# What is musique concrète?



## Kopachris

Simple question, no?

But where does musique concrète start and end? Can it exist in today's Electronic Age? Are "found sounds," later to be warped by the composer, allowed to be recorded from existing music and electronically synthesized sounds?










Certainly, the realm of computers allows composers of such music unlimited possibilities for the manipulation of found sounds. But is it but a ghost of musique concrète? Or maybe a descendant?

This discussion is inspired by a piece I'm working on composing. This is not a trick question.


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## aleazk

Well, I did some musique concréte, or whatever they are, pieces by using sounds from youtube videos (e.g., sounds from planes landing, helicopters, etc.) I think one should be completely free. There's a piece, "Frankenstein Symphony", by Francis Dohmont which is a deliberate pastiche of bits from musique concréte by other composers (very appropriate name for the piece, haha.)


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## millionrainbows

In the age of sampling, it's easy. And with computers to modify sound files, anything can be done. Many of the soundtrack sounds you hear are actually doors creaking, etc.


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## Rogerx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète

Wiki is your friend


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## Kopachris

Rogerx said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concrète
> 
> Wiki is your friend


Wikipedia is a good start! I was already on Wikipedia. It has much about the _history_ of musique concrète but nothing about the present day. Has the genre come and gone? Has it fallen by the wayside precisely _because_ computers have made the possibilities endless and the process easy?

Edit: for example discuss



> By 1949 Schaeffer's compositional work was known publicly as musique concrète (Palombini 1993, 14). Schaeffer stated: "when I proposed the term 'musique concrète,' I intended … to point out an opposition with the way musical work usually goes. Instead of notating musical ideas on paper with the symbols of solfege and entrusting their realization to well-known instruments, *the question was to collect concrete sounds, wherever they came from, and to abstract the musical values they were potentially containing*"


(emphasis mine)

Does that mean that found sounds can come from anywhere? Or must they still be from recorded real-world sources as they were before the modern era?


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## aleazk

I think the spirit of the technique was to use technology. Recording sounds was the solution at that time, today you can use whatever it's available today. Otherwise, it becomes a purist thing about natural sounds only, which I don't find that interesting today ,to be honest.


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## Art Rock

The acclaimed soundtrack for the successful 2019 TV series Cherobyl was composed by Iceland's classical composer Hildur Guðnadóttir - it consist completely of arrangements of sampled sounds recorded in an actual nuclear power plant.


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## Kopachris

@aleazk, do you mind sharing some of your compositions that you'd call musique concrète? I'd love to hear them.

Edit: I think I found them on your SoundCloud and am listening now. Would you care sharing any examples of found sounds you incorporated into your pieces?


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## aleazk

Kopachris said:


> @aleazk, do you mind sharing some of your compositions that you'd call musique concrète? I'd love to hear them.
> 
> Edit: I think I found them on your SoundCloud and am listening now. Would you care sharing any examples of found sounds you incorporated into your pieces?


I only have three. In decreasing order of elaboration: Trinity in the sky; Takeoff; GW150914.

To be honest, I can barely remember all the sources I used for the first two, since I did them 5 years ago. The first one obviously uses some voice recordings and the sound of the atomic explosion of the Trinity test, some sounds from ww2 videos, some transduced electromagnetic waves from Pulsars, and that's all I can remember. The second uses the sound from an helicopter, the sound of a modem from the 90s, some other airplane sounds. The thrid is the simplest one, it only uses the gravitational wave transsuced to sound as was released by LIGO and some Hawking recording.

All sounds I took from youtube videos, otherwise I wouldn't had access to such variety of sounds.


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## Kopachris

aleazk said:


> I only have three. In decreasing order of elaboration: Trinity in the sky; Takeoff; GW150914.
> 
> To be honest, I can barely remember all the sources I used for the first two, since I did them 5 years ago. The first one obviously uses some voice recordings and the sound of the atomic explosion of the Trinity test, some sounds from ww2 videos, some transduced electromagnetic waves from Pulsars, and that's all I can remember. The second uses the sound from an helicopter, the sound of a modem from the 90s, some other airplane sounds. The thrid is the simplest one, it only uses the gravitational wave transsuced to sound as was released by LIGO and some Hawking recording.
> 
> All sounds I took from youtube videos, otherwise I wouldn't had access to such variety of sounds.


Thank you for the elaboration. I recognized a couple of the sounds: thought I heard a pulsar in there somewhere, definitely recognized the dial-up modem and Hawking's distinctive voice.

For the piece I'm working on I have sounds from a variety of sample packs: foley sounds, glitch sounds, impact sounds...

I have so far:

A 4-bar sample from Muse's _Starlight_ stretched (using PaulStretch) to over six minutes forms the background of the piece, along with a lengthier sample of dry ice spinning on metal stretched about 2x...
A sample labeled "lo-fi glitch type9 04" is used and pitch-shifted to form arpeggios...
A sample labeled "pressure woosh" is granularized and similarly pitch-shifted to form arpeggios...
Body being dragged across cement...
Brick being dragged through leaves...
Copper pipe impacting metal bowl for a percussive element...
A sample labeled "quakerish" gives a nice low rumble...
A sample labeled "glitch loop 10" is stretched back and forth...
Pipe screens being shaken in a metal container (this is the only sound recorded by me) is stretched back and forth...
And a flute being played underwater goes down in pitch by stretching rather than computer interpolation


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## aleazk

Did you record the sounds yourself?

