not to think is spiritual praying.
For example the Christian Evagrios the Solitary, who was born in 345, claims that
“You cannot attain pure prayer while entangled in material things and agitated by constant
cares.
For prayer means the shedding of thoughts.”
And this meets the ideas of Zen Buddhist Huangbo Xiyun, who died in 850:
“if you can only rid yourself of conceptual thoughts you will have accomplished everything
Xiyun, H., Blofeld J., 2011. Huang Po - audio
- Chapters 6-9 [Video online]. Available at <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcIQD1KUPUk> [Accessed 16 January 2014].
whether one transcends conceptual thoughts by a longer or shorter way the result is a state of
being”
This State of Non-Thinking is attained in some shamanic practices by repetitive drumming.
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PhD student Zoe Bran explains that “the vast majority of men and women making the journey
Brân, Z. 2013. The return of the Shaman and
Michael Harner. Recordings by Victor Fischl
at Altered Consciousness 27-28 November
2013 [Sound Recording]
for shamanic purposes use percussive sounds drumming or in the case of the green-land shaman here banging sticks together”
About 15 years ago I was walking a long distance with a group of catholic scouts in the south
of France. I was complaining about my melting feet when the priest told me to repeat “Jesus je
t’aime, Jesus je t’aime, Jesus je t’aime” for every step I made. This did not make me love Jesus but
it did make me forget about my pains, my body, stop thinking.
Watts, A. 197?. Alan Watts - Teachings on
Meditation - Listen [3/10] [Video online]
Available at < http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=7g4xScH0Sdk> [Accessed 16
January 2014].
“there is a very effective mantra used by an important sect of Islamic mystics know as Suffis
Jacky Murda. 2007. Three piece suit Survival
Story-The Ragga Jungle Compilation Vol 1
[CD] Not On Label
You surely have already heard some Jungle?
you can easily do this one with me it goes like this Allah allah allah allah allah allah…”
Some Techno?
DDR & The Geezer. 1997. Mad Cows On
Acid [Sound recording] London: Smitten
Some Dub?
High Tone. 2002. Spiral Snake. Acid Dub
Nucleik [Sound recording] France: Jarring
effects
Some Trance?
Cosmosis. 1996. Cannabanoid [Sound
recording] UK: Transient Records
Dance music is the most popular electronic music.
It has two decisive characteristics in the composition: repetition and very present low frequencies.
Penniman, R., Blackwell, R.A., Johnson,
E. 1956. Long Tall Sally [Sound recording]
New-Orleans: Specialty
The repetition of phrases that one can hear in other dance music such as Swing Jazz, Rock’n Roll
or Folk, is here pushed to the extreme
McBride W. 1996. Basketball Heroes [Sound
recording] US: Communique Records
and the development doesn’t only occur in changes of keys and rhythmic patterns
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Les tambours d’avant (Tourou et Bitti). 1971.
[DVD] Rouch, J. Nigeria: CNRS Audiovisuel
Stockhausen said: “I heard the piece Aphex
Twin of Richard James carefully: I think it
would be
very helpful if he listens to my work Song Of
The Youth, which is electronic
music, and a young boy’s voice singing with
himself. Because he would then
immediately stop with all these post-African
repetitions, and he would look
for changing tempi and changing rhythms,
and he would not allow to repeat
any rhythm if it were varied to some extent
and if it did not have a
direction in its sequence of variations.”
Stockhausen, K., Witts, D. 1995 Karlheinz
Stockhausen Advice to clever children…
The Wire [online] Available at < http://www.
stockhausen.org/ksadvice.html> [Accessed 17
January 2014].
, but especially in the quality of the sounds, the timber of the ever-changing instruments.
What Stockhausen called, with scorn, “all these post-African repetitions” now are the core of the
majority of electronic music that is being listened to, and danced to.
One could argue that the collective exploration of these do-not-think sonic dimensions through
repetition helps to unite listeners’ psychic perception.
Maybe this is why repetition seems to have always been favoured in group dancing such as folkloric or tribal dances. But then, what differs in electronic dance music?
Perhaps, the very quickly acquired familiarity with those phrases leads to accepting them as a
comfortable, easy to move to without feeling self-conscious, as there are no rules defining how it
should be danced to.
