Category: Introduction to Sound Arts

I thought I’d talk about a favourite album of mine as I feel it has interesting relations to sound and the creative process.

Laughing Stock is the fifth and final album of the band Talk Talk, though at this point the band only contained members Mark Hollis and Lee Harris. It was produced by Tim Friese-Greene and was released in 1991 on Verve Records.

The album is attributed to the art-rock genre and ambiguous label of post-rock, however, in my opinion, it is an album that does not benefit from a genre label.

Below is Runeii, the closing track of the album.

“Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note, y’know. And that, it’s as simple as that really.  And don’t play one note unless you’ve got a reason to play it.”

The creation of Laughing Stock was unconventional. Over the year-long recording sessions around 50 musicians contributed, though only 18 guests featured on the final album with much of the recorded material discarded.

According to Talk Talk’s manager, Keith Aspden, each musician was asked to “improvise on sections without hearing the full track. With just a basic chord structure at most, they were encouraged to try out anything their hearts encouraged them to, and then, thanks to the emerging digital technology, any results felt appropriate were employed, sometimes in places for which they had never originally been envisioned”.

While creating the album, they would often work in darkness, with windows covered, clocks removed from the walls, the only light from a strobe.

After, the improvised performances were arranged and overdubbed, with the addition of more concrete sounds such as a water heater and kettle. Looping and sampling were also used.

Mark Hollis, the singer, multi-instrumentalist and ‘audio-auteur’ of Talk Talk cited CAN’s Tago Mago and Duke Ellington/John Coltrane’s In a Sentimental Mood as inspirations.

One of my favourite things about this album is the dynamic control throughout. Ascension Day is the loudest track on the album and ends in complete abruptness as the next song After The Flood begins. The album begins and ends in perfect silence.

The technique of improvising and then arranging at a later point is an interesting way of working and is something I wish to explore in the future. When coming across new techniques I often record around 20 minutes of experiments as a means of remembering the sounds that could be achieved from the creative process, perhaps I could use these recordings in other work.

Klangkunst – Sound Art

Klangkorper – Sound Bodies

Klangobjekte – Sound Objects

Germany has a rich history in experimental rock developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

• Can
• Faust
• Neu!
• Popul Vuh
• Tangerine Dream

The term that began to be used for this music was Krautrock, a term given by the British music press. It is also know as Kosmische Musik.

The scene was born out of a rejection of nationalism towards ‘German’ culture in WW2 as well as a rejection of popular American music yet, simultaneously influenced by the avant-garde, experimental and underground scene of places like New York. The West German student movement of 1968 was a series of protests that encapsulated this rejection of traditionalism, and the authority of nationalism.

The scene has been considerably influential in experimental music, despite the limited commercial success of the groups at the time. Techno, post-punkk, ambient and ‘post-rock’ all have at least some krautrock in them.

The band CAN are one of the pioneers of the genre. Members Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt were students under Karlheinz Stockhausen. As a band they had many influences from backgrounds in Jazz, the avant-garde, classical music, rock, funk and the psychadelic. Their music was constructed largely through improvised composition, sampling themselves in the studio, and editing the improvisations.

Faust, formed in 1971 are band that use improvisation, disssonace and experimental electronics in their work, that have been influential in industrial and ambient music.

Soundworks/ Exhibitions

Fur Augen und Ohren

Mille Plateaux, founded in 1994, is as record label that releases minimal techno, glitch and experimental electronic music. In 2000 they released the compilation series Cuts and Clicks what established the aesthetics of glitch music. Artists signed on the label included:

• Alvo Noto (Carsten Nicolai)
• DJ Spooky
• Autopoieses (Ekkehard Ehlers and Sebastian Meissner)
• Jim O’Rourke
• Jetone (Tim Hecker)
• Max Eastley
• Merzbow
• Oval 
• Pita/Peter Rehberg
• Ryoji Ikeda
• Scanner (Robin Rimbaud)
• Ultra-red
• (GAS) Wolfgang Voigt
• Yasunao Tone

Glitch music is something that resonates with me individually, both aesthetically, and in its process. I find that in the current landscape of music creation, it is interesting that the process of creating music on computers has become a means of replicating older technology, while maintaining the accessibility and more democratic nature of a lot of digital technology. For me, the technology, and digital medium, should be used to its full aesthetic potential so create experiment work.

Germany has a history of classical music – Bach, Straus, Wagner, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Handel, Mendelsson, Pachelbel.

Interestingly, during WW2, Richard Wagners music was used as embodiment of ‘german-ness’ and was adopted as national music.

