Music Midterm

What is the speed of sound?

How fast sound travels through air. The exact speed of sound depends on temperature

Difference between Periodic and Aperiodic Waves?

• Periodic Waves repeat (many times after the pitch)

• Aperiodic Waves do not repeat (sound like noise)

• Quasi-periodic waveforms are noisy but have pitch like a timpani or bell

What is sound?

Sound is the vibration that propagates as an audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a medium such as air or water. In physiology and psychology, sound is the reception of such waves and their perception to the brain

What does the Fletcher-Munson curve tell us?

Loudness is our perception of intensity. Fletcher-Munson curves show counters of equal loudness which are noted in phons. Our ears are more sensitive to intensity at some frequencies than others.

Sonorous object

Sound experienced as pure sound , without reference to its source- whether musical, like a note played on a violin- or mundane, like a car horn. It is about caring what the sound is doing and what the result is in the sound.

Reduced listening

-       A mode of listening that produces this experience of sound.  Focuses on the quality of sound rather than its meaning or cause.

Acousmatic

Music is a form of electroacoustic music that is specifically composed for presentation using speakers, as opposed to live music. Music is supposed to make you feel

Standing Wave

• Vibrate in place

• Standing waves have nodes (points where there is no displacement) and antinodes ( points with maximal displacement

Who created the telharmonium and what were three things wrong

Thaddeus Cahill

3 things wrong:

1. Crosstalk- interfered with other telephone lines

2. Consumed too much electricity

3. The notes you added the lower the volume would get for everything

Compare the two studio that used GRM and WDR

GRM- composed by Pierre Schaeffer. Studio was in France. Known for raw sound (recorded sound). The genre was Music concrete.

WDR- Composer was Stockhausen. Studio was in Germany. Worked with synthesized tone generators.

What is music concrete?

• Abstract

• Uses sampled sounds of natural events, not melodic or rhythmic

• focuses on specific type of sound

• narrative

Reverb

• Creates the effect of the many echoes and reflections that occur in an enclosed environments

Delay time

• controls how long the echoes take to reduce by 60db

• Sends sound out the output later in time

John Cage

Williams mix- 8 independently played tapes

Prepared piano- 18 notes prepared using alter sounds using screws, bolts, and rubber between the strings

Phonautograph

• Invented by Édouard-Leon Scott de Martinville

• Created a visual record of a sound

• Allowed sound to be studied visually

• Used to study sound and the voice

• Playback was not possible- no technology

• First device to record any audio

• Physically made sound wave in the wax- made vertical cuts

Phonograph

• Invented by Thomas Edison

• Could record and playback sound

• Created a visual record of a sound

• It meant that sound no longer had to be a live event, but could be captured and replayed

• Wax cylinder- vertical cuts

Gramophone

• Invented by Mile Berliner

• Used to record and playback sound

• Used flat records instead of cylinder to record sound

• better sound quality

• Horizontal cuts

Magnetic Tape

• Developed in Germany

• First patented in 1928 (iron oxide on paper)

• Got improved by the AEG in the 30s

• During World War II, allies focused on wire recording

Dj Kool Herc and Christian Marclay

• DJ Kool Herc is known for isolating the break, looping instrumental sections

• Christian Marclay was the first to popularize the idea of using records to play

Francis Grasso

• American disco music disc jockey from New York

• Known for being the first person to beatmatch

Luigi Russelli Intoromurri

• Created a new mechanical instrument- hand-cranked intonarumori (“noise intoners”)

• Proposed making music from ambient noise and sounds from the environment many years before any effective way of making remote audio recording

• First futurist concert with intonarumori got rotten fruit thrown at them

Ondes Martenot

• Could only play one note at a time

• Invented by Maurice Martenot

• Could vibrate by moving the ring on the ribbon back and forth

How is the theremin played and who popularized it?

• Manipulating electromagnetic fields around two antennae

• Control sounds by moving hands and fingers around a vertical antenna to raise or lower the tone, and up or down over a looped antenna to control volume.

• Clara Rockmore

Brussels World Fair

• First major worlds fair after WWII and a showcase of Belgium and 44 other countries with a message of optimism

• Atomium structure

• 300 speakers

• electronic music- Poéme électronique by Philips Pavillion

• Walt Disneys “America the beautiful” film

Bebe and Louis Barron

• Wrote electronic score for “Forbidden Planet”- first electronic film score

• Created one of the first electronic and tape music studios in Greenwich village

• Composed the first electronic music for magnetic tape in America in 1950

• Created circuits for generating sound and music inspired by Norbert-Weiners 1948 book ‘Cybermetics’

Luciano Berio

• Italian composer and leading figure in musical avant-garde

• Adapts and transforms the music of others

• Manipulated and explored musique concrete

• Blend of electronic music

Edgar Varéses definition of music

• Describes music as organized sound

• emphasizes timbre and rhythm

• believes sound is a living matter

What is the harmonic series?

• A string can simultaneously have vibrations at frequencies which are multiples of the fundamental frequency

• Only periodic waves have harmonic series

• Each harmonic is a single sinusoidal waveform

Law of two and a half

suggests a limit of about two and a half layers of sound or visual information a viewer can easily process at a time.