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avestin View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Electro-Acoustic Music
    Posted: March 09 2008 at 11:25

With the guidance of a good friend at the Progressive Ears website (Michael), I've started exploring this marvelous world (maybe universe is more like it) of sounds.

I'm still new to this but would like to share my enthusiasm with my initial listening experiences and to ask for your recommendations as well.
 
Here's a definition I found for this type of music (which is as diverse as any other style)
 

Electro-Acoustic Music

Electro-acoustic music is a term used to describe a broad range of modern classical electronic music. It often explores the interaction of natural and electronically generated sounds and effects.

The term electro-acoustic refers to a process that happens in any microphone or loudspeaker - sound is transformed into electrical signals, and then transformed from electrical form back to sound. This process is central to all electronic music, because it turns sound into something that can be shaped using electronics and computers.

As a musical genre, electro-acoustic is sort of a catch-all term. As electronica is used to refer to any pop electronic music, electro-acoustic is often used to refer to any electronic music in the classical tradition.

Electro-acoustic grew out of the pioneering work of experimental electronic musicians of the 1940's and 1950's, such as Pierre Schaeffer. Shaeffer created Musique Concrète, a style of music that anticipated the later rise of sampling. Schaeffer was interested in the idea of manipulating sound as a tangible object. He took tape recorded sounds and created a huge variety of effects through splicing, speed changes, looping and reversing them.

It also incorporates the tradition of the early synthesists, such as Edgar Varèse. Initially, electronically generated sounds were used as source materials for further tape manipulation. In the mid 1960's, the emergence of modular synthesizers and computer-based sound manipulation allowed further control over the shaping of sound. Artists like Morton Subotnick explored using gestures to control sound, and combined electronics and synthesizers with acoustic instruments and even dance.

The term electro-acoustic has been adopted by many artists and organizations working in the world of classical electronic music. While the technology of electronic music is constantly changing, electro-acoustic artists continue to draw on the history of ideas pioneered by early electronic musicians.

I'll continue in the next post.
 


Edited by avestin - March 09 2008 at 11:28
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 11:25
Here's what my friend Michael suggested I start with:
 
A really excellent way to aquaint oneself to the acousmatic world is to get a hold of the wonderful INA Grm 5 cd box set called "Archives GRM" This is where I got mine:

http://electrocd.com/en/boutique/inagrm/

At 55 dollars Canadian it's unbelieavably cheap and, as I said, it's a great intro to this music. All the heavies are represented, Pierre Schaffer, a short but excellent Xenakis piece, Bernard Parmegiani (one of my faves), Frances Dhomont, Francois Bayle, Luc Ferrari, Jean Claude Risset and tons more who I've never heard of...but all of generally extremely high quality. There is even a long piece my Messiaen dabbling in the electro-acoustic.

Here is a long-ish review I posted on another list a while back about the standouts for me from this great box...:

Loved just about all of it with many pieces being just downright stupendous.

Ones that come to mind:

Disc one-Iannis Xenakis-Concret PH A short (under 3 min) crystal tapestry of (apparently) fire and ashes crackling...mesmorizing

Disc two-well...most of it was just stunning. What can I say. A couple that stand out are Beatriz Ferreyra "Mer d'Azov and the two pieces by Alain Savouret. I'm wondering if anyone here knows more about these two composers, because their representations on this set makes me want to go out and acquire everything they have ever done (I'm weird like that)

Disc three-Again...all of it was fantastic. Standouts were the Francis Dhomont piece called "Novars" (no surprise there...most everything I've heard from Dhomont is top notch) and the Jean-Claude Risset contribution called "Sud". The latter being a particulary mind blowing demonstration of what I would imagine good industrial music to be. (I know next to nothing about industrial music)

Disc four-once again...superb!! This collection had more "natural" recognizable instruments added to the acousmatic sounds...so the feel of this disc was totally different than the three before it. Much more organic sounding rather than the alien operating room antics that were happening before. Not to say that those still werent there, they were, but with the addition of some stringed insturments (violin, contrebasse) I was brought down to earth for a short while. Standouts were the Denis Dufour piece and the Ramon Gonzales-Arroyo piece.

Disc five-back to the deep reaches of space. The two Jean Schwarz pieces are great along with a rather humourous Francois Bayle/Robert Wyatt collaboration. There is also one by Bernard Parmegiani called "La roue Ferris" that could be my favorite 10 minutes of the whole box. If you're a Tangerine Dream fan...this one is for you! Constantly morphing layers upon layers of sequenced bliss that I just did not want to end. (Speaking of Parmegiani...anyone familiar with his "La Creation du Monde" disc? This is one of my favorite acousmatic discs so far. It was done between 1982-84 but sounds like it came from the year 2207. It projects a movie for the ears about the creation of the universe...and you ARE there...no kidding)

...also there is a 100 page booklet of black and white photographs of all the composers in their various workshops at the GRM as well as in performance. Being a photog myself, I especially enjoyed these.

