Experimental Music Linkdump

JULY 11
What is Experimental Music?

Here is the mix from the first class, with a (hopefully) complete track list below. Each sample is 10 seconds, and many of the vocoder-related samples came from this excellent mix.

or download here

Terry Riley - Persian Surgery Dervishes
Yann Geslin - Variations didactiques
Steve Reich - Drumming
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Mantra
Neu! - Fur Immer
Iannis Xenakis - Concret PH
Raymond Scott - Melonball Bounce (sprite jingle)
Steve Reich - Pendulum Music (performed in last year’s class)
Nick Seaver - Untitled
Zapp - Radio People
Ryoji Ikeda - data.matrix
Philip Glass - einstein on the beach, knee play 1
Pauline Oliveros - Alien Bog
Animal Collective - My Girls
La Monte Young - Excerpt “31 | 69 c. 12:17:33-12:25:33 PM NYC” & “31 | 69 C. 12:17:33-12:24:33 PM NYC”
Pierre Schaeffer - Etude aux chemins du fer
Ben Vautier - Some Ideas for Fluxus
Lesley Flanigan - Retrobuild
Alvin Lucier - I am sitting in a room
Igor Stravinsky - Rite of Spring
Moog 900 series demo recorder
Mac Dre, Mac Mall & E-40 - Dredio
Ryoji Ikeda - Test Pattern #0000
Nick Seaver - Śabda Mañjarī #1
Oval - Gabba Nation
Paul Lansky - Pattern’s Patterns
John Cage (via Nick Seaver) - Imaginary Landscape #5 for the Jonas Brothers
ELO - Mr. Blue Sky
Beck - Harry Partch
Cybotron - Clear
John Cage - Sonata 1 for Prepared Piano
Conlon Nancarrow - Study 36
Ligeti - Continuum (on player piano by Jurgen Hocker)
Hugo Ball - Karawane (performed by Marie Osmond)
Laurie Anderson - Oh Superman
Alva Noto - u_08-1
Maryanne Amacher - Head Rhythm 1
Kraftwerk - Trans-Europe Express
Herbie Hancock - Rockit
Yasunao Tone - Solo for Wounded CD
Iannis Xenakis - Pleiades
Sparky’s Magic Baton
Donna Summer (prod. Giorgio Moroder) - I Feel Love
Steve Reich - Come Out
Brian Eno - Discreet Music
John White - Drinking and Hooting Machine
Justin Bieber - Baby
Amerie - One Thing (DJ API Michael Jackson Remix)
William Burroughs - Silver Smoke of Dreams
Prefuse 73 - Nuno
George Maciunas - Piano Piece #13 (performed by last year’s class)
John Oswald - Brown

JULY 18
How do we hear?

Ears

Frequencies

Mediation

Perfect Tone (app)

How do computers hear (for us)?

Shazam + pdf

Jonathan Sterne on mp3s

Psychoacoustics

Cory Arcangel’s “Number of the Beast” re-encoded as an mp3 666 times

More on Frequencies

Resonance

I-Dosing

entrainment

binaural beats

Gyre by mysterybear

La Monte Young’s Dream House

Otoacoustic emissions

JULY 25
How do we organize ourselves?

In this class, we learned a bit about the Fluxus movement and started to play music in the style of Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Orchestra.

Please take 25 minutes to listen to this podcast about Fluxus. It will give you a good sense of the sound-related work done in the movement and probably some stories to tell your friends. For more, explore the UbuWeb site.

In the style of the Scratch Orchestra, we worked on interpreting a page from Cardew’s massive graphic score for Treatise, thinking about the relationship between visual symbols and sounds. For A LOT more information on Treatise, including ideas about how it should be interpreted, interactive websites, links to recordings, and more, see here. On that page, you can also find four example pages from the score. We worked on page 3 in this class. In the next class, we will be trying out page 75, so please give it a look and think about how you might interpret it with whatever sound-making object you’ll be bringing to class. If you’re hungry for more, here is a reflection on the Scratch Orchestra from a participant.

Next week, we will be working more with scores like this and this and learning about “indeterminacy” — the relationship between compositions and performances, intentions and actions.