But more importantly, it is louder, with a wider range of frequencies,
“you have a lot of Sound Systems which they play very loud very loud bass you know what you
can’t even stand up in front of the speakers and things some people might listen Shaka and say
oh sometime he must have his bass up full but we’re not trying to play that we’re trying to play a
Jah Shaka. 199?. Jah Shaka 90’ [Video
online] Available at <http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=yAIBuui6mLY> [Accessed 17
January 2014].
different frequency of bass which is very deep we’re working on the bass a lot because people
respond like you’re talking about the Shaka crowd the people respond to the that bass frequency you know it cause a vibe it causes people to you know
energy flows through you know
the bass”
You’ve just heard the Dub producer Jah Shaka talking about gatherings around Sound Systems,
Clark, F. ca.1999. Podcast 045 – “Rave
Culture And the End Of The World…as we
know it” - lecture given at Stanford University, Psychedelic Salon. [podcast]. July 2006.
Available at < http://www.matrixmasters.
net/salon/?p=65 > [Accessed 17 January
2014].
another name for reggae and dub party organisers. Let’s now ask the infamous raver Fraser
Clark, his point of view on electronic dance music parties:
“Unlike a hippy thing
32
33
where the band will be over here and you come over here to be quiet you know you choose the
Clark, F. ca.1999. Podcast 045 – “Rave
Culture And the End Of The World…as we
know it” - lecture given at Stanford University, Psychedelic Salon. [podcast]. July 2006.
Available at < http://www.matrixmasters.
net/salon/?p=65 > [Accessed 17 January
2014].
music when you wanted it more of a sort of spectator thing this was more you know everybody
felt involved in it they wanted music loud so that everybody got the same beat at the same time
that was part of the the atmosphere they wanted. My first acid-house party there were twenty
thousand kids going for about two A.M.
massive energy
everybody twenty thousand people
all dancing to that same rhythm we’re now participating in a tribal gathering love dance
to
absolutely non-stop shamanic rhythmic drum rolls and electronic bleaks that slightly unhinge
the mind
comes
myself
where am I
who are we
who am I
gradually the group mind becomes more dominant it be-
I’m part of something
I’m one of the people
I’m part of something that’s actually bigger than
these are my people this is us”
Of course, people like my parents or Stockhausen, will not see or hear any worth in this music.
On a 1994 BBC2 documentary on Jungle music, Peter Harris said:
Harris, P. 1994. All black BBC2 [Video
com/watch?v=myppBaohOao> [Accessed
17 January 2014].
“Jungle is about making music that adults hate and kids love”.
Full quotation is: ““Music is prophecy. Its
styles and economic organization are ahead of
the rest of society because it explores, much
faster than material reality can, the entire
range of possibilities in a given code. It makes
audible the new world that will gradually
become visible, that will impose itself and
regulate the order of things; it is not only the
image of things, but the transcending of the
everyday, the herald of the future.”
Attali, J. 1997. Noise: The Political Economy
of Music. France: Presses Universitaires de
France.
It could be that kids feel that they are the first concerned:
“Jacques Attali in the political economy of music said
music is prophecy its styles are ahead
of the rest of society because it explores much faster than material reality can the entire range
of possibilities
it makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will
impose itself and regulate the order of things”
The rave example proposes that sound links people in space, but also that it links minds in intuitive dimensions and it was suggested earlier that it may link memories within time.
Marshall Mcluhan illustrates this point every time we hear him saying that
“ours is a brain new world of all-at-onceness
34
35
time has ceased
ing
space has vanished
we’re back in acoustic space
we now live in a global village of simultaneous happenwe begun again to structure the primordial feeling the
tribal emotions from which a few centuries of literacy have divorced us
the inner trip
the tribalising process
the depth involvement in the experience of the unified human family that is
something for which we have had no experience for many centuries
it is a process that is locat-
ed so entirely in the present that it does not appear at all in the rear view mirror through which
we have literally looked for reassurance and nostalgic orientation Joyce called it “all space in a
nutshell” erm a nutshell being an eternal present”
Oxford Dictionaries, 2014. sound: definition
of sound 1. [online] Available at <http://www.
oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/
sound> [Accessed 17 January 2014].
Scientifically speaking, sounds are “vibrations that travel through the air or another medium”.
Another medium could be a metallic string, a microphone, our skin, our bones, our ears…
It travels at different speed, frequencies and strength
through and according to the material
world it encounters, thus bonding it.
Maybe this is what Mcluhan means by “acoustic space”.
We have heard Varese and Stockhausen defining music as organised sounds. This way of thinking about music puts emphasis on the links between sounds.
Varese also intends to express this in his music. Let’s jump back to 1954 when journalist George
Charbionnier told him:
“Paul Valéry has said that in a novel one cannot write that the Marchioness got out her car and
October 2014].
went upstairs anymore, I don’t remember his exact terms but the meaning is there.
