Podcasts about San Francisco Tape Music Center

Episode 160 Chapter 21, The San Francisco Tape Music Center. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music  Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes. This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text. The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings. There is a complete playlist for this episode on the website for the podcast. Let's get started with the listening guide to Chapter 21, The San Francisco Tape Music Center from my book Electronic and Experimental music.   Playlist: THE SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC CENTER   Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 01:30 00:00 1.     Terry Riley, “Mescalin-Mix” (1960-62). Early tape collage and one of Riley's first works for tape. 14:23 01:38 2.     Terry Riley, “Concerto For Two Pianos and Five Tape Recorders” )1961).  Piano, LaMonte Young; piano and tape assemblage, Terry Riley. Recorded live. 1961 Riley-Terry_ConcertoForTwoPianos-b.wav 04:36 15:56 3.     Pauline Oliveros, “Apple Box Double” (performance 2008). This piece was composed for various configurations of apple crates that were touched and scraped with various objects while being amplified. The original dates from about 2006. This performance by Seth Cluett and Oliveros took place in 2008. 12:45 20:30 4.     Steve Reich, “Melodica” (1966). Tape piece and the last of Reich's works before moving onto instrumental composition in his minimalist style. 10:42 33:16 5.     Morton Subotnick, “Laminations” (1966). For orchestra and electronic sounds, on tape. By this point, Subotnick was working with an early model of a synthesizer built for the San Francisco Tape Music Center by Donald Buchla. This synthesizer material was also used for the opening of Silver Apples of the Moon the following year. 10:29 44:08 6.     Morton Subotnick, “Prelude No.4 for piano and electronic tape (1966). Another Subotnick work for instruments and tape with synthesized electronic sounds. 06:58 54:36 7.     Pauline Oliveros, “Alien Bog” (1967). Utilizing the original Buchla Box 100 series created for the Tape Music Center by Don Buchla and a tape delay system. 33:17 01:01:30 8.     Morton Subotnick, “Silver Apples of the Moon” (1967). Subotnick, recently departed from San Francisco and taking up shop at New York University, brought synthesizers constructed for him by Don Buchla when he was at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. This electronic composition represented a high point for the use of synthesizers at that time and was recorded on commission from Nonesuch Records. 32:01 01:35:00   Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.

Episode 156 Chapter 17, John Cage in the United States. Works Recommended from my book, Electronic and Experimental Music  Welcome to the Archive of Electronic Music. This is Thom Holmes. This podcast is produced as a companion to my book, Electronic and Experimental Music, published by Routledge. Each of these episodes corresponds to a chapter in the text and an associated list of recommended works, also called Listen in the text. They provide listening examples of vintage electronic works featured in the text. The works themselves can be enjoyed without the book and I hope that they stand as a chronological survey of important works in the history of electronic music. Be sure to tune-in to other episodes of the podcast where we explore a wide range of electronic music in many styles and genres, all drawn from my archive of vintage recordings. There is a complete playlist for this episode on the website for the podcast. Playlist: EARLY ELECTRONIC MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES Time Track Time Start Introduction –Thom Holmes 01:25 00:00 1.     Louis and Bebe Barron, “The Bells of Atlantis” (1952), soundtrack for a film by Ian Hugo based on the writings of his wife Anaïs Nin (who's voice you will hear). Tape composition produced at the Barron's studio (New York). 09:01 01:38 2.     Williams Mix (1952) by John Cage. Tape composition produced at the Barrons' studio (New York). 