Ha, one of the reasons why I don't record myself is that I used to have a very nice professional Shure mic which belonged to my father but it got lost at some moving. I never bought one again.


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## Kopachris

I've only recorded one of the sounds myself, but I'm not done working on it yet. The rest were found in the digital domain, i.e. from free online sample packs, including one very generous (15GB) pack of free foley sounds from Adobe.

Another thing I think Schaeffer said (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the sounds should be considered apart from their origins. i.e. that the source of the sound is less important than how the sound contributes to the whole. What I think he called acousmatic listening. That is how I've tried to treat the sounds, anyway.

Here is the work in progress, if you're interested:

__
https://soundcloud.com/kopachris%2Fconcrete-1-wip

I'd still like to find and layer some more sounds into the climax and the ending.


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## millionrainbows

Just by the spelling, you can tell that it's a French phenomenon. Henri Pousseur is one of the great exponents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pousseur


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## aleazk

Kopachris said:


> I've only recorded one of the sounds myself, but I'm not done working on it yet. The rest were found in the digital domain, i.e. from free online sample packs, including one very generous (15GB) pack of free foley sounds from Adobe.
> 
> Another thing I think Schaeffer said (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the sounds should be considered apart from their origins. i.e. that the source of the sound is less important than how the sound contributes to the whole. What I think he called acousmatic listening. That is how I've tried to treat the sounds, anyway.
> 
> Here is the work in progress, if you're interested:
> 
> __
> https://soundcloud.com/kopachris%2Fconcrete-1-wip
> 
> I'd still like to find and layer some more sounds into the climax and the ending.


Ok, will check it!


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## millionrainbows

I remember a piece that consisted of only a door creaking. But what a creak! They close-miked it, and it was beautiful. Plus, you've got to appreciate an idea like that. Was it...Pierre Henry?










https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Henry


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## Kopachris

millionrainbows said:


> I remember a piece that consisted of only a door creaking. But what a creak! They close-miked it, and it was beautiful. Plus, you've got to appreciate an idea like that. Was it...Pierre Henry?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Henry






 Indeed, what a creak! Fantastic. I love when the sighs come in.


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## aleazk

Kopa, don't forget to check one of the great masters, *Francis Dhomont*. He's the main influence in my humble pieces. Some personal favorites:


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## Kopachris

Thanks for the recommendations. I will check them out.

In the meantime, as I work, I'm discovering that a piece of concrete sound can be treated in much the same way as any other musical motif. It can be slowed down, sped up, transposed in sequence, chopped, and juxtaposed. You can introduce a concrete motif and develop it throughout the piece. Like so:



Here I have a motif that is some birds singing in the Amazon Rainforest. It is introduced as the original recorded sound pitched down first. Then it is slowed down and reversed (retrograde and augmented). The original motif is reintroduced to further establish it as a motif. Then retrograde and augmented further. Then the same speed/augmentation but the original direction.

I have taken other sounds and done similar operations, in addition to arpeggiating other sounds with a sampler and using yet other elements percussively.


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## Kopachris

I think I'm finished with this. I could maybe refine it further, but one can always refine music further and I prefer to move on to the next project. Presented with "graphical score" and spectrogram:


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## millionrainbows

Like other genres of music, Musique Concrete came along at a certain time in the development of technology, so there are certain sounds and techniques I associate with it: reverberation, tape-head echo, and tape effects (speed, direction).
Basically what enabled the creation of musique concrete was recording tape; it was the physical analog of sound, was "plastic" and could be manipulated with echo, reverb, speed changes, editing cuts, and reversing of sound.
I think that digital technology can now re-create these effects, in order to get that "old school" sound.

Except for the pure tones like sine waves, my old Ensoniq synthesizer uses samples as its primary sources; it also filters and triggers these sounds like an electronic synth. So who's to say this isn't essentially "musique concrete"?


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## Kopachris

millionrainbows said:


> Like other genres of music, Musique Concrete came along at a certain time in the development of technology, so there are certain sounds and techniques I associate with it: reverberation, tape-head echo, and tape effects (speed, direction).
> Basically what enabled the creation of musique concrete was recording tape; it was the physical analog of sound, was "plastic" and could be manipulated with echo, reverb, speed changes, editing cuts, and reversing of sound.
> I think that digital technology can now re-create these effects, in order to get that "old school" sound.
> 
> Except for the pure tones like sine waves, my old Ensoniq synthesizer uses samples as its primary sources; it also filters and triggers these sounds like an electronic synth. So who's to say this isn't essentially "musique concrete"?


Now you're at last on exactly the point I started this thread to discuss! Are there any sort of rules of "purity" in this genre of music? Where is the line drawn between sampling and synthesis?

