Tape Music

At the end of the 1950s Terry Riley, then a young composer strongly influenced both by serial music and John Cage's experimental approach to composition, had participated in the pioneering initiatives of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. In 1962 Riley embarked for Paris, for a 18- month stay that would subsequently prove to have been a crucial period in his entire career. There he had contacts with jazz musicians (Bud Powell, Chet Baker); other US expatriates such as William Burroughs, who was making experimental poetry using tape recording; younger artists such as Daevid Allen and Robert Wyatt - who would become key figures in the developments of  European 'progressive' rock. Immersed in such a rich and stimulating milieu, Riley started evolving a new approach to composition, applying experimental tape-looping techniques (at the studios of the ORTF) to modal structures, mostly taken from jazz performances. These operations became the basis of all the work that Riley would develop in the course of the 1960s, eventually transferring tape techniques to instrumental music. This way he gave birth to a compositional method that was strongly idiomatic inasmuch it was both derived from early tape technology and rooted in modal improvisation.
Riley's Paris stay is that one moment when not only minimal music is born out of a truly transcultural cross-pollination of early electroacoustic music, experimental poetry, new jazz,  but also a new way of relating composition to performance which would have a deep and lasting influence on both contemporary art and popular music.

¿Realmente no existe el silencio? ¿En verdad la realidad no puede suprimir ningún aspecto sonoro del mundo? John Cage lo creyó así. Acuñó la idea de que el silencio no existe y la postuló en sus ensayos para lograr uno de los grandes descubrimientos del Siglo XX. Se enfocó en observar la naturaleza de los sucesos, en analizar los fenómenos que ocurren a nuestro alrededor y elucubrar cómo los seres humanos enfrentarían el día a día si se comportaran de manera similar a dichos eventos. Cage, rechazado por unos y admirado por otros, figuró siempre a contracorriente bajo el cobijo de sus ideas revolucionarias en el campo de la música y de la vida. Si se hace el intento por entender las obras y las lecciones que heredó a la humanidad habría que empezar trazando el contorno de las raíces; su infancia en la que se convirtió en la nación más poderosa del mundo. Después, procedería abordar un tren metafórico a su lado rumbo a cada estación en la que observó la vida y degustó sonidos. Finalmente, tendría que hacerse una reflexión no pequeña de su legado.

This essay as specified in the title is only a short introduction to the history of alternative
electronic and experimental music in Asia and Africa, very few has been written on this topic and
forgive me if I didn't mention some important composers or events, and if I didn't develop this topic
a bit more regarding some countries, this is a work in progress that will lead to a book including a
more detailed view on events, composers, music genres and other references. In the present paper, I
speak about some major places where electro-acoustic and experimental music (mostly academical)
developed or are under development and composed by local musicians, I purposely omit expatriates
who live(d) and compose(d) there, not that their works as a lower value, it is simply not the topic of
this paper.

L'undici settembre rappresenta senza dubbio l'evento scatenante del nuovo millennio, il grande trauma che ha plasmato la nostra contemporaneità. A distanza di vent'anni da quella tragedia, i Disintegration Loops emergono come l'opera musicale che più di tutte ha saputo interpretarne le implicazioni ideologiche, costruendoci attorno una potente impalcatura concettuale.

This article discusses preparation and development for my audio and video recording of one of the most important pieces for piano and tape from the twentieth century: ...sofferte onde serene... by Italian composer Luigi Nono. The text contextualizes the piece in Nono’s output, discusses important aspects of the composition and proposes learning and performing strategies for pianists interested in this repertoire.

As he thus “sticks” music to canvas, Hildebrandt seeks to visualize the music. Tape, of course, is akin to the equally analog vinyl medium. When they were the media of audio recording, these analog media embodied temporality. By recording single songs that he likes over and over again on the tapes, Hildebrandt stimulates a reflective nostalgia for the song stirred to his memory.

This article draws on three years of participation in the Taiwanese experimental music scene and argues that, in order to explain how different forms of sociality contribute to its construction and scaling, it is necessary to examine how musicians, organizers and audiences describe their own creative practices. After sketching a brief history of experimental music in Taiwan and contextualizing my positioning as an audience member, musician and critic, I discuss three central components of a music scene: genre, space, and circulation. By analysing the ideological, spatial and material shifts taking place around the Taiwanese experimental music scene in the late 2010s, I demonstrate how musical genres, performance spaces and material circuits are scaled up or down to specific domains of practice or to inclusive social contexts. In this article’s conclusion, I revisit scholarship on the concept of music scene and connect it to the role of scaling in the construction of Taiwan’s experimental music underground.

The ontology of music is a lively and much debated branch of metaphysical philosophy. However, most of the available literature focuses upon works of the Western classical tradition; as a result, the various challenges posed by tape compositions are either marginalised or ignored. Coupled with this is the familiar claim by some musicologists and philosophers that such works cannot be described as musical; one such philosopher, Linda Ferguson, claimed that tape compositions are ontologically distinct from scored musical works and, as a result, are “in search of their metaphysics” (Ferguson, 1983). This paper will address such claims through an investigation of the ontology of tape music. It will be argued that such works share their metaphysical status with scored compositions and that the various differences can be ascribed to the “extent, depth, and saturation of their work-determinative properties” (Davies, pp. 26-27, 2004). Ultimately, it will be noted that there are some significant differences between these two art forms. However, tape music is not “in search of its metaphysics”; it is merely lacking an accurate philosophical assessment.

At the end of the 1950s Terry Riley, then a young composer strongly influenced both by serial music and John Cage's experimental approach to composition, had participated in the pioneering initiatives of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. In 1962 Riley embarked for Paris, for an 18-month stay that would subsequently prove to have been a crucial period in his entire career. There he had contacts with jazz musicians (Bud Powell, Chet Baker); other US expatriates such as William Burroughs, who was making experimental poetry using tape recording; younger artists such as Daevid Allen and Robert Wyatt - who would become key figures in the developments of European 'progressive' rock. Immersed in such a rich and stimulating milieu, Riley started evolving a new approach to composition, applying experimental tape-looping techniques (at the studios of the ORTF) to modal structures, mostly taken from jazz performances. These operations became the basis of all the work that Riley would develop in the course of the 1960s, eventually transferring tape techniques to instrumental music. This way he gave birth to a compositional method that was strongly idiomatic inasmuch it was both derived from early tape technology and rooted in modal improvisation. Riley's Paris stay is that one moment when not only minimal music is born out of a truly transcultural cross-pollination of early electroacoustic music, experimental poetry, new jazz, but also a new way of relating composition to performance which would have a deep and lasting influence on both contemporary art and popular music.

This article deals with the topic of temporality in Steve Reich’s early works, starting from the analysis of It’s Gonna Rain’s sketches held at the Paul Sacher Stiftung. It demonstrates that the technique of phasing came out of an idea of composing and decomposing spatial structures, rather than of a simple mistake or of technological needs. The notion of spatialization of music writing, aiming at the creation of temporal perceptual paradoxes, will be put into relationship with a vectorial, but non protensive and endless conception of musical time.

Argomento principale di questa ricerca è l'orizzonte musicale americano degli anni '50 e '60 del Novecento, in particolar modo si analizzeranno le due principali correnti della musica per nastro magnetico: il Music for Magnetic Tapes Project e la corrente che ha fulcro nel San Francisco Tape Music Center.
Si metterà in evidenza inoltre una prima situazione di carenza e limitatezza tecnologica rispetto ai principali centri di ricerca che avevano trovato loro sistemazione ottimale nelle grandi città degli Stati Europei (Parigi, Bonn, Colonia, Milano).