Academic literature on the topic 'Glitch microsound'

Dans cet article, l’auteur énumère et définit certaines variantes de ce que l’on appelle généralement la musique techno et les nombreuses expressions utilisées pour la désigner. Il s’attarde sur les musiques ambient, IDM (intelligent dance music), jungle ou drum and bass, glitch, microsound, regroupées sous le terme général d’électronica, s’arrêtant sur certains moments clés dans l’évolution du genre tout en dressant un portrait des principaux acteurs qui sont les moteurs d’un nouveau courant parallèle à l’électroacoustique.

AbstractThis article documents the resolution of a problem encountered during the design of a semi-permanent interactive sound and video installation currently being installed at a tram station located in Dublin, Ireland. This artwork generates video and multi-channel sound output in real time, responding to changes in traffic patterns on an adjacent street. While the visuals are composed from pre-recorded content, the sound environment explores the use of site-specific sound within public urban space by sampling and processing sounds that occur naturally in and around the station. Regulations involving the artwork's volume resulted in the sound output being reduced to a level at which it was too subtle to be noticed amidst the busy activity of the station. It was therefore necessary to strengthen the artwork's aural presence without interfering with the subtleties of the site-specific sound environment. A dynamic field of sine tones and rhythmic glitches was composed to augment the more subtle sounds of the installation. This juxtaposition of site-specific sound with compositional structures associated with the popular musical genre known as microsound proved to be effective, calling attention to the mediated sound environment even at low volume levels and balancing the artwork's presence with the other functions of the site.

The definition of genres within electroacoustic music, electronic music or computer music is extremely difficult. In recent times it seems that, for some, the term electroacoustic music has become a euphemism for acousmatic composition; computer music has so many different categories that it has become a generic term hardly used at all but replaced by interactive, algorithmic and the many other sub-genres which now predominate. This is probably a natural and expected evolution through the development and globalisation of technologies and the dissemination of aesthetics, but when Organised Sound issued a call for articles relating to the use and application of computers and technology in ‘popular music’, we may have, inadvertently, guaranteed that no one would understand what we meant. We had imagined that there were many people using what to date had been seen as largely academic research tools and applications and applying them in exciting ways to new forms of commercial experimental music and electronica. We had imagined that the potential of ‘glitch’, ‘électroacoustique’ or ‘microsound’ and the many other genres of contemporary electronica would yield articles about the desires, methods and techniques of young composers and laptop performers.

The use of error by composers as a means of adding colour to a musical text has a long history, but the device is ultimately ineffective. Material whose significance is its incongruity is incorporated by recontextualization, and in time, becomes familiar and unremarkable. ‘Glitch’ is a stylistic mannerism within electroacoustic composition that emerged in the late 1990s. Glitch, or ‘microsound’, as it is known in an academic context, observes the conventions of music concrète, drawing on material sampled from the real world, and fashioning this into sonic narratives. Its signature is the ‘sound of failure’, sonorities characteristic of electronic devices malfunctioning or mis-used: clicks, crackles, distortions, fractured digital files. Glitch/microsound has already diminished from a movement to a mannerism, but its legacy is a refreshment of our palette of sonorities, and an interrogation of the very act of listening. This essay is short examination of the use (and nature) of noise a musical ingredient and the significance of glitch/microsound for electroacoustic composers. It concludes that this ‘style’ is little more than a nuance, and that its advent and advocacy were less to do with a new musical movement, than with a new generation of electronic composers attempting to distinguish itself.

Master of Music
The use of error by composers as a means of adding colour to a musical text has a long history, but the device is ultimately ineffective. Material whose significance is its incongruity is incorporated by recontextualization, and in time, becomes familiar and unremarkable. ‘Glitch’ is a stylistic mannerism within electroacoustic composition that emerged in the late 1990s. Glitch, or ‘microsound’, as it is known in an academic context, observes the conventions of music concrète, drawing on material sampled from the real world, and fashioning this into sonic narratives. Its signature is the ‘sound of failure’, sonorities characteristic of electronic devices malfunctioning or mis-used: clicks, crackles, distortions, fractured digital files. Glitch/microsound has already diminished from a movement to a mannerism, but its legacy is a refreshment of our palette of sonorities, and an interrogation of the very act of listening. This essay is short examination of the use (and nature) of noise a musical ingredient and the significance of glitch/microsound for electroacoustic composers. It concludes that this ‘style’ is little more than a nuance, and that its advent and advocacy were less to do with a new musical movement, than with a new generation of electronic composers attempting to distinguish itself.