The Mellotron was also sample-based and actually used tape to store and play those samples, as I recall. As with the Chamberlin.

I would probably argue that if you can reprogram your Ensoniq synth with arbitrary samples (you probably can't though), then yes you can use it to make MC, especially if it gives you controls to modify the sound such as adjustable filters and envelopes (which were also in the purview of "old school" experimental MC). In this case the device serves much the same function as the tape player, only allowing you to automate the speeding and slowing of the "tape" by which key you press. In much the same way, I would argue wavetable synthesis can be _used for_ musique concrète as long as 1) the sample used for synthesis is a found sound and 2) the results do not produce a recognizable melody or harmonic progression. Maybe not "strict" or "classic" MC, but I do believe it's still in the spirit of MC to experiment with sounds using available technology (this tech was developed in the '70s).

Inspired by Xenakis, I've also used granular synthesis in my piece, wherein a sample is "granularized" and the playback of the grains can be adjusted to break apart the sound. He had to do it with tape splicing and a tone generator. I'm able to do it instantaneously with a computer. Does that make a difference?

Regarding speed changes, we have another modern innovation that brings new life into this technique-Paulstretch, an algorithm that similarly granularizes a sound but then _smears_ the grains together to infinitely prolong any sound. This forms the background of my piece, wherein I've taken an 8-second sample of existing music and stretched it to over 6 minutes. But should it be barred by dint of being to modern? I would say the pioneers of MC certainly would've used this technique if they had it available. It creates fantastic soundscapes ranging from hellish to heavenly. If it's not barred then why not newer manipulation techniques such as convolution, distortion, and I can't think of a third thing right now but I'm sure there are other techniques we have available now that they didn't then...

So then... I think the technology used is less important to musique concrète than the original sounds and how they are treated. If the sound is pitched and treated as a pitched instrument, there is nothing special there. But a pitched sound treated as its own motif, or an unpitched sound treated as a pitched instrument, or an unpitched sound treated as its own motif, that is different.

Perhaps a distinction should be made in the character of the music? I.e. musique concrète is largely perceived timbrally and texturally rather than melodically. What do you think?


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## millionrainbows

Agreed on everything. I think that what distinguishes musique concrete from traditional music is that it is not pitched; it's more like percussion in this sense, in that it is "noise"-based instead of sustained pitch-based.

Yes, this makes it more timbrally and texturally experienced. We still have an extremely wide palette. 

Since sound, even sustained pitches, consists of individual harmonics, which Karlheinz Stockhausen demonstrated in his piece where he placed a microphone on a sustained gong sound at various places, producing the individual harmonics (which sounded like electronic sine tones), then the continuum is revealed. He also showed that pulse-tones (sounding like drum beats), when speeded-up, become pitches. It's "all one." Good luck with your adventures in sound.

About the Ensoniq, I also have a Yamaha A4000 sampler, which would be excellent for creating musique concrete, or pitched sounds. It's basically a new type of "tape recorder". These units can be gotten used for fairly cheap.

Also, I think there's something to be said for the "old school" approach to the studio; instead of having everything in software, have it in discrete hardware units, like samplers, pulse generators, etc, like Stockhausen did.


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## norstick

One of the differences for musique concrète compared to say acousmatic music is also the time period and aesthetics of it all. Musique concrète as a concept is quite tightly connected to the RTF studios and the philosophy of Pierre Schaeffer which was really quite different than say the Cologne Studio when that popped up. That said, a lot of more modern aesthetics are also connected to it to this day such as a lot of the Belgian and Quebec traditions. There are of course exceptions but to just give a general jist of it. 

Also something that is incredibly important to musique concrète is the concept of reduced listening which Schaeffer developped. For him musique concrète was an abstract form of music in which the sounds had to be appreciated for how they sounded, not what they were. This is why he didn't really completely get along with some of Ferrari's concepts, and it's also the source of his disagreements with Xenakis which eventually made him leave. Another important aspect in the aesthetics was the idea of playing around with the recorded sound, almost in an improvisational matter. Schaeffer was a visionary but he's often considered to be a rather lackluster composer and also rather limited in his views of the possibilities of the technology and concepts of musique concrète. A lot of other composers would come along and then expand on it. 

Although the lines are blurry to a certain extent, there is a difference between musique concrète, electroacoustic music, acousmatic music, etc. These differences also vary a bit from territory to territory. Today, few people would say they compose musique concrète unless specifically meant as an homage to that aesthetic.


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## Mandryka

I have somewhere a book by Luc Ferrari where he talks about the battles he had with Schaefer because of the way he edited and assembled found sounds in _Presque Rien_. It's many years since I last read it, I'll try to find it again later. I remember also how surprised I was that Herman Scherchen was a mover and shaker in the musique concrète movement, providing support to buy studio time etc.


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## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> Just by the spelling, you can tell that it's a French phenomenon. Henri Pousseur is one of the great exponents.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Pousseur


Excellent, ironic name right there!!


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## SanAntone

*Presque Rien n°1 - Luc Ferrari *


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