05:42 10:40 3.     Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, “Moonflight” (1952) Tape composition produced at the composer's Tape Music Center at Columbia University, the precursor of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. 02:54 16:20 4.     Henry Jacobs, “Sonata for Loudspeakers” (1953-54). Tape composition produced at radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley. 09:29 19:12 5.     Jim Fassett, track “B2” (Untitled) (1955). From the album, Strange To Your Ears. Tape composition produced at CBS radio. 08:15 28:38 6.     Harry F. Olsen, “The Well-Tempered Clavier: Fugue No. 2” (Bach), “Nola” (Arndt) and “Home, Sweet Home” (1955). Disc composition created on RCA Mark I Music Synthesizer at Princeton University. 05:26 36:54 7.     John Cage, “Fontana Mix” (1958). Tape composition produced by Cage at Studio di Fonologia of the Italian Radio (Milan). 11:33 42:33 8.     Tod Dockstader, “Drone” (1962). Tape composition produced privately by the composer (Los Angeles). 13:24 54:06 9.     Kenneth Gaburo, “Lemon Drops (Tape Alone)” (1965). Tape composition produced at the studio for Experimental Music of the University of Illinois. 02:52 01:07:30 10.   Jean Eichelberger Ivey, “Pinball” (1965) from Electronic Music (1967 Folkways). Tape composition produced at the Electronic Music Studio of Brandeis University. 06:12 01:10:20 11.   Pauline Oliveros, “Bye Bye Butterfly” (1965). Tape composition produced at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. 08:05 01:16:32 12.   Olly W. Wilson, “Cetus” (1967). Tape composition produced at the studio for Experimental Music of the University of Illinois. 09:18 01:24:36   Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. My Books/eBooks: Electronic and Experimental Music, sixth edition, Routledge 2020. Also, Sound Art: Concepts and Practices, first edition, Routledge 2022. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For a transcript, please see my blog, Noise and Notations. Original music by Thom Holmes can be found on iTunes and Bandcamp.

Junto a Pauline Oliveros y Ramón Sender funda en 1961el San Francisco Tape Music Center, primer estudio de la Costa Oeste dedicado a la música experimental. Cinco años más tarde, crea el primer disco electrónico jamás grabado, “Silver Apples of the Moon”._____Has escuchadoThe Other Piano. Lullaby: For Piano & Live Electronics (2007). Soojin Anjou, piano; Morton Subotnick, electrónica. Mode (2019)Silver Apples of the Moon. Part A (1967). WERGO (1994)The Wild Beasts. After the Butterfly (1978). Conjunto instrumental dirigido por Subotnick. WERGO (2015)_____Selección bibliográficaBERNSTEIN, David, The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-garde. University of California Press, 2008CLEMAN, Tom y Morton Subotnick, “Parallel Lines for Solo Piccolo with "Ghost Electronics" and Nine Players”. Notes, n.º 40 (1983), p. 404DAVISON, Stephen, “All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis, Multimedia CD-ROM for Macintosh by Morton Subotnick” [Reseña]. Notes, n.º 53 (1996), p. 530-533*GLUCK, Robert, “Electric Circus, Electric Ear and the Intermedia Center in Late-1960s New York”. Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 45, n.º 1 (2012), pp. 51-56*—, “Nurturing Young Composers: Morton Subotnick's Late-1960s Studio in New York City”. Computer Music Journal, vol. 36, n.º 1 (2012), pp. 65-80*HANSON, Jeffrey, Morton Subotnick's Ghost Scores: Interaction and Performance with Music Technology.  TFM, San Jose State University, 2010MACHOVER, Tod, “Interview with Morton Subotnick”. Contemporary Music Review, vol. 13, n.º 2 (1996), pp. 3-11*ROADS, Curtis, “Interview with Morton Subotnick”. Computer Music Journal, vol. 12, n.º 1 (1988), pp. 9-18*ROADS, Curtis y Morton Subotnick, “A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur/After the Butterfly”. Computer Music Journal, n.º 5 (1981), p. 81SUBOTNICK, Morton, “Extending the Stuff Music is Made of”. Music Educators Journal, n.