Electronic music

Progr. Notes f. SFVSC Electronic music Anz

Approximately ten years have gone by since the first noteworthy experiments in electronic music were carried out. Today production of electronic music is being produced ubiquitous, taking place anywhere between primitive homemade equipment and formidable million-dollar installations. Misconceptions about the nature of this field sector of music making were are considerably slower in receding than it growth would suggest.

Electronic music is based on owns its existence to the possibilities of generating sounds in vacuum tubes and of recording these sounds on magnetic tape. The essential elements of the instrumentation are oscillators generating various types of waves (e.g. sine-waves, which produce yield pure tones without partials, square-waves, and sawtooth-waves, which produce sounds of complex spectra), noise gene- rators (e.g. "white noise", which is the sum total of all aud- ible frequencies sounded simultaneously), and filters (de- vices by which complex sound spectra - including the noises - may be modified through eliminating certain frequency bands so that different timbres are obtained). Additional instruments influencing attack and decay, articulation, dynamic level of the sounds, echo-like reverberation and other characteristics are available in various stages combinations and stages of development. The sounds thus obtained are recorded on magnetic tapes and may be further modified to an some extent by various processes of cutting, splicing, re-recording at different speeds or in retrograde motion, and synchronizing.

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In the RCA Synthesizer operated at Columbia University in New York under the supervision of Columbia and Princeton Universities differs from the components described discussed here are integrated in one piece of machinery. They are put into concerted action by commands transmitted electronically from a system of perforation that the roll onto which the composer has punched rows of holes into a roll of paper. The Siemens Company in Munich has developed a similar installation.

The apparatus constructed by the Bell Telephone Company differs from the machinery sketched so far in that the in- structions of the composer are expressed in numerical form on Bell cards committed to a computer and translated by a suitable converter into impulses that are directly recorded on the tape.

Obviously in none of these cases arrangements a computer takes over the roll of the creative mind. For even in the cases last described the computer does no more or less than execute the instructions of the person who sets up the program, that is: the composer. The notion that electronic music is "automated", "me- chanized", artificially "contrived by synthetic brains” and such is en- tirely unfounded. p.3

The elements described here are the basic equipment of nearly Nearly all electronic studios laboratories in America and in Europe (including the studio at San Fernando Valley State College). Variations in the state of perfection of some of these elements may suggest more emphasis on some, less on other sound qualities and musical processes. 3 Wether the introduction of computer techniques repre­- sents real progress in electronic music depends entirely on the degree in which these techniques will facilitate and accelerate the admitedly laborious procedures required so far at this time. The material of sounds offered by the ad- vanced machinery is so far not significantly different from that previously availabe.

The so-called Musique concrète (inaugurated by Pierre Schaeffer in Paris) does not employ electronically generated sounds, but recordings of noises and other noises that are afterwards processed like the electr electronic sounds, while in the early days of the movement a sharp line of demarkation was drawn between electronic and concrete music, in recent years sounds from either source were frequently combined.

The opening work on this program, by Györgi Ligeti (a Hungarian composer living in Vienna), is not electronic at all. It is an orchestral work chosen because of the vicinity of its sound quality to that of electronic music. It may be observed that composers who have worked in the electr- onic medium show a tendency to reproduce typically electronic timbres in their instrumental works.

Milton Babbitt's work was produced on the RCA Synthesizer in a four-track version. The two - track stereo-adaptation offered on this program was pre- pared by the composer. Through the elegance of its sharp outlines and its neat articulation the composition shows the wide range of the synthesizer's potential to great advantage. The conspicuous presence of tremolo-like sounds in the middle section is, of course an expression ingredient of the composer's personal style, not necessitated by the apparatus he used.

Structurally three sections may be distinguished, the last being introduced by percussive sounds. 4

While Babbitt uses echo effects hardly at all, the piece by Herbert Eimert is almost entirely consists of such. It has a strongly suggestive quality, evoking the picture of vast lonely space, of voices of lost humans reverber- ating from invisible shores. It is interesting to notice that composers working in the electronic medium very early were tempted to mix recorded vocal sounds with the electronic ones (which, of course, is a touch of musique concrète) and later reproduced vocal timbres by electronic means. The work originatet at the studio of the West German Radio in Cologne, which has standard equipment of very high quality. In the work by Ernst Krenek, realized at the laboratory of San Fernando Valley State College by the composer, with the assistance of Beverly Grigsby and John Bartley, recor- ding engineer, electronic sounds und recorded instru- mental and other sounds (noises) are combined. The char- acter of the installation available did not promote polish and or slickness, but favored a certain roughness of articulation.

The resulting rather rather sharp contrasts created a dramatic atmo- sphere, which suggested the subtitles of the six sections of the piece (played without interruption). part of the work Thus they do not represent a program, but an afterthought. Structurally, new by five sixths of the piece are the result of selecting and organizing sound material produced by more or less improvisatory methods. The fourth ( "constructive") section consists of one sequence of sound events played against itself in retrograde motion at four different speed- and pitch levels (technically speaking a four-part mensuration canon).

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Ingvar Lidholm's ballett "Riter" contains one section made up of electronic sounds. Here again the special idea of synthetic vocal sounds reverber- ating in space prevails, although with a higher degree of urgency than in the contemplative, nostalgic piece of Eimert. The tape was made at the Swedisch Radio in Stockholm.

.... Grigsby

The work of Toshiro Mayuzumi is pure musique concrète inasmuch as it is a montage of bell sounds recorded at various temples all over Japan. It is distinguished by very refined technical manipulation. of the material and a peculiar soothing quality.

Mario Davidowsky's Study was realized at the Ussachevsky Laboratory at Columbia University. in New York, technically comparable to the Cologne installation. It is very impressive because of its brilliant playfulness and quasi-virtuoso character.

We hope that the present program will, among other things, demonstrate that electronic music is by no means stereotyped, but in its diversification reflects the personalities of the com- poser just as their non-electronic music does, and that electronic music, far from being impersonal and mechanized, conveys a great deal of emotional impact.