Response: Electronic Music Resources

For my articles, I chose "Notes on Place and Moment" and "Making Analogs with a Magnet." I wasn't sure how many we were supposed to read. If you had explained it in class then I must have not heard.

Firstly, let me just say that I attempted to listen to some of the sounds provided by the History of Electronic/Electroacoustic music on Ubuweb before actually reading the articles. Keep in mind that I still had the bitter taste of last weeks assignment still lingering on my tongue. No toothpaste can clean that awful tinge that it left. So you could understand that I already didn't want to listen to any of these. I merely listened to them assuming that it was also part of our assignment. So I listened to around 3 songs, approximately 30-60 seconds of each, until I found myself falling asleep, leaving me to conclude that this is not my kind of music.

I was about ready to quit my broadening of my horizons in the oddity of music until I listened to a couple pieces from Henry & Schaeffer's Symphonie pour un homme seul. Note, I don't find myself putting these pieces on shuffle throughout my playlists, but I do think they'd work great in some horror scenes as ominous/ambient audio.

After listening to the audio bits, I started on the articles. Let me start by saying I actually enjoyed both of these articles, to my surprise. They were definitely up a few pegs on the ladder than last week's reading. I read Notes on Place and Moment, by Max Neuhaus, first. It's kind of funny to me when Neuhaus began speaking of how he wasn't concerned about an individual's frame of mind with the works he creates. The reason being is because when I was listening to some of the music samples, I was thinking to myself that most of this (the music) is garbage; that I didn't find any of it interesting. But I did think that it would be very interesting to attempt to make this sort of music myself. Similar to how I absolutely DESPISE watching baseball, but wouldn't mind if some of my friends wanted to go out and play baseball at a nearby field. I found his observation on how people react to walking into a created place or moment very intriguing. The way he explained it, I could almost get that sense of another door opening once you've already walked into the room.

The other article, Making Analogs with a Magenet by Jacob Meyerwitz, was pretty interesting to me, and I'd much like to conduct this project myself after reading it. The article starts with Meyerwitz coming to the understanding that tape recordings are merely a strand of tape with a magnetic band permanently inscribed on it. So he later goes into an explanation on how to make your own noise with a roll of recording tape and a magnet, preferably in the shape of a prism. Sliding the magnet across the tape in certain style and patterns, you'll be able to make your own music without the use of oscillators and the whole recording process. I plan to try and attempt this sort of sound making sometime in the near future during my down time. It should prove to be entertaining.