For me it’s the same thing, all these small things have no significance, we go from place to place,
we don’t have to tell about a flight, the story can be in Paris and the next page is in New York,
there is no need to describe
36
37
October 2014].
describe the means of transport nor… which are secondary things or purely functional.
So we come to increase the ellipse even more
Absolutely, and synthesis”
Synthesis.
Unity.
Sound.
Dimension.
Intuition.
Please Read On
Let’s now take the opportunity of the analogy that Goeorge Charbonnier has just made, between a novel and
a piece of music, to stop being in the present and start looking “through the rear-view mirror” of literal expression. This will allow us to think on a different plane. Yes, I am writing “us” again. But earlier, “us” meant
“human beings”, it now means, and you have understood it very well, “you and me”.
This relationship between author and reader in writing is quite interesting when compared to that of musician and listeners. It seems more intimate. The ear expert Alfred Tomatis observed that the same muscles
go to work when one is saying a word and when one is reading it, “there’s nothing remarkable about that,
Tomatis, A. 1991. The Conscious ear: my life
of transformation through listening Page 89
.Station Hill Press
you may say, if we are talking of reading aloud and, therefore, of vocalisation. But, surprisingly enough, this
interdependence remains valid with silent reading.” So, if we believe Tomatis, you are now saying my words.
Strangely enough, I suspect that you hear them with my voice.
After having heard me speaking for about half an hour or so, you are not the one to be blamed for it!
You may now stop reading and start listening, you will hear me again on the fourty-third minute, if it has not already started.
As Paul suggested earlier, there is a desire for technologies to bring music, or at least popular
music, closer to us, to build a more intimate relationship,
O’Kane, P. 2013. Dissertation group tutorial
on 17 October 2013 [Sound recording].
“like can I get it in the car
can I get it walking down the street”.
One could also think of the loud bass and kick drums used in electronic dance music as some
way of feeling the sound enter very “deep into the molecular and atomic layers of ourselves”.
Maryanne Amacher enjoys
38
39
staying hours in her studios with to her electronic music, in order to “learn about dimension in
Amacher, M. 1989. Maryanne Amacher
speaking at Ars Electronica 1989 - Linz
Austria [Video online]. Available at <http://
vimeo.com/30955464> [Accessed 16 January 2014].
sound”,
in order to build an intimate relationship with them.
I imagine her
naming a sound in her thoughts, giving it a meaning that allows memories to
grasp it, fade on it and change it,
and then later, she adds another sound, another sound that
she has learned two or three hours ago , and slowly lets the initial meaning transmute.
As if we, human beings, had a strong, almost innate, desire to print sounds; let them come closer and closer, so intimate that we can grasp them and make them our own.
But isn’t it what happens with language? We associate a range of experiences to a word, to a
sound, and combine them to express ideas and concepts.
When thinking about sounds from this point of view, one could ask whether music speaks directly in “the world of immediate experience”.
Huxley, A. 1961. Aldous huxley 1961 london
interview, Psychedelic Salon. [podcast].
January 2010. Available at <http://www.
matrixmasters.net/salon/?p=248> [Accessed
16 January 2014].
Amacher, M. 1977-1979. Psychoacoustic
phenomena in musical composition [PDF]
Available at
< http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/text/emr/
articles/amacher.pdf>[Accessed 17 January
2014].
As Maryanne Amacher said on the sixth of February nineteen seventy nine around four PM, a
sound can produce,”the so-called psychoacoustical phenomena: tone sensation we create in our
ears and brain, in response to many of the intervals in music.”
But even so, without their intended reorganisation by a person or a group of people, maybe
then, they stay vibrations they are not music. With electronic music and especially with sound
synthesis, the composer is able to work more closely with those psychoacoustic phenomena,
for example Jah Shaka’s deep bass ,
Jah Shaka. 1984. Satta Dub. Jah Shaka Meets
Mad Professor at Ariwa Sounds [Sound
recording] UK: Ariwa Sound
the Shepard’s scale used in Mutation by Jean Claude Risset,
40
41
La Monte Young drift studies
Young, LM. 1969. Drift Study 31 I 69
12:17:30 - 12:49:58 PM NYC [Sound recording]. United States.
or Maryanne Amacher’s Head Rhythm.
Amacher, M. 1999. Head Rythm 1/Playing 1,
Sound Characters [Sound recording] US
Perhaps this is one of the aspects of electronic music that strongly relates it to intuition, intuition as the world of immediate experience, in a stronger way than language would.
