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Sound Diffusion
Sound diffusion (sometimes referred to simply as 'diffusion') is a performance practice in the field of acousmatic music. According to composer and theorist Denis Smalley, it describes the "projection and the spreading of sound in an acoustic space for a group of listeners" during a concert. These concerts can be seen as acoustic recitals without performers, where sound is exclusively generated by loudspeakers. In many cases, the sound diffusion is performed by the composer themselves, whose task it is to integrate and interpret the music within the concert space. The practice was originally formulated by composer Pierre Henry and based on the diffusion of a stereo signal to multiple loudspeakers using a special mixing desk. Differing from the spatial sound approach adopted by Stockhausen and others, the loudspeaker orchestra consisted of a diverse range of speakers, specifically chosen for their diverse tonal characteristics. The aim of the diffusion is to “exaggerate the dynam ...
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Acousmatic Music
Acousmatic music (from Greek ἄκουσμα ''akousma'', "a thing heard") is a form of electroacoustic music that is specifically ''composed'' for presentation using speakers, as opposed to a live performance. It stems from a compositional tradition that dates back to the introduction of musique concrète (a form of musique expérimentale) in the late 1940s. Unlike musical works that are realised using sheet music exclusively, compositions that are purely acousmatic (in listening terms) often exist solely as fixed media audio recordings. The compositional practice of acousmatic music features acousmatic sound as a central musical aspect. Other aspects traditionally thought of as 'musical' such as melody, harmony, rhythm, metre may be present but more often consideration is given to sound-based characteristics such as timbre and spectrum. Compositional materials can include sounds derived from musical instruments, voice, electronically generated sound, audio that has been m ...
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Denis Smalley
Denis Arthur Smalley (born 1946 in Nelson, New Zealand) is a composer of electroacoustic music, with a special interest in acousmatic music. Biography Denis Smalley studied at the University of Canterbury and Victoria University in his native New Zealand, and later at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen, with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), and at the University of York.John Young, "Smalley, Denis (Arthur)", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music, 2001). He initially composed onto tape, but as early as the 1980s realised his works using computer software. His composition ''Pentes'' (1974) is regarded as one of the classics of electroacoustic music. Source sounds for his works may come from the environment—and are often the starting point for his pieces—but he may also develop highly sophisticated timbres from scratc ...
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Pierre Henry
Henry at his home (January 2008) Pierre Georges Albert François Henry (; 9 December 1927 – 5 July 2017) was a French composer and pioneer of musique concrète. Biography Henry was born in Paris, France, and began experimenting at the age of 15 with sounds produced by various objects. He became fascinated with the integration of noise into music, now called noise music. He studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen, and Félix Passerone at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1938 to 1948. Between 1949 and 1958, Henry worked at the Club d'Essai studio at RTF, which had been founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1943. During this period, he wrote the 1950 piece ''Symphonie pour un homme seul'', in cooperation with Schaeffer. It is an important early example of musique concrète. Henry also composed the first musique concrète track to appear in a commercial film: the 1952 short film ''Astrologie ou le miroir de la vie'' by Jean Grémillon. Henry also scored numerous additional films ...
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Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, for introducing controlled chance ( aleatory techniques) into serial composition, and for musical spatialization. He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne, later studying with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music, but also on jazz and popular music. His works, composed over a period of nearly sixty years, eschew traditional forms. In addition to electronic music—both with and without live performers—they range from miniatures for musical boxes through works for sol ...
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Acousmonium
The Acousmonium is the sound diffusion system designed in 1974 by Francois Bayle and used originally by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales at the Maison de Radio France. It consists of 80 loudspeakers of differing size and shape, and was designed for tape playback. As Bayle wrote in a CD sleeve note in 1993, it was The process of distributing compositions of electroacoustic music or Musique concrète across an acousmonium is called ''diffusion''. This is done by the composer or a performer by controlling and adjusting the spatial distribution and volume of the music during playback. The Acousmonium has been in use more recently. It was, for example, used for a series of concerts held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in May, 2006. See also *Acousmatic music Acousmatic music (from Greek ἄκουσμα ''akousma'', "a thing heard") is a form of electroacoustic music that is specifically ''composed'' for presentation using speakers, as opposed to a live performance ...
