New Sound One: Was made by using transposition, time stretch and reverb. An original beeping sound was transposed down and time stretched make it four times as long. Reverb was then added to blur the original beeps and give a more rich and smooth sound.

New Sound Two: This was made by transposing an original recording of birds and adding reverb. The recording of birds was transposed upwards to eight times its original. A highly reflective reverb was then added to make the sound blur.

New Sound Three: This was made by using time-stretch and transposition. The original sound  (a car driving past) was taken and stretched to make it twice its original length and half its original pitch.

Answer:

Recording technology captured the sounds, and sound editing programmes on the computer were used to transform them.

New Music for a New Age

The world at the end of the 19th and early 20th century was a rapidly changing place. The invention of the motor car and the expansion of factories made the world much louder and busier.

The Italian Futurists were excited by all of the new technologies being invented at the beginning of the 20th Century: Cars, telephones, aeroplanes, trains (many of which we take for granted these days).

They felt that traditional music was out of date, boring and stuck in the past. They wanted to create a new style of music that would fit with this new modern world.

Appreciating All Sounds

One of the Futurists, Luigi Russolo, argued that most music was only made with about four or five different types of sounds:

• • Instruments played with the bow
  • Plucked instruments
  • Brass instruments
  • Woodwind
  • Percussion

He demanded:

“We must break out of this narrow circle of [note] sounds, and conquer the infinite variety of [all] sounds.

Let us therefore invite young musicians of genius and audacity { that’s you! } to listen attentively to all sounds, so that they can understand the varied rhythms [and tones] of which they are composed. […]

Then, when comparing the varied timbres of sounds and noises with those of musical tones, they will be convinced by how much more interesting [all sounds are than the few traditional orchestra sounds].”

Listen to some examples of sounds from each category. Which collection of sounds do you prefer? Why?

Orchestral Sounds

Keys – Discrete and contained pitches.

Wind – Steady pitch sound.

Percussion – Mainly only used for emphasis.

Bow – Steady pitch sound.

All Sounds

Ding – Complex vibration and beating.

Crunch –Different textures.

Thud – Solid thump.

Patter – Many small sounds with depth.

New Sounds from New Technology

As the technologies developed and improved throughout the early 20th Century, ever more exciting possibilities for creating music became available.

Pierre Schaeffer was working as a technician at the French radio (RTF) in the 1940s, when he became fascinated with the possibilities of recorded sound. He recorded sounds onto vinyl disks (like LP records) and then explored the transformations that were possible. For example: reversing sounds, transposition, time-stretch and loops.

Using these techniques he invented a style of music which he called Musique Concrète.

Etude aux Tourniquets (1948)

An excerpt from one of Pierre Schaeffer’s five studies in sound.