# Music without musical instruments



## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Recommend me some music that only features sounds produced by objects whose normal function is something other than to make musical sounds.

I'm going to allow inclusion of the human voice only if it is accompanied by a non-musical instrument. So no a cappella pieces.


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## Earthling (May 21, 2010)

How about Cage's Radio Music?

Or Steve Reich's _It's Gonna Rain_? (argh! I can't find a You Tube link on this!) -- brilliant piece for multiple tapes ... Not singing per se, so I dunno if that works for you here...

Of course there is always THIS....


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2010)

My first reaction was "there's too much."

But that's almost always true.

Any soundscape piece. Practically any acousmatic piece. Any electronic piece. Any turntable music.

There are tons of pieces or recorded sets for "objects," though a lot of those also have "musical instruments" as well. See Chris Cutler and Gino Robair for starters. There are also a lot of people doing live electronics with cheap circuitry. rebreather has a site with lots of clips: http://www.delaurenti.net/rebreather.htm

Here's a link to a group that is no longer active, sadly. (Because that's where I live, and I could hear them all the time if they still played.)

http://www.cosmicjoke.com/PortlandBikeEnsemble.html

Otomo Yoshihide's _Turntable Solo _is just that, for turntable alone (no vinyl). It's outrageous.

Yasunao Tone's _Solo for Wounded CD_ is similarly just that, a piece for a CD of another of Tone's pieces that's been messed up in various ways and then played.

David Tudor was first an organist, then a pianist, then a composer who made pieces out of homemade electronic circuitry. There are a few cool CDs of his music. One of them is Live Electronic Music, which has three pieces on it, _Anima Pepsi, Toneburst,_ and _Dialects._ _Toneburst_ is for feedback.

I'm listening right now to _Vertebra,_ by Matthew Ostrowski, which is very charming. Junk and electronics and manipulated recordings.

A tiny little taste of some of the things kids* are doing nowadays.

*Tone is in his seventies.

[I just remembered Judy Dunaway, mother of balloon music. That's the name of one of her albums. Though there are also "normal" instruments on that as well.]


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## dmg (Sep 13, 2009)

There's always Stomp:


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

. . . and Blue Man Group with their PVC pipes. But I think they're a little old hat now.

Also - surely you've already seen the early clean cut Frank Zappa appearance playing bicycle in 1963 on The Steve Allen Show. It's all over YouTube. Of course there were real instruments used too so that doesn't count.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

some guy said:


> My first reaction was "there's too much."
> 
> But that's almost always true.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the suggestions.

Yes there is a surprisingly large amount of this kind of music out there and the difficulty I found is where exactly to start.

I'd only heard of David Tudor via his links to Cage and as a pianist and didn't realise he composed. Some interesting stuff to be heard by him.

Tone conjures up some great sounds and with a name like his how could he be anything other than a musician.

I've heard pieces I liked by all you mentioned and those in themselves have led me to further composers. Sticking their names into Last FM's multi-artist radio is a great way of finding new music. So far I've heard a lot I liked and out of the guys I'd never heard of Morton Subotnick, Aube, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Joji Yuasa, Dick Raaijmakers, Ryoji Ikeda, Voice Crack and Mauricio Kagel stuck in my mind. The Japanese seem to have particularly took to the use of electronics and trying to expand the timbral vocabulary.

Some observations. As good as some of this music may sound live, there is no getting away from the fact that a man fiddling with a computer doesn't look as impressive as a man striking, bowing, plucking and whacking some funny shaped objects. It seems a strength of natural acoustics over electrically generated tones is the necessity of visual stimulus from the performers.


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## 151 (Jun 14, 2010)

I'd say every object is musical.

But one of the least inherently musical objects may be a vinyl, so how do you feel about sampled music? If you wouldn't mind, I'd check out Foley Room by Amon Tobin, with appearances from lions, bees, motorcycles and the Kronos Quartet.


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## Guest (Jun 30, 2010)

Argus said:


> Thanks for the suggestions.


You're welcome.



Argus said:


> Morton Subotnick, Aube, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Joji Yuasa, Dick Raaijmakers, Ryoji Ikeda, Voice Crack and Mauricio Kagel stuck in my mind.


