I’m currently reading the book “Composing Electronic Music, A New Aesthetic” by the electronic music composer Curtis Roads. I would say this is the most thorough and complete book when addressing electronic music, going from the medium history to its developments and most important work. Also the book goes through very technical aspects of the medium, like the physical nature of sound.

From what I have read some specific points have stranded out that gave me another perspective of how viewing sound. In the introduction of the book, Roads gives a very smart analogy of the difference between electronic music and acoustic music. He said that acoustic music is like integer numbers and that electronic music are like real numbers, meaning that electronic music follows the rules of all acoustic music, but then expands every single feature to great extents. An example of this would be how in electronic music timbre can be drastically manipulated while in acoustic music, timbre is determined by the instrument.

I found very interesting the chapter on the book called Sonic Narrative, where Roads explains the capabilities of narrative development by using electronic mediums. For example he explained that in electronic music you can symbolize thing with greater detail, by using samples or recordings of such element that is going to be symbolized and that the acoustic counterpart cannot compete agains this feature.

This book will help me as a framework of what electronic music is and what is it capable of. Mostly all my compositions are electronically made and I like more the medium that the acoustic medium. Furthermore I have listen to Roads music and I found that his way of using granulator synthesis creates really complex and interesting compositions.

Tokyo Noise (2002) is a documentary made by Swedish directors Kristian Petri, Jan Röed and Johan Söderberg. This documentary explores Tokyo through its noise and sound culture, getting different perspectives by interviewing characters that don’t necessarily revolve across the noise world, for example a psychologist or a photographer. What makes this documentary remarkable, apart from its pleasing visual aesthetic, is the wide palette of sounds used. Tokyo soundscape is successfully mixed with electronic music and intelligent sound design, giving the city a character and a narrative. At the same time the documentary explores and analyses the current social problems that torment the habitants of Tokyo, from the growth of automatization industrialization, to the intense anti-social culture.

The documentary is an eye candy to watch and it can be said the same thing about the sound. This documentary has become for me a reference of audiovisual composition, at the same time it introduced me to Japanese sound artist and I can comfortably say that I like the aesthetic of the noise music. I would like to try introducing some qualities of noise music into my compositions.

Jana Winderen is a Norwegian sound artist that works with sound of nature, specially sounds from deep underwater and frigid atmospheres . Her recordings are made using hydrophones, picking up inaudible frequencies to the human ear. Her goal is to get recordings that are hard for a human to make both psychically and aurally. Then with the recording she made create site specific installations that are exhibited across the world. Her work has becomes highly recognized and she has worked with big institutions such as the BBC.

It’s really interesting how Winderen’s work relate to the field of earthworks, using nature as her main artistic resource. I had encounter before sound pieces that deal directly with sounds of the nature, for example pieces by Bernie Krause and Francisco Lopez, but I thought that the work of Winderen was quite unique because its very specific. Also I admire how she creates her pieces to get global consciousness of the natural problems happing in the environment. It’s a very powerful and honest form of activism.

Gesang Der Jünge – is a piece by the german composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, finished in 1956. This piece is arguably one of the greatest works in experimental music, working both with concrete sounds and electronic music, its innovation is compared with few. The piece is built from different recordings and processing of a boy singing phrases of biblical texts, then the recordings are combined with a wide palette of electronic sounds created by primitive synthesizers of the age. A key characteristic of the piece is the experimental use of panning. Stockhausen wrote: “By incorporating controlled positioning of the sound sources in space, it will have been possible for the first time to demonstrate aesthetically the universal application of my serial technique” (1955). This piece also was performed live with a quadrophonic setup, where the audience could really experience the creative spacing of sounds.

The complexity of this piece doesn’t stop to astonish me. Even though the piece could not be the most pleasant thing to hear, it has a powerful emotional value. I found a blog that did a deep analysis of the piece, where I found all the information referenced. The blog outlines from the structure of the piece to the equipment used. Below is the link attached and the video of Gesang Der Jünge.

Link to the blog: http://stockhausenspace.blogspot.com/2015/01/opus-8-gesang-der-junglinge.html

I recently read the introduction for Pauline Olivero’s book Deep Listening, where she defines the concepts taken into consideration and describes superficially her arguments and ideas. A couple of things stranded out for me:

First: The difference between listening and hearing. I never thought of both concepts as a pathway of consciousness, she explains that listening requires attention from an acoustic and psychological perspective. Hearing in the other hand refers to the simple psychical means that enable to perceive a sound.

Second: The concept of Deep listening and its relationship with meditation. She argues that deep listening is the further step when perceiving and analyzing sound, she expressed it as listening to the listening. Then she discussed that listening is a form of meditation but meditation is not a form of listening. Meditations refers to the fact of putting attention to something.

Third: She gave a basic outline of how deep listening could be a change of improvement in everyday activities and society. Her expression on listening is very romantic and poetic, I fell totally compelled by it.

