There is a musical term called field recordings, which focuses on recording the surrounding sounds, whether they are natural or man-made, as the basis of musical material. Rather than music being the starting point, it is sound or noise. Today, it is a musical style of its own, and it has emerged from many branches which have looked at non-musical sounds and their application in music. After all, after the liberation of tonality, it was only expected that sound itself would need its own revolution. And it has come a long way. Let’s have a look at how this has come to be, and what exactly have been the applications of this liberation.
psyche rock (Full Version)
The movement called musique concrète is based on the usage of non-musical sounds in order to create musical material. It was first developed by French composer Schaeffer at the beginning of the 1940s. In his view, the focus is on the sound objects. Schaeffer established the Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète and, throughout its existence, attracted figures such as Henry, Ferrari, Boulez, Stockhausen, Varèse and Xenakis.
Portrait of Marcel Duchamp © Wikipedia
The Italian futurists, too, in Pratella’s Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, wanted to bring the sounds of everyday life to the same level as the ones developed through the history of music. Some of the main ideas behind their movement were to keep young musicians away from conservatories and encourage them to study independently, abstain from competitions and allow music to be free, and promote new works in preference to old ones.
Pierre Schaeffer © thevinylfactory.com
Later, these ideas of intentional equality between sounds were strongly influenced by the Fluxus movement, itself strongly influenced by the Dadaism of Marcel Duchamps, who gave importance to everyday objects and questioned their legitimacy as works of art. Of course, and later on, one can also think of Warhol, whose work on bringing consumerism into museums has been highly influential in raising the question of what art is, and what is good enough to be considered art.
Balilla Pratella – AVIATORE DRO – Fragment with Intonarumori
This approach to recording does not only apply to the experiments of avant-garde composers; blues, for instance, was strongly developed around the concept of field recordings. It is thanks to Alan Lomax who travelled across the country to record blue musicians, that the music came to be what it is today. In itself, blues was initially the subject of social and cultural research and behind the intention of documenting what was happening in rural America. It was only after that, that it became the foundation of national North American music.
3DIO – Free Space Binaural Microphone XLR © studiocare.com
Technological developments have also allowed us to capture sounds in the most creative ways. If the recording studio has reached incredible levels of progress, recording on the go, in a natural environment, for instance, is also easier than ever. Nowadays, sound engineers and musicians are able to record sounds and their dimensional images, allowing the listener to then perceive the recorded sample with a sense of place and location. The microphone company 3Dio for instance, released a pair of binaural microphones, which allow recording sound the way the human ear hears it.
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