Hard semester so far

Well it's Monday, September 20th and so far it has been a horrible beginning to another horrible week of school.  In MPA 334, we had a test on the first chapter of our book and the beginnings of electronic music....failed miserably.  I hate it when I know what the answers to the questions are, but my brain shuts off and I can't answer it. So I ended up with blank answers for all of the questions, except the 2nd question, which was about Theremin, his life, and his electronic instrument... except I spelled Theremin's name wrong as well. Been talking about the man for two weeks and making notes on him, but I get his name wrong today. Then to make it worse, I actually forgot to write out my blog for last week as to the life of Leon Theremin and how he invented the Theremin instrument, as well as some of his other inventions.

So back to the class and the notes from both class and book, here you are:
Chapter 2- Early Electronic Music in Europe

Recording before the Tape Recorder, there were:

• Disks, which was more popular than the other two, partly due to the fact that disk recordings were "less expensive, widely available, and more amenable to a trial and error process". Some of the disadvantages, however, were that the playback time for disc recordings were limited to a few minutes at a speed of 78 rpm, and there was no sound editing or mixing capability.
• Wire Recorders
• Phonofilm, also known as the De Forest Process, named after its inventor, Lee de Forest who was known for also coming up with the Audiom vacuum tube.

The De Forest process:

• First introduced 1919
• It worked by converting audio signals to electrical waveforms and photographically recorded on the edge of motion picture film:
• "Soundtracks were made audible by using a photoelectric call to convert the track during the playback of the motion picture"

Turntablism- the idea of exploiting a device and using it the way its not supposed to be used.
Turntables were often used onstage as part of the performances at this time; however Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) and Ernst Toch (1887-1964), who were both (inspired by the common gramophone), were able to find other applications for the turntable.  They decided to experiment with record players as an instrument rather than using them to record the performance.

• Grammophonmusik
• The roots of turntablism
• Originalwerke fur Schallplatten
• Hindemith's and Toch's short program consisting of 5 works that lasted only a few minutes each
• Hindemith's 2 works were titled Trickaufnahmen ("trick recordings")
• Toch's 3 works were titled Gesprochene Music ("spoken music")
• For all 5 records, the men exploited the effects of using pre-recording and playing them back at the wrong speed.

Musique Concrete:

Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995)- a radio engineer, broadcaster, writer, and biographer.

Pierre Henry (b. 1927)- a classically trained composer.

Schaeffer and Henry decided to collaborate together to form what would later come Musique Concrete, a term originally coined by Schaeffer in 1948. Their compositions referred to real world sounds or audibles or other naturally occurring sounds that didn't include instruments or human interface.  Musique Concrete embodied new sensibilities of music expression and re-conceptualized the abstraction of notation.  Schaeffer's first idea was to use any and all sounds except traditional instruments.

Listening: Etudes de Bruits ("studies of noise") (1948) used:

• A disc-cutting lathe
• 4 turntables
• 4 channel mixers
• Microphone
• Audio filters
• Reverb chamber
• Previously recorded sounds.

Side note: Schaeffer also found a way to repeat sounds in his Etudes by creating lock grooves, or endless loops, with the disc cutter.

Four principles that the second era of electronic music rest on are:

1. Composing through technology means dealing with actual sounds
2. Sounds organic coming from mon musical sources
3. Replayed identically each time using mechanical means
4. Presentation of the work did not require human performers

This is what I have so far, but I plan on updating this when I gather more notes on Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007).

MPA 334 Week 3 9/6-7/10

 

The Theremin:

             Was originally developed in 1919 by Lev Termen, known by his anglicized name, Leon Theremin (1896-1993). Leon Theremin was a Russian inventor, professor, electrical engineer, and cellist who is most known for inventing the Theremin instrument, which he patented in 1928. He was also the inventor for the interface, which is a technique that is used for improving the picture quality of a video signal, and is widely used for video and television technology.