º 55 (1968), pp. 109-110—, “The Use of the Buchla Synthesizer in Musical Composition”. Journal of The Audio Engineering Society (1970), s/n—, “The use of computer technology in an interactive or “Real time” performance environment”. Contemporary Music Review, n.º 18 (1999), pp. 113-117WHIPPLE, Harold W., “Beasts and Butterflies: Morton Subotnick's Ghost Scores”. The Musical Quarterly, vol. 69, n.º 3 (1983), pp. 425-441*YELTON, Geary, “A Conversation with Morton Subotnick: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Silver Apples of the Moon”. Electronic Musician, vol. 33, n.º 11 (2017), pp. 26-30 *Documento disponible para su consulta en la Sala de Nuevas Músicas de la Biblioteca y Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación de la Fundación Juan March

Los orígenes del sintetizador musical—instrumento electrónico que funciona mediante la manipulación de corrientes eléctricas, que modula las ondas produciendo diferentes timbres—nos llevan a finales del siglo XIX, momento en que se descubre la generación de sonido a través de la vibración de un circuito electromagnético._____Has escuchadoBlues Mix (1966) / Joel Chadabe. Realizado con un Moog modular. Waveshaper Media (2019)Chaotic Synthesis Recording #3 / Jason R. Burcher. Realizado con un Buchla 200. Autoedición (2010)Figueroa Terrace / Thomas Ankersmit. Realizado con un Serge Modular. Touch (2014)This Causes Consciousness to Fracture (en Patterns of Consciousness) / Caterina Barbieri. Realizado con un Eurorack modular. Important Records (2017)_____Selección bibliográficaBERNSTEIN, David W., The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde. University of California Press, 2008*DE WILDE, Laurent, Les fous du son: d'Edison à nos jours. Bernard Grasset, 2016*DIDUCK, Ryan Alexander, Mad Skills: MIDI and Music Technology in the Twentieth Century. Repeater Books, 2018*FREKE, Oli, Synthesizer Evolution: From Analogue to Digital (and Back). Velocity Press, 2020GLINSKY, Albert, Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2022*HENNION, Antoine y Christophe Levaux, Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies. Routledge, 2021*JENKINS, Mark, Analog Synthesizers: Understanding Performing Buying from the Legacy of Moog to Software Synthesis. Routledge, 2020O'CONNOR, Neil, Dark Waves: The Synthesizer and the Dystopian Sound of Britain (1977-80). Rowman & Littlefield, 2023PATTESON, Thomas, Instruments for New Music: Sound, Technology and Modernism. University of California Press, 2015*PEJROLO, Andrea y Scott B Metcalfe, Creating Sounds from Scratch: A Practical Guide to Music Synthesis for Producers and Composers. Oxford University Press, 2017STRANGE, Allen, Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques and Controls. McGraw-Hill, 1983TARA, Rodgers, Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. Duke University Press, 2010*VAIL, Mark, The Synthesizer: a Comprehensive Guide to Understanding, Programming, Playing, and Recording the Ultimate Electronic Music Instrument. Oxford University Press, 2014WILSON, Nick, Interpreting the Synthesizer: Meaning through Sonics. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020 *Documento disponible para su consulta en la Sala de Nuevas Músicas de la Biblioteca y Centro de Apoyo a la Investigación de la Fundación Juan March

Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He has worked extensively with interactive electronics and multi-media, co-founding the San Francisco Tape Music Center with Ramón Sender, and is an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. On the podcast, we talk about his youth growing up in Los Angeles, his co-founding of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, shifting from the clarinet to the electronic music studio to live electronic performance, and his upcoming performance of As I Live & Breathe at Other Minds 27 with video artist Lillevan. mortonsubotnick.com Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. otherminds.org Contact us at otherminds@otherminds.org. The Other Minds Podcast is hosted and edited by Joseph Bohigian. Intro/outro music is “Kings: Atahualpa” by Brian Baumbusch (Other Minds Records).

