Musique Concrète and its influences
Origins of Musique Concrète
The tape recorder was invented in world war two and was developed by the Nazi’s to broadcast edited material, normally for propaganda. These machines drove Europe to design their own, due to how effective they were. using the original German design, Britain developed their own and despite being primarily used by the BBC, a new wave of experimental art was arriving with these machines.
Pierre Schaeffer, a French composer, was one of the first to experiment with tape. with his colleagues, the RTF (Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française), gave them the opportunity to use and experiment with tape. His techniques with tape became known as Musique Concrète.
Musique Concrète is based around the idea of only using “concrete” sounds, no instrumentation or theory was needed. A concrete sound is an unedited, raw but recorded sound, normally a sample or naturalistic sound.
Pierre Schaeffer’s piece Étude aux chemins de fer is regarded as the first Musique Concrète piece, which defined the style as a whole.
Legacy and Influence
Despite Musique Concrète never being popular, the experiments Pierre Schaeffer carried out inspired a wave of future genres, artists and bands. listed below are some examples of tracks inspired by Musique Concrète in their genres.
Psychedelic & Progressive Rock
Despite being more traditional and mainstream then the other examples, more progressive and experimental rocks bands used tape manipulation and sampling similar to Musique Concrète. In turn, allowing these techniques to become more mainstream. Some examples include:
- The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows
- The Beatles – Revolution 9
- Pink Floyd – Money
Industrial
This more experimental genre uses industrial noises as rhythmic patterns or short motifs. Manipulation of tape loops and samplers were commonplace in industrial music. Some examples include:
- Throbbing Gristle – Discipline
- Laibach – Vier Personen
- Einstürzende Neubauten live
Collage/Plunderphonics
Being directly influenced by Musique Concrète, this genre involved sampling music or other forms of media to create new songs. Some examples include:
- The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu – Whitney Joins the Jams
- John Oswald – Dab