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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / fc's music / Gesang der Siam (für Pseudo-Tape)

Gesang der Siam (für Pseudo-Tape)

By fc on March 13, 2016 11:43 am

In my two days of teaching tertiary-level composition, I get the great pleasure of introducing young composers to tape composition techniques. This is not a composition that is *truly* tape-based, or *truly* based on tape techniques, as it employs a number of digital shortcuts and Max4Live-based processing. Kind of like tape in the digital age - running tape machines via software processing. So I call it Pseudo-Tape. It is in the spirit of tape-based compositions, but capitalising on some modern tech.

It is in my own small way, a tribute to Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge, though unlike that piece, does not employ any synthesis.

All the sounds are taken from freesound.org and are all CC0 licensed, so they are freely available for use.

I am, when it comes to it, a "serial" composer, so all materials and structures are in a broad sense, constructed through serial processes. There are a host of nested time-duration-tuplets that make up the general structural skeleton of the piece. These are all permuted in various ways, as are the materials themselves.

Here is the skeleton score, on my bed.

I've had a kinda crappy week, and spilled liquid on my main working laptop, which is now at the Apple store getting remedied. Consequently, this was Ableton Live 9.1 as that is what is on my old laptop; I started in Reaper but my goodness that is clunky.

I lurve this! Dare I say – far better than Stockhausen.

So no physical tape recorder was used?

Jim Wood wrote:

I lurve this! Dare I say – far better than Stockhausen.

So no physical tape recorder was used?


Thankee. No, there was no physical tape used. But I do like the idea of using physical tape at some stage. I don't have the facilities though, unfortunately.

Wonderful. It's a refreshingly modern take on one of the oldest forms of electroacoustic composition. Entirely digital but very much alive and soulful as the original tape compositions were.

I should dig out the reel-to-reel. Only thing is that old thing is in desperate need of alignment and biasing... Probably by now it needs a total overhaul.

kevanatkins wrote:

Wonderful. It's a refreshingly modern take on one of the oldest forms of electroacoustic composition. Entirely digital but very much alive and soulful as the original tape compositions were.

I should dig out the reel-to-reel. Only thing is that old thing is in desperate need of alignment and biasing... Probably by now it needs a total overhaul.

Let's make some augmented tape pieces.

Thanks for listening and the comment, I'm glad the 'spirit' of tape composition came through.

vinpous wrote:
kevanatkins wrote:

Wonderful. It's a refreshingly modern take on one of the oldest forms of electroacoustic composition. Entirely digital but very much alive and soulful as the original tape compositions were.

I should dig out the reel-to-reel. Only thing is that old thing is in desperate need of alignment and biasing... Probably by now it needs a total overhaul.

Let's make some augmented tape pieces.

Thanks for listening and the comment, I'm glad the 'spirit' of tape composition came through.

If it still works or when I eventually get around fixing it in the case that it's fucked, we should totally do that. It's one of those domestic ones from a now defunct brand National, which some people on here might remember. It was how Panasonic, got away with selling shit to the domestic market.

kevanatkins wrote:
vinpous wrote:
kevanatkins wrote:

Wonderful. It's a refreshingly modern take on one of the oldest forms of electroacoustic composition. Entirely digital but very much alive and soulful as the original tape compositions were.

I should dig out the reel-to-reel. Only thing is that old thing is in desperate need of alignment and biasing... Probably by now it needs a total overhaul.

Let's make some augmented tape pieces.

Thanks for listening and the comment, I'm glad the 'spirit' of tape composition came through.

If it still works or when I eventually get around fixing it in the case that it's fucked, we should totally do that. It's one of those domestic ones from a now defunct brand National, which some people on here might remember. It was how Panasonic, got away with selling shit to the domestic market.

Did you catch Another Other? Pateras was doing some wonderful tape manipulations in real time.

vinpous wrote:
kevanatkins wrote:
vinpous wrote:
kevanatkins wrote:

Wonderful. It's a refreshingly modern take on one of the oldest forms of electroacoustic composition. Entirely digital but very much alive and soulful as the original tape compositions were.

I should dig out the reel-to-reel. Only thing is that old thing is in desperate need of alignment and biasing... Probably by now it needs a total overhaul.

Let's make some augmented tape pieces.

Thanks for listening and the comment, I'm glad the 'spirit' of tape composition came through.

If it still works or when I eventually get around fixing it in the case that it's fucked, we should totally do that. It's one of those domestic ones from a now defunct brand National, which some people on here might remember. It was how Panasonic, got away with selling shit to the domestic market.

Did you catch Another Other? Pateras was doing some wonderful tape manipulations in real time.

I'm afraid I didn't. I really should be more on top of that.

Great track.  Very effective and does capture a lot of the essence of tape music.  Nice one!

ps.  The score link is 404.

rdomain wrote:

ps.  The score link is 404.


Try this

For some reason, Dropbox completely spazzed out between my two laptops/getting one fixed. I'm quite ticked off about it, too.

That did the trick  smile

tape is a lot of fun to play around with and i have a lot of respect for musique concrete for setting the stage for the future of music, nice homage to the genre

rdomain wrote:

That did the trick  smile

Yay!

george bowles wrote:

tape is a lot of fun to play around with and i have a lot of respect for musique concrete for setting the stage for the future of music, nice homage to the genre

It didn't just set the stage, it defined it! But yeah, musique concrete is the bomb-diggity.

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