Monday, June 29, 2015

Ruth Anderson - SUM (State of the Union Message)


1973

This is one of most fun pieces of sound collage I know of.  From the CRI album of music by Lesbian American Composers.

Update:

Vladimir Ussachevsky Sonic Contours 1952


The piece was created in Arturo Toscannini's personal recording studio, in collaboration with his personal technician, David Sarser aiding Ussachevsky.


I love those early electronic pieces, makes me nostalgic for when I had a job at a really primitive patch cord and tape deck music studio when I was in college. But not that far back.   None of my pieces I made then survive, which is probably just as well.  One sampled Washboard Sam from an old recording.  I wanted some more sound so I stole the door off a locker and rubbed a stick against the ventilation slits to try to get the same rhythm with a different sound.  Didn't work the way I'd planned it,  I didn't know that Washboard Sam had fitted his board with a wheel with a sort of reed on it that made his unique signature sound.

Haven't done any more with the medium but I did learn how to edit reel to reel tape with a demagnetized razor blade and paper tape.  Which was also good for inserting silence into a piece, really useful if you had to add a few seconds here and there to meet the time requirement for an assignment.   I did one that I called Zebra 36.  No idea what happened to those tapes.  I don't have anything to play them on, anyway.  I wasn't big on the synthesizer when they introduced it.  An Arp, as I recall.  It sounded awful.  All the students pieces on it sounded like music to introduce the 6 O'clock news.

Got to watch out, nostalgia is a trap.

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