Episode 146

Chapter 08, Tape Composition and Sound Editing. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music

Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes.

This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text.

The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings.

There is a complete playlist for this episode on the website for the podcast.

Let’s get started with the listening guide to Chapter 08, Tape Composition and Sound Editing from my book Electronic and Experimental music.

Playlist: Classic Tape Composition Techniques

Time

Track Time

Start

Introduction –Thom Holmes

01:30

00:00

1 Pierre Schaeffer, “Cinq études de bruits: Étude violette (1948). Early application of backwards sounds using a turntable

03:19

01:34

2 Pierre Henry, “Le Microphone bien tempéré” (1950– 52). Used reverberation.

24:48

04:50

3 Otto Luening, “Invention in Twelve Tones” (1952). Used tape echo.

03:47

29:37

4 Morton Feldman, “Intersection” (1953). Used leader tape as a composition tool to add patches of silence.

03:30

33:18

5 György Ligeti, “Glissandi” (1957). Extensive use of tape speed variation and backwards sounds.

07:45

33:44

6 Henri Pousseur, “Scambi” (1957– 58). Explored white noise, filtering, and reverberation.

06:34

44:20

7 Herbert Brün, “Anepigraphe” (1958). Tape music with voices edited into the mix, produced in the WDR studio in Cologne.

07:46

50:56

8 Terry Riley, “Music for the Gift” part 1 (1963). One of the first uses of tape delay with multiple tape recorders.

05:45

58:42

9 Pauline Oliveros, “Beautiful Soop” (1967). Used multiple tape echo signals.

27:46

01:04:24

10 Violet Archer, “Episodes” (1973). Using two Putney synthesizers, a bank of 10 oscillators, mixer, reverb, ring modulation, and filtering.

08:46

01:32:10

Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes.

My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022.

See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation.

For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations.

Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.