Before the invention of the tape recorder in 1929 music's vocabulary was extremely limited. Confined to traditional instruments played by musicians it was an event one experienced in a static environment. The introduction of recorded media would completely change music's role, capabilities, and meaning. Recorded onto tape (or any media for that matter) music makes the transformation from event to object, gaining the ability to be taken out of context and planted into new ones. The implications for this are immense. Sound, when recorded onto media becomes a material object, and its plasticity, just like any other material, can be altered, manipulated, and broken.
It wasn't long after the tape recorder for musicians to begin to discover the full potential of a materialized sound. Pierre Schaeffer's pioneering work with tape loops in 1940s in Paris and Halim El-Dabh's work in Cairo around the same time expanded music's vocabulary to include any recorded sound. The definition of the instrument changed. The media technology itself, in this case the tape recorder, becomes an instrument. Along with this a whole new set of methodologies and compositional strategies that emerge from the technology and mechanical workings of the tape recorder make their way into musical practice, widening music's boundaries even more. Here a synthesis between music and technology occurs, with the development of music and technology coincides forming some kind of symbiotic relationship. Musique Concrete, the making of music from concrete objects, would serve as the basis of sampling and sample culture which today has become a large part of popular music. You can listen and subscribe to the podcast at KCPR.
It wasn't long after the tape recorder for musicians to begin to discover the full potential of a materialized sound. Pierre Schaeffer's pioneering work with tape loops in 1940s in Paris and Halim El-Dabh's work in Cairo around the same time expanded music's vocabulary to include any recorded sound. The definition of the instrument changed. The media technology itself, in this case the tape recorder, becomes an instrument. Along with this a whole new set of methodologies and compositional strategies that emerge from the technology and mechanical workings of the tape recorder make their way into musical practice, widening music's boundaries even more. Here a synthesis between music and technology occurs, with the development of music and technology coincides forming some kind of symbiotic relationship. Musique Concrete, the making of music from concrete objects, would serve as the basis of sampling and sample culture which today has become a large part of popular music. You can listen and subscribe to the podcast at KCPR.
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