On conclusion, I think I do practice often deep listening. I find myself a lot perceiving my surroundings and analyzing both the psychological and acoustic nature of sound. I also overthink and re-analyze what I have concluded of such listening experiences and then tailor my skills to my sonic wants and needs. Of course I will have to read the entire book to find out her ideas and to get tips and feedback on my ways of listening.

Eraserhead is a film by the American director David Lynch, released in 1977. This surreal and kafkesque film builds through a black and white industrial aesthetic, that is somehow dream like, exposing fears and deep connotations of society. The sound design and music of the film are carefully selected to add tension and to create specific emotions, usually to attack or make the audience uncomfortable. Noise is used repetitively with music, industrial drones made from machines fill the atmosphere, blending perfectly to the colorless of the film. This gave me a new curiosity to explore noise music, specially when its used for other medium apart from film.

I found a great video essay analyzing the sound used in specific scenes of the film. The video is very precise with details and showed me things I hadn’t connected while seeing the film. Currently I’m working on the sound of a friends short film and I was inspired by Eraserhead to use mainly industrial sounds with a more modern approach than the film. I am going to record a wide range of industrial/mechanic sounds and then process them through digital effects, like granulator delays and spectral modifiers.

The Dream House – is a creative audio visual installation by the minimalist composer La Monte Young and visual artist Marian Zazeela, in 1993. The project consists as the title of suggest of a house, where neon pink lights are reflected across the walls and sound is played to fit the atmosphere. The sound of the house could be described as very evolving and hypnotic drones, with a big psychedelic connotation. The work exploits thoroughly the ideology of sound installations, the sound changes as the person perceiving it walks and explores through the house. Below is a short video of a walk through the house, its impressive how the sound drastically changes when the person moves through the rooms.

Both artist created a unique atmosphere that connects visual and sonic stimulations to create a new reality, that’s why it’s a dream house. I loved the concept of creating a synthetic reality with just sound and light and I will love to visit a similar installation.

Khyam Allami currently focus in the decentralization of western music theory in DAW’s. For this, Allami has collaborated with Counterpoint to create Apotome and Leimma, two softwares that allow the exploration of uncommon tuning systems and the use of microtonality, such as it is used in a wide range of world music. Allami is deeply influenced by his Iranian heritage and middle eastern music. His performances are complex combinations of electronic sounds with middle eastern instruments, he plays the oud and use it for many compositions. Additionally the both programs mention above are also generative music based, giving an extra experimental capability. Below is a video of Allami using said program for a short composition, for the specific video he focuses in Western African tuning systems.

Tonality is such an interesting concept for me, I have never experimented with it and I always relay in the default grid and keyboard of Ableton. Allami made me question why I use this systems and normally focus western. I’m going to try both Apotome and Leimma to try seeing music through another perspective.

DeForrest Brown Jr is an American journalist, artist and sound curator that is deeply involve with the Make Techno Black Again. This campaigns seeks to recognize and reattribute that techno music is Afro-american by origin and to white wash the modern electronic club scene. A few weeks ago, we had DeForrest as one of the visiting practitioners. He talked about his support to the movement and how his comments caused him to loose his job in Mixmag. Now DeForrest is writing a book about the origin of techno and it’s relationship with Afro-futurism, a term that I hadn’t encountered before the lecture. He explained us how techo was born from dystopian thoughts of the future and the general suffering and history of Detroit. He argued that techno was being appropriated by white culture and that it was destroyed the original concept of techno.

I found his lecture very compelling and I thought he was right in a lot of his arguments. It made me think how appropriation works in different matters and why, until an extent, should be stopped. I also want to read his book because I felt curious of some of the ideas he mentioned but did not explain in depth.

Below is a video of DeForrest performing a sound piece exploiting the concept of black sonic warfare, where he collage samples and sounds that evidence racial injustice and then combining them with music to do a very powerful performance.

Manuel Rocha Iturbide is a Mexican sound artist and curator that has become notorious for its academic work on the sound art practice in Mexico. Rocha Iturbide has published three relevant essays with UNAM (Mexico’s autonomous university), that outline the history and practice in of sound art in Mexico. The most important of the three essays is titled Sound Art in Mexico where he analyzes the first sonic practices of international a national artist in the country, dating back from the 1960. I discovered very interesting pieces and art works from artist that I did not know that they did sound art. For example the chilean film maker and play play-writer Alejandro Jodorowsky, that scored sound actions in his scripts when living in Mexico. Rocha Iturbide is currently a teacher of digital arts in the Metropolitan university of Mexico.

Researching Rocha Iturbide was the first time I investigated a Mexican sound academic. This gave me a general intake in the academic mediums of sound art in Mexico and inspired me to in some near future, contact Rocha Iturbide or or other sound academic and interview them, to get a deeper insight of their jobs.