So, babbling aside (to late you might think ) this box, for me might be the purchase of the year and will go a long way in aiding me for future explorations.
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 11:26
And this:
 
Hi Assaf...I have a few minutes this morning so, I'd like throw out another recommendation---Luc Ferrari's release "Son Memorise". This is a totally far-out, psychedelic mind trip that is centered around the natural sound of the human voice, both processed and unprocessed. There is other stuff going on too, like field recordings of ethnic percussion, but for the most part, it's key element is the voice.

Ferrari was fond (I use "was" because he passed away last year) of traveling to remote areas of the globe and making field recordings. There is one piece here called "Symphonic walk though a Soundscape or A day of celebration in El-Qued, 1976" that, I think succeeds in sucking the listener, totally and completely into the strange world of a celebration which took place in a Nomadic tent village in the Algerian desert. Over the course of it's 20 or so minutes, you, the listener are actually walking throuh this remote place, taking in the sites and sounds in stark and vivid detail. After the first 5 minutes, the mind is so engrossed in the detail of this recording that you are tempted to look around you, just to re-assure yourself that you are still in your own home! To say this is a vivid psychedelic experience is an understatement...and it's all done with no processing...just a man with a microphone, walking though a totally alien (for me) world.

The last piece on the disc, "Saliceburry Cocktail" is a mind blowing meld of field recordings and processed electronics that continues the lysergic trip thats, pretty much there throughout the entire disc. Once again, headphone listening is a must to get the full effect of the spatialisation that is taking place. When it's all over, you well and truly feel that you've been to "somewhere else"...terrestial and non-terrestial.
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 11:26
And this:
Assaf...a couple more recs...

Bernard Parmegiani-Le Creation Du Monde

Francois Bayle-Camera Oscura/Espaces Inhabitables

The Bayle disc is similar to the Dhomont disc I told you about...although here, the sounds are more rareified, more delicate...but no less mind blowing.

The Parmegiani disc is just brilliant from start to finish...definitely a minor masterpiece in my small but growing collection of acousmatic discs.

 
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 11:27
I've also started with Iancu Dumitrescu's spectral compositions but I'll keep that for later as it's somewhat of a world within a world here.
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 11:41
Battiato was used this style if you will, quite often in his 70's  albums

GREAT topic Assaf Clap
The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 13:20
Thumbs%20Up Absolutely fascinating Assaf. Clap
 
That box set does sound like a bargain, I think I'll take advantage of the exchange-rate and purchase that. Approve (assuming it's still availableConfused, apparently the 5-CD box is out of print but re-issued as 5 single cds)
 
Here are a couple of short Bernard Parmegiani pieces found on the ubiquitous YouTube:
 
Une Mission Ephemere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aulXlb8Dt24 <-- as great as the animation is on this video, it is far too distracting for the music, I minimised the window and just listened. Smile
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 13:32
I got the Dhomont album Michael recommended me and it's absolutely fascinating and marvelous experience!!!
 
I also got the Ferrari album, Son Meorise and I'll have a listen to it today.
I hope to get that box-set anthology as well (though I'm in a bit of "uneasy" financial state so it'll have to wait...).
 
Thanks for those links, Dean!
 
 
I'll try and post here more info as I receive it about more composers.
 
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 13:43
Well, I've ordered the box-set, so it is still available.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 09 2008 at 20:31
Here's some info about Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu and the Spectral school:
 
 
 
 
 
 

IANCU  DUMITRESCU ( born 1944 ) is one of the leading personalities of contemporary music, embracing both composition and interpretation.
    He studied with Sergiu Celibidache musical phenomenology and conducting
    His compositions are based on ultra-spectralism and acousmatics from a phenomenological point of view (Ed. Husserl), in which sound is subject to analysis and dissociation, (harmonical multisounds - diagonal  sounds) processes which confer a genuine force of suggestion and penetration. His music is edited by Editions Salabert (Paris), Escargot-CBS (Paris), ReR Megacorp (London), Gerig Musikverlage (Koln), Generation Unlimited (New York) etc.
His complete work is released on CD at EDITION MODERN ( London-Bucharest )
For instance the serie counts 20 titles of CDs.