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Groupe De Recherches Musicales
A group is a military unit or a military formation that is most often associated with military aviation. Air and aviation groups The terms group and wing differ significantly from one country to another, as well as between different branches of a national defence force. Air groups vary considerably in size and status, but generally take two forms: * A unit of two to four squadrons, commanded by a lieutenant colonel, colonel, commander, naval captain or an equivalent rank. The United States Air Force (USAF), ''groupes'' of the French ''Armée de l'air'', ''gruppen'' of the German ''Luftwaffe'', United States Marine Corps Aviation, British Fleet Air Arm and some other naval air services usually follow this pattern. * A larger formation, often comprising more than 10 squadrons, commanded by a major general, brigadier general, commodore, rear admiral, air commodore or air vice-marshal. The air forces of many Commonwealth countries, such as the British Royal Air Force (RAF), fo ...
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Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer (English pronunciation: , ; 14 August 1910 – 19 August 1995) was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist, acoustician and founder of Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète (GRMC). His innovative work in both the sciences—particularly communications and acoustics—and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end of World War II, as well as his anti-nuclear activism and cultural criticism garnered him widespread recognition in his lifetime. Amongst the vast range of works and projects he undertook, Schaeffer is most widely and currently recognized for his accomplishments in electronic and experimental music, at the core of which stands his role as the chief developer of a unique and early form of avant-garde music known as musique concrète. The genre emerged in Europe from the utilization of new music technology developed in the post-war era, following the advance of electroacoustic an ...
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Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre
Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre, or as it is more commonly known, BEAST, is a sound diffusion system specifically designed for the performance of electroacoustic music. It is a long-running project of the Electroacoustic Music Studios at the University of Birmingham, founded in 1982 under the directorship of Jonty Harrison. Since 2014 BEAST has been directed by Scott Wilson, along with Annie Mahtani and James Carpenter as technical director. Simply put, it consists of a set of loudspeakers connected to a computer, usually controlled by a diffusion console. The loudspeakers BEAST can consist of up to over 100 channels of loudspeakers, often arranged largely in pairs or rings,, and includes ultra-low frequency loudspeakers (''bins'') and custom-built trees of high frequency speakers (''tweeter trees'') which can be suspended above an audience. The minimum set-up that BEAST would ordinarily use for stereo diffusion comprises a set of loudspeakers which Jonty Harrison term ...
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Musique Concrète
Musique concrète (; ): " problem for any translator of an academic work in French is that the language is relatively abstract and theoretical compared to English; one might even say that the mode of thinking itself tends to be more schematic, with a readiness to see material for study in terms of highly abstract dualisms and correlations, which on occasion does not sit easily with the perhaps more pragmatic English language. This creates several problems of translation affecting key terms. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the word ''concret''/''concrète'' itself. The word in French, which has nothing of the familiar meaning of "concrete" in English, is used throughout 'In Search of a Concrete Music''with all its usual French connotations of "palpable", "nontheoretical", and "experiential", all of which pertain to a greater or lesser extent to the type of music Schaeffer is pioneering. Despite the risk of ambiguity, we decided to translate it with the English word ''concrete'' ...
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Sound Engineering
An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduction, and reinforcement of sound. Audio engineers work on the "technical aspect of recording—the placing of microphones, pre-amp knobs, the setting of levels. The physical recording of any project is done by an engineer... the nuts and bolts." Sound engineering is increasingly seen as a creative profession where musical instruments and technology are used to produce sound for film, radio, television, music and video games. Audio engineers also set up, sound check and do live sound mixing using a mixing console and a sound reinforcement system for music concerts, theatre, sports games and corporate events. Alternatively, ''audio engineer'' can refer to a scientist or professional engineer who holds an engineering degree and who designs, ...
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Sound Art
Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art as a practice "harnesses, describes, analyzes, performs, and interrogates the condition of sound and the process by which it operates." In Western art, early examples include Luigi Russolo's '' Intonarumori'' or noise intoners (1913), and subsequent experiments by dadaists, surrealists, the Situationist International, and in Fluxus events and other Happenings. Because of the diversity of sound art, there is often debate about whether sound art falls within the domains of visual art or experimental music, or both. Other artistic lineages from which sound art emerges are conceptual art, minimalism, site-specific art, sound poetry, electro-acoustic music, spoken word, avant-garde poetry, sound scenography, and experimental thea ...
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Sound Collage
In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or Musical composition, compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as Photomontage, montage. This is often done through the use of sampling (music), sampling, while some playable sound collages were produced by gluing together sectors of different vinyl records. In any case, it may be achieved through the use of previous sound recordings or musical Sheet music, scores. Like its visual cousin, the collage work may have a completely different effect than that of the component parts, even if the original parts are completely recognizable or from only one source. History The origin of sound collage can be traced back to the works of Heinrich Ignaz Biber, Biber's programmatic sonata ''Battalia'' (1673) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'' (1789), and some critics have described certain passages in Gustav Mahl ...
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