             The Theremin is considered to be the first electronic music instrument and is actually used without ever touching it.  The instrument consists of two antennae, one that comes out vertically and the other that comes out horizontally, and uses a beat frequency method to sound.  The vertical antenna was played with the right hand and controlled the pitch.  The horizontal antenna was played with the left hand and controlled the amplitude, or loudness, of the sound.  The human body's electrical is used to disrupt the electromagnetic field of the two antennae in order to change the pitch and the amplitude.

           
              The most renowned thereminist, considered to be the world's best, was Clara Rockmore (1911-1998).  Clara Rockmore was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was a student of Leon Theremin's, and was also a child prodigy in music.  She originally played the violin but was forced to give it up due to bone problems with her hands.  She was known for developing a unique way of "aereal fingering" in order to play the Theremin with the unparalleled precision that she had.  
            

The Theremin in Music and Film:

               The Theremin was more popularly used for movies made in the 1950s and 60s, because of its eerie and bizarre sounds.  One popular movie that used the Theremin for its sounds was 'The Day the Earth Stood Still". Other movies that were able to use the Theremin are 'It Came From Outer Space", "Spellbound", and "The Lost Weekend".  Since the 60s, however, other directors and sound engineers have been able to bring back the sounds of the Theremin for their movies, such as:

• Ed Wood
• Monster house
• The Machinist
• Hellboy
• The Avengers
• Moulin Rouge
• It Might Get Loud
• The Flintstones
• The Ten Commandments
• Mars Attacks!
• Bartleby

              Bands and musicians, over the years, have also been able to use the Theremin in order to create new and exciting sounds in their music, bands like:

• Led Zeppelin
• Elton John, who used the Theremin in his song 'Rocket Man', although it was only used for a few seconds.
• Muse
• Keane,
• All-American Rejects
• Aerosmith
• Elvis Costello and the Imposters
• The Beach Boys
• Black-Eyed Peas
• David Byrne
• Talking Heads
• Os Mutantes, a group in the 1960s who started the Tropicalia Movement of Brazil
• Simon and Garfunkel
• System of a Down
• Third Eye Blind
• The White Stripes
• Nine Inch Nails
• Queens of the Stone Age
• Sufjan Stevens
• Jem
• Incubus
• Rooney
• Semisonic
• Marilyn Manson

The majority of the list of movies and bands that I found that have used the Theremin in some of their songs I found on www.thereminworld.com.

MPA 334 Week 2

Three principle themes of electronic music:

1. The marriage of technology and music is inescapable and not always perfect
2. The history of invention
3. The diffusion og electronic music into worldwide musical culture

Edgar Varese (1883-1965)

• Considered to be the father of poeme electronique.
• Poeme electronique was first composed by "using three synchronized tracks of magnetic tape" (p4)
• French composer
• Worked closely with fellow composer Feruccio Busoni (1866-1924)

Melvin Kranzberg (1917-95)

• renowned scholar on the history of technology
• "'Invention is the mother of necessity'"

Philip Reis (1834-74)

• Reis Telephone, first introduced in 1861. The idea for the Reis Telephone was a device that detected sound and transmitted it from one membrane to another using a wire connected to both ends. The wire was charged by a battery

Elisha Gray (1835-1901)

• Involved in telegraph communication.
• Employed by the Western Electric Company as a supervisor.
• Best known for contentious patent dispute with Alexander Graham Bell over the design of the original 1876 telephone.
• Involved in the creation of the Musical Telegraph, which first dates back to 1874.
• Showed how frequencies changed depending on the resistance of electromagnet.
• Had two telegraph keys, each having an electromagnet and small strip of metal (a.k.a. a reed). When the telegraph key was pressed, an electrical circuit was closed, causing the reed to vibrate at a frequency that was audible when electrically amplified.
• The instrument was polyphonic.
• Predates the electric organ by 60 years.
• Could transmit musical signals over ordinary telegraph wires to a receiver stationed as far as 200 miles away.
• Gray soon lost interest in the telegraph's musical applications and instead saw its potential for being able to send several telegraph signals at once.
• 1885, Ernst Lorenz, a German inventor further developed the sound-generating circuits and even found ways to control the envelope of sound.