With good cause!



Argus said:


> It seems a strength of natural acoustics over electrically generated tones is the necessity of visual stimulus from the performers.


Francisco López has a whole series of pieces that you're supposed to listen to in the dark. He even includes a blindfold in the CDs for viewers um I mean listeners at home. That's one way to go, anyway.


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## Earthling (May 21, 2010)

Argus said:


> Ryoji Ikeda


I don't recall how I came across his work just a few months ago, but its striking music, extremely "minimalistic." If you like him, check out *Alva Noto*-- his music is in a similar vein.


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## Morris Billy (Jun 30, 2010)

Realize that dance is only partial without music, and we have decided to let her play an instrument -- our problem is that both of... on how to give her a choice of musical instruments.


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

Earthling said:


> I don't recall how I came across his work just a few months ago, but its striking music, extremely "minimalistic." If you like him, check out *Alva Noto*-- his music is in a similar vein.


I've had a listen to some Alva Noto and I can dig. I've been listening to an album called Insen that he did with Ryuichi Sakamoto and it seems to be good stuff. Definite minimalist streak and the electronic elements are actually quite subtle.

Some more unfamiliar artistsB that I've found interesting are Bernard Parmegiani, Francois Bayle and the group AMM. I might have also found my new favourite female composer in Annie Gosfield. This does feature some actual musical instruments but is interesting enough:



.

I also listened to a piece that was about an hour long by David Tudor called Sliding Pitches in the Rainforest in the Field. It was a weird listen and would probably work better at a live performance but is was enjoyable enough.

I've been listening to most of these electronics works on my Grado headphones and whilst you get a great effect, it does seem like tinnitus on order when some white noise is pumped into your ears.

It seems to be that I prefer the pioneers of much of this acousmatic/electroacoustic/noise stuff, when it used to be only the guys really seriously interested in new sounds could acquire the necessary equipment. Some of the more recent works I've listened to don't appear to be evolving in a direction I prefer.

This seems a good compilation set to sample a lot of these artists, but the fact that the pieces are heavily edited turns me off.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2010)

Argus said:


> I've been listening to most of these electronics works on my Grado headphones ...


Hey! That's the kind of headphones I have, too.



Argus said:


> It seems to be that I prefer the pioneers of much of this acousmatic/electroacoustic/noise stuff, when it used to be only the guys really seriously interested in new sounds could acquire the necessary equipment. Some of the more recent works I've listened to don't appear to be evolving in a direction I prefer.


Exactly what happened to me when I started listening to electroacoustic. But only at the start. Part of it was just discovering more stuff, but a big part of it was readjusting my ears/expectations. (I had some Eliane Radigue many years ago that I returned, sure I would never like it. Some of my favorite stuff now.



Argus said:


> This seems a good compilation set to sample a lot of these artists, but the fact that the pieces are heavily edited turns me off.


I returned my OHM set, too, but in that case I never regretted it. (I've had to repurchase the Radigue I used to have.) Better and more various compilations are sub rosa's a-chronology sets.

Annie Gosfield's pretty cool, I agree!


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## Argus (Oct 16, 2009)

some guy said:


> Hey! That's the kind of headphones I have, too.


I used to work with a guy who was at AMS Neve years ago and knows a lot about recording and mixing, and he believes Grados are among the best on the market.



> I had some Eliane Radigue many years ago that I returned, sure I would never like it. Some of my favorite stuff now.


Radigue was one of composers I was listening to that inspired this thread.

http://www.talkclassical.com/102393-post5606.html

I can easily see why someone wouldn't like it but I had already been exposed to long sustained drones via La Monte Young et al, so latching onto Radigue wasn't too much of a problem.

The electronic stuff that more resembles the kind of modern dance/IDM I find harder to connect with. It might be because I was mainly into trance and dance music in my early teens and I feel like an anti-nostalgia feeling towards it. Like a kind of been there done that mindset. I do however get the nice nostalgia when I hear synthesizers/tone generators that sound like old 8-bit beeps and bloops ala Commodore 64 and SNES consoles.


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2010)

Argus said:


> modern dance/IDM


Ah. Understood.


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