Episode 99 Crosscurrents in Electronic Tape Music in the United States Playlist Louis and Bebe Barron, “Bells of Atlantis” (1952), soundtrack for a film by Ian Hugo based on the writings of his wife Anaïs Nin, who also appeared in the film. The Barrons were credited with “Electronic Music.” The Barrons scored three of Ian Hugo's short experimental films and this is the earliest, marking an early start for tape music in the United States. Bebe told me some years ago about a work called “Heavenly Menagerie” that they produced in 1950. I have written before that I think this work was most likely the first electronic music made for magnetic tape in the United States, although I have never been able to find a recording of the work. Bells of Atlantis will stand as an example of what they could produce in their Greenwich Village studio at the time. They were also engaged helping John Cage produce “Williams Mix” at the time, being recordists of outdoor sounds around New York that Cage would use during the process of editing the composition, which is described below. The Forbidden Planet soundtrack, their most famous work, was created in 1956. 8:59 John Cage, “Williams Mix” (1952) from The 25-Year Retrospective Concert Of The Music Of John Cage (1959 Avakian). Composed in 1952, the tape was played at this Town Hall concert a few years later. Premiered in Urbana, Ill., March 22, 1953. From the Cage database of compositions: “This is a work for eight tracks of 1/4” magnetic tape. The score is a pattern for the cutting and splicing of sounds recorded on tape. Its rhythmic structure is 5-6-16-3-11-5. Sounds fall into 6 categories: A (city sounds), B (country sounds), C (electronic sounds), D (manually produced sounds), E (wind produced sounds), and F ("small" sounds, requiring amplification). Pitch, timbre, and loudness are notated as well. Approximately 600 recordings are necessary to make a version of this piece. The compositional means were I Ching chance operations. Cage made a realization of the work in 1952/53 (starting in May 1952) with the assistance of Earle Brown, Louis and Bebe Barron, David Tudor, Ben Johnston, and others, but it also possible to create other versions.” This was a kind of landmark work for John as he explored the possibilities of working with the tape medium. It is the only work from this period, created in the United States, for which there is an original recording of a Cage realization. He also composed “Imaginary Landscape No. 5” in 1952 for 42-disc recordings as a collage of fragments from long-playing records recorded on tape (he preferred to use jazz records as the source), put together with the assistance of David Tudor. Though some modern interpretations exist, there is no recording from the 1950s of a Cage/Tudor realization so I am unable to represent what it would have been like at that time. 5:42 Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, “Moonflight” (1952) from Tape Music An Historic Concert (1968 Desto). This record documents tape pieces played at perhaps the earliest concert of American tape music at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 28, 1952. Realized at the composer's Tape Music Center at Columbia University, the precursor of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. 2:54 Otto Luening, “Fantasy in Space” (1952) from Tape Music An Historic Concert (1968 Desto). Realized at the composer's Tape Music Center at Columbia University, the precursor of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. 2:51 Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky, “Incantation” (1953) from Tape Music An Historic Concert (1968 Desto). This record documents tape pieces played at perhaps the earliest concert of American tape music at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 28, 1952. Realized at the composer's Tape Music Center at Columbia University, the precursor of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. 2:34 Henry Jacobs, “Sonata for Loudspeakers” (1953-54) from Sounds of New Music (1958 Folkways). “Experiments with synthetic rhythm” produced by Henry Jacobs who worked at radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley. Jacobs narrates the track to explain his use of tape loops and recorded sound. 9:29 Jim Fassett, track “B2” (Untitled) from Strange To Your Ears - The Fabulous World of Sound With Jim Fassett (1955 Columbia Masterworks). “The fabulous world of sound,” narrated with tape effects, by Jim Fassett. Fassett, a CBS Radio musical director, was fascinated with the possibilities of tape composition. With this recording, done during the formative years of tape music in the middle 1950s, he took a somewhat less daring approach than his experimental counterparts, but a bold step nonetheless for a national radio audience. He hosted a weekend program called Strange to Your Ears to showcase these experiments and this album collected some of his best bits. 8:15 Harry F. Olsen, “The Well-Tempered Clavier: Fugue No. 2” (Bach) and “Nola” (Arndt) and “Home, Sweet Home” from The Sounds and Music of the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer (1955 RCA). These “experimental” tracks were intended to demonstrate the range of sound that could be created with RCA Music Synthesizer. This was the Mark I model, equipped with a disc lathe instead of a tape recorder. When it was upgraded and called the Mark II in the late 1950s, it became the showpiece of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Here we listen to three tunes created by Harry F. Olsen, one of the inventors, in the style of a harpsichord, a piano, and “an engineer's conception of the music.” 