Major works: " Pérspectives au Movemur" , " Sirius-Kronos Quartet"  for  string quartet, "Movemur et sumus" II, III, IV, V  for cello, violin, viola, double bass, "Movemur et sumus" for violin, viola, cello and double bass , "Medium"  ( I - III), "Gnosis"  for double bass (...),"Reliefs " for two orchestras and piano, "Apogeum"  I - II  for orchestra, "Aulodie Mioritica I"  for clarinet and orchestra, "Aulodie Mioritica ( gamma ) " for double-bass and orchestra, "Multiples I-II-III-IV-V"  ( mew rhythmic project) , " Zenith" (I),(II), "Orion" (I),(II)  for percussion," The Second Moira"  for traditional instruments, wind instruments, strings, percussion and magnetic tape, "Ursa Maior", "Alpha Centaori", " Pierres Sacrées" , " Galaxy " , “Cogito / Trompe l’Oeil”, “Mythos”, “A Priori”, “Zenith”, “Harryphonies”, for diagonal sounds and instruments. "Orphics" for artisanal wind objects and instruments, "Oroscopo" for prepared piano (three prepared pianos) and clarinet. "Panta Rhei"  for chamber ensemble...  Computer assisted music  and  instruments :  "Colossus", "Oiseaux Céléstes",  "Meteors and Pulsars", " New Meteors and Pulsars",  "Eon  I - II - Dans un Désordre Absolu " , " Soleil Explosant" ,  "Pulse and Universe Reborn", “Bolids and contemplations”, “Objet sonore mysterieux” ...

He has been commissioned by, among others, “Radio France”, "Art ZOYD", the “Kronos Quartet", The UPIC- CCMIX - Paris ( Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis )  and the French Ministry of Culture, Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation, Bucharest,

 
 
 

* "The new Romanian school, with Iancu Dumitrescu at the forefront, is not alone in its search for a similar spectral approach - hyper-consonant, hyperharmonic, in the real sense of these terms - as we find parallel tendencies in the young French school of the Groupe de l'Itinéraire, amongst  the  young Canadians or the Italians. The Romanians, working for so long in relative isolation, are in right to claim a certain seniority in this approach that lead with Iancu Dumitrescu's to a real spectral analysis of the interior of the sound, equivalent to a kind of nuclear fission. The great predecessor in this direction, whose importance is just beginning to be recognized as he celebrates his eightieth birthday, is the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi... In such a "spectral" and "hyperconsonant" music as that of Iancu Dumitrescu, we seem to recognize ceaselessly fragments, echoes of folkloric melodies, songs and ancestral calls of the Carpathian shepherds. And that because the folk instruments also elude the compromise of the temperate scale in order to render the natural scale of the harmonics. The spectre thus contains thousands of virtual melodies that fleeting embody themselves according to the meeting or the crossing of the harmonic columns. Folk music is thus a sonorous phenomenon both natural and cultural. Starting with the brilliant forerunner George Enescu, the whole Romanian school has used its pure resources, fructifying and transfiguring them. This was the case with Iancu Dumitrescu's masters: St. Niculescu and A. Stroe, while A. Mendelson inculcated him the basic classical craft and S. Celibidache's precious advices helped him to clarify his phenomenological conception of musical composition. Iancu Dumitrescu's works situate themselves far from the traditional concepts, not only regarding sound, but also form and structure. His main works introduce the concept of acousmatic, Socratic term designing the art of hiding the essence of the sound source, of disguising its origin. Based on the intimate exploration of the secret, hidden, parameters of the sonorous phenomenon, his music extracts its formal models out of the inner structure of the sound, in a perfect correspondence of micro- and macrostructure. This phenomenological approach of the compositional proceeding implies both a great confidence in the intuitive dimension of the invention and a permanent, indispensable, intellectual lucidity. Composing becomes thus a surgeon or biologist-like attitude, working directly on the sonorous plasma, on the living and mobile substance. This attitude extends to the several parameters of the sound, especially to a system of duration organization that confers each number a rhythm that bears its own aesthetics, ethics and poignancy. As Time, the only sonorous parameter also existing outside the sound, is equally the one who implies all the rest: pitches, timbres and intensities are evaluated by means of vibrations, periods, and, thus, time. Iancu Dumitrescu's predilection for grave instruments (double bass, bassoon, trombone, tuba etc.) is explained by the fact that they possess the most complete column of harmonics, the richest and most beautiful spectrum. The acoustical principles evoked above otherwise permit rendering almost unrecognizable the instrumental sources. Thus, in "Ursa Mare", the two bassoons are prepared, by introducing foreign objects in the wholes and clefts. Additionally, the instrumentalists must play with the upper part of the instrument stuck to the membrane of the big drum, which prolongs and modifies the harmonics. The bassoon has thus at its disposal an original scale of micro-intervals. Some of Iancu Dumitrescu's important works exist in several variants which differ by their instrumentation. Finished in 1983, this recorded version of "Ursa Mare", the most complete regarding the instrumental force, uses two prepared bassoons, four double basses, one piano (also prepared), an ensemble of percussion (membranes and metals) and, finally, a magnetic tape. The work is dedicated to Harry Halbreich. From the beginning of his career, Iancu Dumitrescu made himself known through orchestral pages of amazing novelty, where most of his nowadays achievements were more than prefigured. "Apogeum" (for winds and percussion), "Reliefs" (for two orchestras and piano) count among the major pages of the new Romanian orchestral music. Invigorated by the experiences acquired in the long years of practicing with his musicians in the Hyperion Ensemble and with the great Italian double bass player Fernando Grillo, Iancu Dumitrescu composed "Aulodie Mioritica", first for clarinet and orchestra, and then for other soloists. The double bass solo and orchestra version ("Aulodie Mioritica" Gamma), dedicated to and created by Fernando Grillo, was finished in June 1984 and performed for the first time soon after its ending, at Radio France, by the latter, accompanied by the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique conducted by Yves Prin."

