“…the effort to abstract the noise from its dramatic context and raise it to the status of musical material.”
Pierre Schaeffer, 1954
In this post, i will explore how that quote from Pierre Schaeffer, the papa of “musique concrète” travels through the last 70 years to today, through hardware and up the recent work of our studio.
To begin with, let's set some basic definitions:
A music sequencer is a device (or software application) that can record, edit, and/ or play back music, by handling note and performance information in several forms. In a way, a player-piano is a sequencer, in that it uses a paper file to trigger playback of sounds - the sounds of the piano instrument.
A drum machine is a device that keeps sounds cued in memory, for the player to play back these sounds, often as an instrumentalist (hitting pads with the fingers or with sticks that trigger sounds).
A sampler is a device that records sounds for playback through various means. Samplers are sometimes combined with playback systems such as a drum machine or sequencers. Often a MIDI keyboard or other trigger / playback device can be connected to a sampler. Samplers often feature sound manipulation parameters such as trimming, pitch control, reverse, EQ, etc.
In many instances, characteristics of drum machines, sequencers and samplers are combined to allow various versions of sound capture, manipulation and performance or playback.
A Beginning
Pierre Schaeffer was a pioneering radio engineer turned sound artist and composer. His work in France in the 1950’s and later helped to establish the fields of sound art, sampling and experimental music while questioning the established edges of what most considered “musical.” He is remembered for advancements in acoustics, sound engineering and composition, while writing about and provoking theoretical new ground in electronic and experimental music. Schaeffer’s work is a treasure of questioning and exploration, and his effort as quoted above “to abstract the noise from its dramatic context and raise it to the status of musical material” is central to this discussion. Before him, most composers looked to traditional musical instruments to create sound, and then worked to arrange and organize these sounds toward artworks, or performable compositions. Shaeffer’s access to the recording studios of Radiodiffusion Française allowed him the resources to experiment with the sounds of trains, traffic, construction and more. His experiments, and later compositions, addressed the idea of “abstracting the noise from its dramatic context” - in other words, how to take the sound of the train and present it such that one hears no longer the dramatic reference of a train, but of the sound themselves - and then to organize these sounds (pitch, form, repetition) such that sincere compositional material is brought to bear. Schaeffer is widely recognized to be the first composing sound artist to utilize a number of sound recording and sampling techniques.
While not a sampling artist, it is worth mentioning John Cage, who’s work in the 1950’s amd later similarly questioned the established definition of what is “musical” through his compositions featuring silence, radios, and other non-traditional sound sources. Cage’s work was massively influential, particularly on the avant-guard sound artists of the latter part of the 20th century.
In the decades that followed Schaeffer’s early experiments, technological advancements made tape recorders more accessible and affordable, and electronic hardware systems with digital recording processors were not far behind. The tools that Schaeffer proposed and created would ultimately become widespread and accessible, as artists and industry the world over took note.
A Continuity
Early sequencers and drum machines were stand-alone purpose-built hardware units that were generally used to accompany live music making (or at least intended to do so). The first major industrial application of drum machines / sequencers were part of “drum boxes” that came as an option to home and church organs, available as accompaniment to the live player. Many of these are still sought after as vintage sound devices and analog solutions to beat-making.
The creation of Roland’s TR-808 revolutionized the drum machine in its ease of use, programmability and sounds. Partially due to the constraints of available electronic parts, technology and certain decisions made by the engineers of the 808 in Japan, the original sounds of the 808, while referencing traditional drum sounds, were not exact replicas - or even close - to its acoustic cousins. “Snare drum” on the 808 sounded like a white noise crunch, and the 808 kick, well, we all know that iconic sound, still ubiquitous in so much music today. The early widespread use of the 808 as a “replacement” for “real” drum sounds ushered in an era of experimentation and fast creation for composers and beat makers, primarily in the hip hop world of the early 80’s.
Step sequencers are quite common and use a series of programmable steps to offer the user sequential options to playback selected sounds. In series, and as loops, this type of device is common in music from early hip hop to early house and techno and through to today's contemporary electronic music of many styles.
These developments ran parallel with early hardware samplers - units that allowed users to sample, or record, short pieces of sound - whatever they chose - and assign these short recordings to banks of available sound files, to be triggered in playback by various means.
It is notable that early turn-tableists were in effect sampling records and overlapping / overlaying parts of songs, breaks, horn shouts, choruses, intros, etc during the very early days of hip hop. Cueing a record to drop the needle on at just the right time is a version of selected managed playpack, even if it is from a fixed-media source. DJ Kool Herc is widely recognized as teh originator of this technique in 1970’s Bronx, NYC.
Speaking of media sources, the affordability and accessibility of early 2 and 4 track magnetic tape recorders opened the doors to new experimentation. The early work of the San Francisco tape Music Center (1960’s) and artists like Steve Reich (It’s Gonna Rain) and Pauline Oliveros (Bye Bye Butterfly) must also be mentioned, as the use of tape recorders and unconventional slicing techniques, manipulations and looping were major advancements in the effort towards Schaeffer’s “general piano.”
The combination of samplers, sequencers and drum machines ramped up the creative process, making sound art and rhythmical manipulation of any sounds more accessible to more artists. This type of “rapid prototyping” and accessibility turbo charged the creative possibilities of the early hip-hop and avant-guard pioneers of sound art.
A Now
This blog is admittedly not comprehensive, and I can by no means claim to be an expert on any of these topics, merely a student. What I can say is that like so many artists now and before me, I am fascinated with where we draw the line at what is “music” and what is “sound” or “noise.”
I have long endeavored to add questions to the mind of listeners and students as we grow into assumptions of what are “true” musical instruments, what is theoretically musical and what is not. I have been diving headlong into a study of the works of Pierre Schaeffer and those that followed in his footsteps of investigation and questioning, often, as I so adore, as agent provocateurs.
So much of my work with MASARY has been site-specific, and that is often driven by finding stories and narratives in a place where we have been invited to create an artwork. Many times, I find myself listening at a site, to the environment and the people, and at times, pulling out a recording device to capture samples of my own. These samples become fodder for my creative process, sometimes finding their way into arranged, managed and curated banks of sounds, playable by a variety of devices (a MIDI keyboard, a drum pad, or a sequencer).
This work fascinates me, and inspired me to create not only from my experience, but also from the moment, from the place, and from new inspiration through the sampled textures, sounds, environmental layers and more.
Our recent artwork, Massively Distributed, falls neatly into this study, as a device that is at once a sampler, a drum machine and a sequencer (to say nothing of the visual effects, that are manipulated alongside the sounds). The web app puts the curated and processed samples of a place into the user’s hands and allows an easy interface to be creative with sound samples from the environment.
I humbly see this work in the lineage and exploration of grand-pere Pierre Schaeffer and the wild west-coasters of the SFTMC and then the New York avant guard scene, and then yes - the hip-hop revolution. I am most proud not as an inventor (I am not) but as an enabler, a facilitator and perhaps most aspiringly as an agent provocateur.
Ryan Edwards
November 2020
“I have coined the term “musique concrète” for this commitment to compose with materials taken from “given” experimental sound in order to emphasize our dependence, no longer on preconceived sound abstractions but on sound fragments that exist in reality and that are considered as discrete and complete sound objects even if and above all when they do not fit in with the elementary definitions of music theory.”
“There is no instrument on which to play musique concrète. That is the main difficulty. Or else we have to imagine a huge cybernetic-like machine that can achieve millions of combinations, and we’re not there yet.”
- Pierre Schaeffer, June 1954
A la Recherche d'une Musique Concrète