5:26 Milton Babbitt, “Composition For Synthesizer” (1960-61) (1968 Columbia). Babbitt was one of the only composers at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center who composed and produced works based solely on using the RCA Music Synthesizer. Most others took advantage of other tape processing techniques found in the studio and not controlled by the RCA Mark II. It took him quite a long time to work out all of the details using the synthesizer and his meticulous rules for composing serially. On the other hand, the programmability of the instrument made it much more possible to control all the parameters of the sound being created electronically rather than by human musicians. This work is a prime example of this kind of work. 10:41 Tod Dockstader, “Drone” (1962) from Drone; Two Fragments From Apocalypse; Water Music (1966 Owl Records). Self-produced album by independent American composer Dockstader. This came along at an interesting period for American elecgtronic music, sandwiched between the institutional studio work being done at various universities and the era of the independent musician working with a synthesizer. Dockstader used his own studio and his own devices to make this imaginative music. This was one of a series of four albums featuring Dockstader's music that were released on Owl in the 1966-67 timeframe. They have all been reissued in one form or another. Here is what Dockstader himself wrote about this piece: “Drone, like many of my other works, began life as a single sound; in this case, the sound of racing cars. But, unlike the others, the germinal sound is no longer in the piece. It's been replaced by another a guitar. I found in composing the work that the cars didn't go anywhere, except, seemingly, in circles. The sound of them that had interested me originally was a high to low glissando the Doppler effect. In making equivalents of this sound, I found guitar glissandos could be bent into figures the cars couldn't. . . . After the guitar had established itself as the base line of the piece, I began matching its sound with a muted sawtooth oscillator (again, concrete and electronic music: the guitar being a mechanical source of sound, the oscillator an electronic source). This instrument had a timbre similar to the guitar, with the addition of soft attack, sustained tones, and frequencies beyond the range of the guitar. . . . The effect of the guitar and the oscillator, working together, was to produce a kind of drone, with variations something like the procedure of classical Japanese music, but with more violence. Alternating violence with loneliness, hectic motion with static stillness, was the aim of the original piece; and this is still in Drone, but in the process, the means changed so much that, of all my pieces, it is the only one I can't remember all the sounds of, so it continues to surprise me when I play it.” (From the original liner notes by Dockstader). 13:24 Wendy Carlos, “Dialogs for Piano and Two Loudspeakers” (1963) from Electronic Music (1965 Turnabout). This is an early recording of Wendy, pre-Switched-on Bach, from her days as a composer and technician. In this work, Carlos tackles the task of combining synthesized sounds with those of acoustic instruments, in this case the piano. It's funny that after you listen to this you could swear that there were instruments other than the piano used, so deft was her blending of electronic sounds with even just a single instrument. 4:00 Gordon Mumma, “Music from the Venezia Space Theater” (1963-64) (1966 Advance). Mono recording from the original release on Advance. Composed at the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This was the studio created by Mumma and fellow composer Robert Ashley to produce their electronic tape works for Milton Cohen's Space Theater on Ann Arbor, which this piece tries to reproduce. The original was a quad magnetic tape. It was premiered at the 27th Venezia Bianale, Venice, Italy on September 11, 1964 and comprised the ONCE group with dancers. 