After the sound walk, I created a basic visual representation of the experience. Notations are something I find quite interesting after seeing John Cages ‘Notations’

I thought of the purpose of notation, whenever we create work MIDI in modern DAWs it almost creates its own notation in the form of the piano roll. Can I make a DAW with a more expressive or indeterminate interface, one that is new and does not limit itself to equal temperament? The notation creates the music itself.

I found that 2D, on paper, stationary notations are limited. While I was drawing my notation of the sound walk I felt limited in its dimension and lack of fluidity. I felt I could express time and duration on the paper but it felt cumbersome. Maybe animated notation is more useful and practical when we spend more time looking at screens, which allow for such fluidity, than paper.

My initial drawings were done between breaks of the sound walk. I was thinking of the sounds in regards of spaciality rather than on a linear time frame. I thought as my self as a microphone and what directions the sounds where coming from. As you can see in the images, I used a birds-eye/top-down view. This limited the concept of sound from above and below. The other rings surrounding the LR circle show the distance of sound from the microphone. In the middle ground sounds are much more tangible in their spacial placement. Basic colour theory as well as shape could be used to differentiate sounds or even convey mood. Angular shapes have more aggressive attacks, rounder shapes fade in and out. Size determines volume. Lines and gaps rhythm.

China as a nation. The concept of an ancient established kingdom and its claim to the land. The cultural revolution. Removing the past (Four Olds: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Customs). Encouraged vigilantism.

I read about Yayue, meaning (elegant music), a form of classical music and dance that was performed at the royal court in ancient China. The philosopher Confucius considered yayue to be beneficial music and good, whereas he saw the popular music of the day, termed suyue (uncultivated music) to be decadent and corrupting. Yayue was seen as refined, improving and essential for self-cultivation and symbolised good and stable governance. In Confucius tradition the Guqin, a seven stringed zither, is seen as the instruments of the scholar-official class.

This made me of Jacques Attali’s Noise: The Political Economy of Music and the concept of sound/music in regards to authority and power. Has much really changed in the way we see music?

In some circles, classical music is seen as having a sort of superiority over popular music, is this a result of the perpetuation of the educatated ruling class enforcing what is ‘elegant’ and what is ‘uncultivated’? Perhaps a better word for uncultivated would be uncensored. If the same emotions are felt from 2 different pieces of music, popular and classical, is one seen as more valid than the other, is the value equal?

Western ‘classical’ music is an interesting field for me, from a social standpoint. I do not come from a background of classical musicianship and neither do members of my family. My Dad listens mostly to rock, and my Mum more Alternate/Indie rock. Classical music is seen as something of an sophisticated and intellectual category, as well as elitist. I suppose the same thing can be thought about regarding jazz. Maybe it’s because while the working class labour, the elites dictate what is music and what is not. However, I do enjoy classical music. In my childhood I had compilation of Tchaikovsky that I would listen to in order to fall asleep. Maybe my Mum got me the cd after reading something about the controversial ‘Mozart effect’ of listening to classical music making children smarter, that is no doubt regaled by elitist institutionalists. I didn’t really get into classical music until I started listening to Debussy and Satie, what then introduced me to ‘modern’ composers such as Arvo Part, John Cage, Morton Feldman and the minimal music movement.

The ancient philosopher Mozi denounced anything that was seen as divisive based on the concept of consequentialism. This meant the entire condemnation of music as an extravagance and indulgence, something that serves no useful purpose and may be harmful. This is a stance that I have not come across before due to its intense utilitarianism in regards to the material, but little regard for the pleasures of the individual.

The Taoist branch of philosophy has an emphasis on Tao (“the way”) balance and harmony with nature. Taosim is an interesting mix of philosophy and spiritual tradition, though I would argue that philosophy and religeon/spirituality are much in the same thing. Rooted in folk tradition, Taoist music is seen as a way to bring Yin and Yang into balance during ceremonial rites, and as a way to speak to the gods, to pray for the dead. Yin tones are seen as soft, female, dark, cold and negative while Yang tones are seen as hard, male, light, warm.

I recently watched The Innocents (1961), directed by Jack Clayton. It was to my surprise that a few days later, I found out that the sound effects were created by Daphne Oram, whose work on the film was uncredited.

I remember while watching the film that I was very impressed with the sound, something that is often lacking in older films. The reverberant sounds certainly brought the film to life, as well as creating surreal moments of tension that were much more effective than the orchestral elements of the score.

Oram was a pioneering composer and musician known for her work in founding the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (1958) as well as for her development of Oramics, a method of sound synthesis using drawn sound, where 35mm film was drawn upon and transformed into sounds.

She created the music for the play Amphitryon 38 (1957) using a sine wave oscillator, a tape recorder and filters, making the first wholly electronic score in BBC history.