Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music

Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music Special Edition 3CD + DVD


[Track Listings]

Disc: 1
1. Valse Sentimentale - Clara Rockmore
2. Oraison - Ens D'Ondes De Montreal
3. Etude Aux Chemins De Fer - Pierre Schaeffer
4. Williams Mix - John Cage
5. Klangstudie II - Herbert Eimert/Robert Beyer
6. Low Speed - Otto Luening
7. Dripsody - Hugh Le Caine
8. Forbidden Planet: Main Title - Louis Barron/Bebe Barron
9. Elektronische Tanzste: Concertando Rubato - Oskar Sala
10. Poem Electronique - Edgard Varese
11. Sine Music (A Swarm Of Butterflies Encountered Over The Ocean) - Richard Maxfield
12. Apocalypse-Part 2 - Tod Dockstader
13. Kontakte - James Tenney/William Winant
14. Wireless Fant - Vladimir Ussachevsky
15. Philomel - Milton Babbitt
16. Spacecraft - MEV
Disc: 2
1. Cindy Electronium - Raymond Scott
2. Pendulum Music - Sonic Youth
3. Bye Bye Butterfly - Pauline Oliveros
4. Projection Esemplastic For White Noise - Joji Yuasa
5. Silver Apples Of The Moon, Part 1 - Morton Subotnick
6. Rainforest Version 1 - David Tudor
7. Poppy Nogood - Terry Riley
8. Boat-Woman-Song - Holger Czukay
9. Music Promenade - Luc Ferrari
10. Vibrations Composees: Rosace 3 - Francois Bayle
11. Mutations - Jean-Claude Risset
12. Hibiki-Hana-Ma - Iannis Xenakis
13. Map Of 49's Dream The Two Systems Of Eleven Sets Of Galactic Intervals: Drift Study '31/69 c.... - La Monte Young
Disc: 3
1. He Destroyed Her Image - Charles Dodge
2. Six Fants On A Poem By Thomas Campion: Her Song - Paul Lansky
3. Appalachian Grove - Laurie Spiegel
4. En Phase/Hors Phase - Bernard Parmegiani
5. On The Other Ocean - David Behrman
6. Stria - John Chowning
7. Living Sound, Patent Pending Music For Sound-Joined Rooms Series - Maryanne Amacher
8. Automatic Writing - Robert Ashley
9. Canti Illuminati - Alvin Curran
10. Music On A Long Thin Wire - Alvin Lucier
11. Melange - Klaus Schulze
12. Before And After Charm (La Notte) - Jon Hassell
13. Unfamiliar Wind (Leeks Hills) - Brian Eno

Musique Concrete - [Origins of Electronic & Industrial Music]

Jahsonic.com's Definition of Musique Concrete:

(also known as Electroacoustics) is the name given to a class of electronic music produced from editing together tape-recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds. Concrete (as opposed to "Abstraite", traditional composition) was pioneered in the late 1940's and 1950's, spurred by developments in microphones and the commercial availability of the magnetic tape recorder.

Pierre Schaeffer, a Paris radio broadcaster, created some of the earliest pieces of Musique Concrete, including "Etude aux chemins de fer" ("Study with Trains"), "Etude au piano I" ("Piano Study I") and "Etude aux casseroles" ("Study with Baking Pans"). Each of these pieces involved splicing, speeding up, looping, and reversing recordings of sound sources like trains, piano and rattling cookware. Schaeffer also collaborated with another Musique Concrete pioneer, Pierre Henry. Together, they created pieces such as "Symphonie pour un homme seule" ("Symphony for a Man Alone").

Concrete was combined with other, synthesized forms of Electronic music to create Edgar Varese's "Poeme Electronique". "Poeme" was played at the 1958 Brussels World's fair through 400 carefully placed loudspeakers in a special pavilion designed by Iannis Xenakis.

After the 1950's, Concrete was somewhat displaced by other forms of Electronic composition, although its influence can be seen in popular music by many bands, including The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Traditional and non-traditional Concrete has experienced a revival in the '80's and '90's, although modern sampling technology is now often used in place of magnetic tape.

Recently, the growing popularity in all forms of electronica has led to a re-birth of Musique Concrete. Artists such as Christian Fennesz, and Francisco Lopez use many Concrete techniques in their music while often being classified under more common electronica genres such as Intelligent Dance Music or Downtempo. Electronica magazines such as The Wire regularly feature articles and reviews of Musique Concr�te. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%E8te

First Concert of Musique Concrete
March 18, 1950: First concert of musique concrete, Paris, Auditorium of the Ecole Normale de Musique. First performance of Symphonie pour un homme seul by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. http://www.ina.fr/grm/presentation/dates.en.html

Film Editing
It is no surprise to find that musique concrete took its inspiration from film editing in many ways, so that sound was organised according to the logic of montage principles, rather than harmonic sequences. Pierre Henry has claimed that musique concrete "proceeds from photography, from cinema", whilst Rob Young has written that "the artistic moment no longer occurred in the written manuscript, nor with the physicality of performance, but became distributed within the manipulation of stock and found sounds, a process resembling film editing." --http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/articles/audio-visual-ryhythms.htm

Beatles [...]

By the mid-1960's popular musicians began to exploit the sophisticaited technology of the recording studio. This phenomenon prompted the Beatles to announce that they were retiring from touring because it was impossible to 'reproduce' their recorded music live. On their White Album, the track Revolution Number Nine introduced musique concrete to a wide audience. This track instigated the 'Paul is dead' rumour. --Kevin Concannon http://www.localmotives.com/hoved/tema/nr_2/cut.html [Aug 2004]

Books
Modulations: A History of Electronic Music: Throbbing Words on Sound - Iara Lee;
In this expansive history of electronic music, Shapiro (The Rough Guide to Drum `n' Bass) chronicles the creative moment of generating sound through sampling, mixing, and manipulation. Written by musicians and aficionados, the articles assembled here form a fascinating account of innovators from John Cage to Miles Davis, thoroughly exploring this sprawling genre and its musical offshoots. Densely packed and meticulously detailed, the book makes some startling geographic and stylistic leaps in an effort to trace the comprehensive history of electronic music. Through interviews, vivid pictures, and crisp commentary, it illustrates how electronic music is now at work in the majority of today's musical styles. This work, a tie-in to Iara Lee's 1998 film of the same name, explores in greater detail some of the same ground covered in J.M. Kelly's The Rough Guide to Techno Music (2000). An essential tool for anyone interested in this music, whether mildly or deeply. -- Caroline Dadas