11:58 Jean Eichelberger Ivey, “Pinball” (1965) from Electronic Music (1967 Folkways). Realized at the Electronic Music Studio of Brandeis University. This work was produced in the Brandeis University Electronic Music Studio and was her first work of electroacoustic music. In 1964 she began a Doctor of Musical Arts program in composition, including studies in electronic music, at the University of Toronto and completed the degree in 1972. Ivey founded the Peabody Electronic Music Studio in 1967 and taught composition and electronic music at the Peabody Conservatory of Music until her retirement in 1997. Ivey was a respected composer who also sought more recognition for women in the field. In 1968, she was the only woman composer represented at the Eastman-Rochester American Music Festival. Her work in electronic music and other music was characteristic of her general attitude about modern composing, “I consider all the musical resources of the past and present as being at the composer's disposal, but always in the service of the effective communication of humanistic ideas and intuitive emotion.” 6:12 Pauline Oliveros, “Bye Bye Butterfly” (1965) from New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media (1977 1750 Arch Records). This was composed at the San Francisco Tape Music Center where so many west coast composers first found their footing: Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender all did work there around this time. Oliveros was experimenting with the use of tape delay in a number of works, of which “Bye Bye Butterfly” is a great example. 8:05 Gordon Mumma, “The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945” (1965) from Dresden / Venezia / Megaton (1979 Lovely Music). Composed at the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music (Ann Arbor, Michigan). Remixed at The Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College (Oakland, California). This tape piece was premiered at the sixth annual ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor where Mumma configured an array of sixteen “mini speakers” to surround the audience and project the 4-channel mix. The middle section of the piece contains the “harrowing roar of live, alcohol-burning model airplane engines.” (Mumma) This anti-war piece was presented in the 20th anniversary of the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden near the end of World War II. 12:14 Kenneth Gaburo, “Lemon Drops (Tape Alone)” (1965) from Electronic Music from the University of Illinois (1967 Heliodor). From Gaburo: “Lemon Drops” is one of a group of five tape compositions made during 1964-5 referencing the work of Harry Partch. All are concerned with aspects of timbre (e.g., mixing concrete and electronically generated sound); with nuance (e.g., extending the expressive range of concrete sound through machine manipulation, and reducing machine rigidity through flexible compositional techniques); and with counterpoint (e.g., stereo as a contrapuntal system).”(see). 2:52 Steve Reich, “Melodica” (1966) from Music From Mills (1986 Mills College). This is one of Reich's lesser-known phased loop compositions from the 1960s. It is “composed of one tape loop gradually going out of phase with itself, first in two voices and then in four.” This was Reich's last work for tape before he transitioned to writing instrumental music. 10:43 Pril Smiley, “Eclipse” (1967) from Electronic Music, Vol. IV (1969 Turnabout). The selections are works by the winners of the First International Electronic Music Competition - Dartmouth College, April 5, 1968. The competition was judged by composers Milton Babbitt, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and George Balch Wilson. The winner was awarded a $500 prize. Pril Smiley was 1st finalist and realized “Eclipse” at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Smiley had this to say about the work: “Eclipse” was originally composed for four separate tracks, the composer having worked with a specifically-structured antiphonal distribution of compositional material to be heard from four corners of a room or other appropriate space. Some sections of “Eclipse” are semi-improvisatory; by and large, the piece was worked out via many sketches and preliminary experiments on tape: all elements such as rhythm, timbre, loudness, and duration of each note were very precisely determined and controlled. In many ways, the structure of “Eclipse” is related to the composer's use of timbre. There are basically two kinds of sounds in the piece: the low, sustained gong-like sounds (always either increasing or decreasing in loudness) and the short more percussive sounds, which can be thought of as metallic, glassy, or wooden in character. These different kinds of timbres are usually used in contrast to one another, sometimes being set end to end so that one kind of sound interrupts another, and sometimes being dovetailed so that one timbre appears to emerge out of or from beneath another. Eighty-five percent of the sounds are electronic in origin; the non-electronic sounds are mainly pre-recorded percussion sounds–but subsequently electronically modified so that they are not always recognizable.” (From the original liner notes by Smiley.) 