Herman von Helmholtz (1821-94)

• German physicist who was interested in how people hear music.
• Published On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, which was about acoustic and tone generation.
• Inventor of the Helmholtz Resonator, "which demonstrate the theory of complex tone quality".

Thaddeus Cahill (1867-1934)

• Took an interest in Helmholtz's work and was inspired to devise an electrical method to fabricate the musical sound and giving a single performer the power of a synthetic orchestra.
• First patent was filed on August 10, 1895
• found the original design to be too complicated and impractical, so he assimilated the features into a "better-conceived 45-page patent opus in 1896".
• Considered the first person to possess a sense for the commercial potential of electronic music and is even credited for coining the term "synthesizing" in the field of electronic music.
• The instrument he later patented in 1897 was known by two different names, the Dynamophone and the Telharmonium.
• consisted of electrical tone-generating mechanics
• a touch-sensitive polyphonic keyboard for activating the tone-generating circuitry
• and a speaker system for reproducing the sound
• His first Telharmonium concert was in New York in 1906.

The time of Cahill's Telharmonium and early electronic music face some of the same problems as we do today:

• Method tone generating
• Tuning
• Interface design
• Power supply
• Size
• Mixing of sounds
• Amplification
• Control of dynamics
• Funding issues
• Widespread uses

The Futurists:

Feruccio Busoni (1866-1924)

• Italian musician, composer, and teacher.
• Had an interest in "freeing music from its 'hallowed traditions".
• "A product of the machine age, he was compelled to use his music as a means for discarding the past in order to link to the future".
• Published Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music, which documented his musical ideas.
• "'Music was born free; and to win freedom is its destiny".
• "Inspired a younger generation of composers to open their minds to the use of any and all sounds in music"
• "One of the first composers to realize technology might be a means to fulfill his musical ideas"
• Busoni understood and foretold how machines and industry would become necessary in the production and creativity of music, "'I almost think that in the new great music, machines will be necessary and will be assigned a share in it. Perhaps industry, too will bring forth her share in the artistic ascent.'"

"The Futurist Manifesto":

• First published in 1909 and written be Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944).
• Marinetti's words anticipated the rise of Fascisim.
• "Beauty exists only in struggle"

Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)

• Name closely associated with musical movements of the Futurist movement.
• Published the Art of Noise.
• Envisioned new ways of making music through the use of the sounds of the industrial age.
• Categorized music into six separated categories:
• Roars, thunders, explosions
• Whistling, hiss, puff
• Whispers, murmurs, mumblings
• Screeching, creaks, rustles
• Percussive instruments (metal, wood)
• Voices of animals and people
• Had his first Futurist Concerto in 1914, which was met with an angry audience, who threw rotten fruits and vegetables at the performers and composer.

Lee de Forest (1874-1961)

• Invented vaccuum tubes which would take a relatively low signal and amplifying it; 
• this would later lead to modern radio productivity
• the amplification of microphones and musical instruments, 
• the innovations of televisions and high fidelity recording

Lev Sergeyevich Termen, also known as, Leon Theremin (1896-1993)

• Russian electrical engineer and cellist
• The inventor of the Theremin, which was a sort-of instrument that uses a beat frequency method to produce its sonorities.
• Patented in 1928
• Instead of using a keyboard, like the Audion Piano, the Theremin was played by moving the hands around two antennae, one upright antenna and one horizontal, circular antenna.
• The vertical antenna was played with the right hand and controlled the pitch
• The horizontal antenna was played with the left hand and controlled the amplitude, or loudness, of the sound.
• The sound remained continuous unless the left hand was touching the horizontal antenna.
• The first gesture-controlled electronic musical instrument.
• The way the machine works is by using an electrical charge held by the human body called the Capacitance. This charge would disrupt the electromagnetic field around each of the antennae.