Description:
An entirely new means of muscial expression, the use of recorded material on tape for the purpose of muscial composition, is now being systematically explored in several studio laboratories abroad and in the United States. For the past ten years muscial experimentation has relied more and more upon electroacoustical apparatus as the principal means for enlarging a sound vocabulary. Recorded sounds from multiple sources are being subjected to extensive mutation through the application of filters, ring modulators, tape-speed variation, intricate tape splicing, electronic reverberation, etc. The tape recorder's function as a recording and playback mechanism has been extended to that of a performing solo instrument in a symphony orchestra. This paper gives a résuḿ of sound sources explored and of the new apparatus developed to manipulate sound; it describes some of the techniques used, and it illustrates with recorded excerpts certain typical results obtained through controlled evolution of electronic and nonelectronic sounds as they are shaped to become components of complex sound textures in this new experimental medium.