Harry HALBREICH (Editions Salabert)  Paris
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 10 2008 at 18:49
I found this interesting link - http://people.unt.edu/~aeh0018/womtechdisc.html
which talks about Selected discography of currently available electroacoustic music by women composers.
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 10 2008 at 18:53
Also, haven't had time to read all of it, but this article seems to be an interesting retrospective of EAM:
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 10 2008 at 18:55
And these are the albums listed under EAM in CD Baby:
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 11 2008 at 00:58
I have tons of Electroacoustic/Acousmatic titles (no surprise; I've been composing the stuff for over 25 years, hence my nickname here); it's hard to go wrong with stuff on the Electrocd site; those Canadian composers have "cornered the market"; Dhomont, Normandeau, Gobeil, Harrison, Oswald, Roy, etc.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 11 2008 at 02:38
Assaf, from those you have mentioned my favourites would be:

Bernard Parmegiani - All of his '70's release are solid, you cannot really go wrong. Also if you enjoyed that latter work of his it could be worth while tracking down the split he did with Australia EA artist Philip Samartzis from '06 called Immersion; this possibly could only have been released on vinyl tho' - not sure.

Francois Bayle - L'expérience acoustique
                                      - Vibrations composées / Grande polyphonie
                                      - Erosphère

Just a warning I didn't think much of the split album between Bayle and Parmegiani.   

Luc Ferrari - Presque rien
                              - Danses organiques
                              - Son mémorisé (already mentioned) 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 11 2008 at 09:33
Originally posted by soundsweird soundsweird wrote:

I have tons of Electroacoustic/Acousmatic titles (no surprise; I've been composing the stuff for over 25 years, hence my nickname here); it's hard to go wrong with stuff on the Electrocd site; those Canadian composers have "cornered the market"; Dhomont, Normandeau, Gobeil, Harrison, Oswald, Roy, etc.
 
 
Hi there, SW. Smile
I'd be interested in listening to your music; any links, websites?
 
 
 
 
Originally posted by Black Velvet Black Velvet wrote:

Assaf, from those you have mentioned my favourites would be:

Bernard Parmegiani - All of his '70's release are solid, you cannot really go wrong. Also if you enjoyed that latter work of his it could be worth while tracking down the split he did with Australia EA artist Philip Samartzis from '06 called Immersion; this possibly could only have been released on vinyl tho' - not sure.

Francois Bayle - L'expérience acoustique
                                      - Vibrations composées / Grande polyphonie
                                      - Erosphère

Just a warning I didn't think much of the split album between Bayle and Parmegiani.   

Luc Ferrari - Presque rien
                              - Danses organiques
                              - Son mémorisé (already mentioned) 
 
Added to my list, thank Adam.
 
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 11 2008 at 22:53
Bump
 
Found this on Myspace:
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2008 at 00:32
Bump
 
PFS article on INA GRM:
 
The label's discography in Forced exposure:
 
Last FM page of the label with samples:
 
Discography at Jazz Loft:
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 13 2008 at 22:48
   
        Avestin, here's a link to some excerpts of pieces I did in the 90's. It's a site dedicated to the analog synth I used to get all of my strange sounds, and the guy asked me to give him some samples to put up there. Most of it is a bit more commercial than my "serious" stuff, and has been used in modern dances. The same guy is working with me currently to remaster and clean up my music for CD release...   Just click on "music", and scroll down to 6 excerpts towards the bottom of the page.
      
                      
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: March 14 2008 at 07:44
^ Link appear to be missing Soundswierd. Unhappy
 
I'm stunned. Shocked ... the GRM Archives 5 CD box set arrived on my doorstep a few minutes ago! I was expecting a 2 or 3 week wait for a delivery from Canada and it arrived from Paris in 5 days - I'm not even getting that kind of delivery from AmazonUK at the moment - hat's off to the guys at ElectroCD Clap
 
Haven't had chance to listen yet (perparing a mini-marathon for this afternoon Approve) but looking through the photo-booklet brings back memories of researching some of this for an essay on electronic music I did at University in the 80s.
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