7:56 Olly W. Wilson, “Cetus” (1967) from Electronic Music, Vol. IV (1969 Turnabout). The selections are works by the winners of the First International Electronic Music Competition - Dartmouth College, April 5, 1968. The competition was judged by composers Milton Babbitt, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and George Balch Wilson. The winner was awarded a $500 prize. Olly W. Wilson was the competition Winner with “Cetus.” It was realized in the studio for Experimental Music of the University of Illinois. Olly Wilson wrote about the work: “the compositional process characteristic of the “classical tape studio” (the mutation of a few basic electronic signals by means of filters, signal modifiers, and recording processes) was employed in the realization of this work and was enhanced by means of certain instruments which permit improvisation by synthesized sound. Cetus contains passages which were improvised by the composer as well as sections realized by classical tape studio procedures. The master of this work was prepared on a two channel tape. Under the ideal circumstances it should be performed with multiple speakers surrounding the auditor.” (Olly Wilson. The Avant Garde Project at UBUWEB, AGP129 – US Electronic Music VIII | Dartmouth College Competition (1968-70). 9:18 Alice Shields, “The Transformation of Ani” (1970) from Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center Tenth Anniversary Celebration (1971 CRI). Composed at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Alice Shields explained, “The text of “The Transformation of Ani” is taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, as translated into English by E. A. Budge. Most sounds in the piece were made from my own voice, speaking and singing the words of the text. Each letter of the English translation was assigned a pitch, and each hieroglyph of the Egyptian was given a particular sound or short phrase, of mostly indefinite pitch. Each series, the one derived from the English translation, and the one derived from the original hieroglyphs, was then improvised upon to create material I thought appropriate to the way in which I wanted to develop the meaning of the text, which I divided into three sections.” (see). 8:59 Opening background music: John Cage, Fontana Mix (1958) (1966 Turnabout). This tape work was composed in 1958 and I believe this is the only recorded version by Cage himself as well as the only Cage version presented as a work not in accompaniment of another work. An earlier recording, from the Time label in 1962, feature the tape piece combined with another Cage work, “Aria.” This version for 2 tapes was prepared b Cage in February 1959 at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan, with technical assistance from Mario Zuccheri. From the Cage Database website. “This is a composition indeterminate of its performance, and was derived from notation CC from Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra. The score consists of 10 sheets of paper and 12 transparencies. The sheets of paper contain drawings of 6 differentiated (as to thickness and texture) curved lines. 10 of these transparencies have randomly distributed points (the number of points on the transparencies being 7, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 22, 26, 29, and 30). Another transparency has a grid, measuring 2 x 10 inches, and the last one contains a straight line (10 3/4 inch). By superimposing these transparencies, the player creates a structure from which a performance score can be made: one of the transparencies with dots is placed over one of the sheets with curved lines. Over this one places the grid. A point enclosed in the grid is connected with a point outside, using the straight line transparency. Horizontal and vertical measurements of intersections of the straight line with the grid and the curved line create a time-bracket along with actions to be made.” Opening and closing sequences voiced by Anne Benkovitz. Additional opening, closing, and other incidental music by Thom Holmes. See my companion blog that I write for the Bob Moog Foundation. For additional notes, please see my blog, Noise and Notations.

Episode Notes Few places had the impact on the History of Music like the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and TONY MARTIN WAS THERE!!!!!!! Find out more at https://three-minute-modernist.pinecast.co

In 1842 Francisco Lopez discovered gold while foraging wild onions near an oak tree in Placerita Canyon, initiating the California gold rush. In 1965 Don Buchla introduced his 100 series modular synthesizer at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. These histories are entangled and ongoing. The episode has been curated by Michael Ned Holte, a writer, curator and educator living in Los Angeles and occasional columnist of Occasional Radio. This episode features: Harold Budd, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Suzanne Ciani, M. Geddes Gengras, Steve Roden.