“For all the poetry that is in the world your first sensations on entering a wood or standing on
Huxley, A. 1961. Aldous Huxley on human
thought and expression (lecture on language)
[Video online] Available at <http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=9JsHSiF7Kxg> [Accessed 17 January 2014].
the shores of a lake has not been chanted yet
it remains for you unwritten
this of course de-
scribe the essential ineffability of the experience”.
However we have also seen together that memory plays an important part in the experience of
music. In fact, the repetition of a sound, whether it is a techno beat, a Sufi mantra or a continu-
Xiyun, H., Blofeld J., 2011. Huang Po - audio
- Chapters 6-9 [Video online]. Available at <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcIQD1KUPUk> [Accessed 16 January 2014].
Jean-Paul Sarte’s “Existence”:
“Never, until these last few days, had I
understood the meaning of
“existence.” I was like the others, like
the ones walking along the seashore,
all dressed in their spring
finery. I said, like them, “The ocean is
green; that white speck up there is a
seagull,” but I didn’t feel
that it existed or that the seagull was
an “existing seagull”; usually existence
hides itself. It is there,
around us, in us, it is us, you can’t say
two words without mentioning it, but
you can never touch it.
When I believed I was thinking about
it, I must believe that I was thinking
nothing, my head was
empty, or there was just one word in
my head, the word “to be.””
Sartres, P. 1938. La Nausée. France:
Gallimard
42
ous drone, prints the sound so intensively that it looses its meaning,
meaning,
and what we are left with,
until everything looses
is an intuitive feeling, an ineffable experience of the
moment,
of Joyce’s “nutshell”,
of the Zen Buddhist “state of being”
or Jean Paul Sartre’s “existence”.
That there is a powerful technology that can trigger Roquentin’s Nausea is truly wonderful,
but
what more can I say?
It just is.
This dissertation also gives another definition of intuition, one that could be described by
43
Apollinaire, G. 1917. Les mamelles de tirésias.
Préface. Available at <http://wikilivres.ca/
wiki/Les_Mamelles_de_Tirésias/Préface>[Accessed 17 January 2014].
Guillaume Appolinaire’s word “surrealism” how we intuitively link experiences together to form
ideas, to create the wheel, to sing, to speak…
One can hear traces of those moments of intuitive thinking throughout my conversations with
Joseph, with Sion, with Paul and also in Stockhausen’s interventions.
Electronic music, live or recorded, does not relate stronger or less to this intuition, the connective part of our brain, than live acoustic music, written and spoken language or singing.
It is however using tools that forces us to concretise these connections in a different way,
through a different medium, different technologies than our digestive system, or a piece of
wood with metallic strings but technologies that use electrical current and electronic components, technologies that seem to be placing themselves at the heart of our time.
In what ways do these technologies allow the composer to suggest his or her intuitive associations to a listener? This would have been a better question.
Joseph may be able to help us start thinking about this. One day he was talking about the word
“record mm it’s it’s like I think the earliest form of recording you know through a machine
were just ways of of documenting you know so I will record this thing and then
44
45
I will have a record of it and archive it or whatever but then it got to a point where the medium
becomes you know it’s not just a transparent medium it’s not like I I don’t wanna listen to this
as it as it exactly was on this day I can change it I can manipulate it
manipulate it
manipulate it
so that becomes the doc that is instead of someone playing the music that is the
the item like
you know it’s there is there is it’s not it’s not true to what it was”
“but that’s quite interesting like the whole this whole I don’t know if you wanna comment on
this whole process of what is going on now ‘cause
it is it isn’t
erm so you can always cut
this as well so this doesn’t what’s the time of this you know the time ‘cause you’re gonna be
kind of cutting it putting it back in and chopping and changing it
I don’t know just ‘cause I
wasn’t aware I wasn’t aware until you said that we’re gonna cut it that we were recording I kind
of forgot oh sorry Oh no no no it’s fine but I think surely it relates to what we were talking
about the record and how this medium now
what did we say
is affecting I dunno what do I mean
I don’t know I can’t put it into words
erm just a cut
just cut
tha”
Thanks to
Johnny Gibbon (reading Max Neuhaus and George Charbonnier),
Taylor Davis (reading Evagrius the Solitary and Varese),
Luke Evans (reading Pierre Schaeffer),
Sion Piough, Paul O’Kane and Joseph Evans (being themselves)
46
6,205w
47

Singing in the Machine

Transcription

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