History of music Concrète – notable figures etc.
Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire
In today’s session, we used Ableton to manipulate samples that we recorded around the uni building. I would say that I’m very familiar with sampling in Ableton as I often resample sounds that I have previously made and recorded. I often use the Simpler device with my Push 2 due to its intuitive visual interface and flexibility in playback (with the option to playback loops polyphonically, as well as chop the sample into 64 smaller slices). The Sampler device is better for multisampling, however, the interface is less intuitive on the Push.
I’ve read about Music Concrete before as I’m very interested in sampling, plunderphonics and the concept of sampling in relation to soundscapes such as KFL’s Chillout, the music of Boards of Canada and some of Lawrence English’s work. This is something I hope to explore further in the future, and will likely explore in the context of digital worlds due to my experience with game engine environments.
Inspired by Music Concrète, I made a piece. The sound sources are a paper booklet, me cracking my knuckles, an old radio drama recording, some cello samples and feedback sounds from playing headphones over a microphone.
I used Max to speed up sounds beyond recognition and used Paulstretch to slow down more percussive sounds to completely remove the transient. I also used max to create a looping effect that randomly changes the loop length (and playback rate of the sound). I arranged it in Ableton live 11.
I think I should have attempted to create more percussive ‘attack’ focused sounds. This juxtaposition would have created more variety in the piece and aided in the compositional structure to give a sense of tension.
The concept of sound objects makes me think of Matmos and their use of sampling and abstracting physical materials.