Pierre Schaeffer in 1952 playing the phonogène à clavier, a tape recorder with its speed altered by playing any of twelve keys on a keyboard. Photo courtesy of GRM.
Image and text source: http://www.newmusicbox.org/
Published: May 24, 2006
Inside the Box: The computer comes out to play
There’s often a vertical plane between musician and audience. The sheet-music stand paved the way for the upturned plastic shell of the turntable, and today, chances are that rectangle obscuring the face of the performer on stage is the screen of a laptop computer, which has emerged as a ubiquitous music-making tool.
This is a 40-minute MP3 of a British radio broadcast called “DJ Food – Raiding the 20th Century” that attempted to sum up the entire cut-up/remix/mash up music movement. It’s lots of crazy, whacky, jarring, harmonious, tricksy, and serendipitous sound, and it made me laugh and think. The landing page for the MP3 has an exhaustive list of the samples employed.
Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.