Patrick Gleeson began experimenting with electronic music in the mid-'60s at the San Francisco Tape Music Center using a Buchla synthesizer and other devices. In 1968, upon hearing Wendy Carlos' “Switched-On Bach”, he bought a Moog synthesizer and opened the Different Fur recording studio in San Francisco.He worked with Herbie Hancock in the early 1970s, touring with Hancock – thus pioneering the use of synthesizers outside the studio – and appearing on the albums "Crossings" and "Sextant". Hancock's “Sextant” and “Headhunters” were both recorded in part at Different Fur studios. Gleeson has worked with many other Jazz musicians including Freddie Hubbard, Charles Earland, Eddie Henderson, Joe Henderson, and Lenny White.Gleeson recorded a number of solo albums, starting with “Beyond the Sun” - An Electronic Portrait of Holst's "The Planets" in 1976. The album was nominated for a "Best Engineered Recording: Classical" Grammy in 1976. “Beyond the Sun” was followed in 1977 by a more commercial album, titled “Star Wars”.Pat worked as an engineer on the 1978 Devo album “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!”, part of which was recorded at Different Fur. Gleeson has been involved in the scoring of a number of film soundtracks, including “The Plague Dogs”, “Apocalypse Now”, and “Crossroads and The Bedroom Window”. He has scored nine television series, including “Knots Landing”.

Morton Subotnick In Conversation with Katie Gately On the heels of the 50th anniversary of his album, Silver Apples of the Moon, Morton Subotnick came to LA to perform two celebratory shows at CalArts. He sat down with Katie Gately at the dublab Studio to talk about this legendary electronic album, his current performance practice, and the history behind his groundbreaking compositional approach. Subotnick also touched upon his storied collaborations with the electronic music innovators, Don Buchla, Ramon Sender, and the members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Morton Subotnick is a pioneer in the development of electronic music and multi-media performance and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part, or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre. His work, Silver Apples of the Moon, has become a modern classic and was recently entered into the National Registry of Recorded Works at the Library of Congress. “First you make the machine, then the machine makes you” -Marshall McCluhan In Conversation is produced by dublab. Sound editing and music are by Matteah Baim. Due to rights reasons music from the original broadcast has been removed. To hear more, please visit dublab.com.

One of electronic music’s most important early figures, Pauline Oliveros dedicated her life to sound. An original member of the pioneering San Francisco Tape Music Center, she also founded the Deep Listening Institute. In this episode, recorded at the 2016 Red Bull Music Academy in Montreal and released in rememberance of her passing, Oliveros talks about building her own instruments and transformative potential of listening with more than the ear.

Originally founded in 1961 as the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) moved to Mills College in 1966. Since then a tradition of experiment music has taken root at Mills through the program's of composers such as Henry Cowell, John Cage, and Lou Harrison. Spark visits students at CCM as they explore the relationship between audience and performer.

Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden explains why Silver Apples of the Moon by the American composer Morton Subotnick stands out for him as a classic of early electronic music. Author and journalist Rob Young provides some background to the work, which was created on a Buchla synthesizer at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and conceived specifically for two sides of an LP.

This week: And now for something completely different! This week’s episode comes to us from our friends at Art Practical, whose current issue delves into the rich history of sound art in the San Francisco Bay Area. The included essays and interviews constitute a fraction of the rich and varied world of experimental sound. Here, Art Practical’s contributing editors Catherine McChrystal and Kara Q. Smith offer an all-audio version of that issue with samples of work by the artists profiled in that issue, including: Maryann Amacher, Joshua Churchill, Paul DeMarinas, Chris Duncan, Jacqueline Gordon, Aaron Harbor, Shane Myrbeck, Pauline Oliveros, Ethan Rose, and the San Francisco Tape Music Center. The Bay Area’s technological reign has established San Francisco as a destination for sound artists and experimental composers seeking to advance their practices through the genesis of new mediums. They explore sound’s capacity to conflate sensory experience; from the earliest days of sound art, artists and experimental musicians discovered in the genre a medium that is inclusive, participatory, disruptive, and that could embody their political goals. This episode explores how sounds are both aural and physical, producing reverberations that register in our ears and bodies and that locate or disorient us in space. You can check out the articles included in Art Practical’s Sound Issue here.