Sound collage

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In music montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage, the use of portions of previous recordings or scores. This is often done through the use of sampling, while some playable sound collages were produced by glueing together sectors of different vinyl records.^[1] Like its visual cousin, the collage work may have a completely different effect than that of the component parts, even if the original parts are completely recognizable or from only one source.

History

Sound collage first became a possibility with the widespread use of magnetic tape in the early 1950s. Recording engineers soon discovered that tape could be cut with a razorblade and spliced back together in a different order, and even from different sources. It wasn't long before artists began to explore the new possibilities. Iannis Xenakis is the first well-known composer to have worked with sound collage^{[citation needed]}; other early artists who experimented with it include John Cage, Brion Gysin, and William S. Burroughs. The most famous examples in popular music are to be found in the work of The Beatles: George Martin cut up and randomly reassembled a recording of a carousel in "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP, and John Lennon included a long pastiche of sound effects and crowd noises on The Beatles titled "Revolution 9".

The cultural awareness of dada sound collage was greatly increased in the 1980s and early 1990s due largely to two lawsuits: the first by the Canadian Recording Association against John Oswald for his seminal collage work Plunderphonics and the second by Island Records against the band Negativland for their EP titled U2. The latter was provoked by Negativland's misleading cover art. The popularity of two new musical genres that included elements of sound collage—rap and house music—over the same period also helped to popularize it.

Today audio collage may be thought of as fluxus postmodern and a form of digital art. An example is George Rochberg, an artist well known for his use of collage in pieces including Contra Mortem et Tempus and Symphony No. 3 (Rochberg) ^[2].

Micromontage

Micromontage is the use of montage on the time scale of microsounds, its primary proponent being composer Horacio Vaggione in works such as Octuor (1982), Thema (1985, Wergo 2026-2), and Schall (1995, Mnémosyne Musique Média LDC 278-1102). The technique may include the extraction and arrangement of sound particles from a sample or the creation and exact placement of each particle to create complex sound patterns or singular particles (transients). It may be accomplished through graphic editing, a script, or automated through a computer program. ^[3]

Regardless, digital micromontage requires ^[3]:

• creation or compilation of a library of sound files on several different time scales
• importation into the library of the editing and mixing program
• use of the cursor, script, or algorithm to position each sound at a specific time-point or time-points
• editing of the duration, amplitude, and spatial positions of all sounds (possibly done by a script or algorithm)

Granular synthesis incorporates many of the techniques of micromontage, though granular synthesis is inevitably automated and micromontage may be realized directly, point by point. "It therefore demands unusual patience" and may be compared to the pointillistic paintings of Georges Seurat. ^[3]

Sound collages in broadcasting

Sound collages can occasionally be heard on the radio as well. They are used when a radio station is stunting towards an eventual format change. Broadcasted sound collages often contain random bits of music, movie clips, sound effects, and other audio which may or may not relate to the previous or upcoming format. In addition, they may be interspliced with messages prompting listeners to tune in at specific date and time to find out what the new format will be. After dropping its Free FM talk format, WFNY-FM in New York City played a sound collage for several hours on May 24, 2007 before returning to the rock format the station previously held. The collage was interspliced with messages inviting listeners to tune in "today at 5" in order to find out what format the station would adopt.

Further reading

• Brandon Taylor Collage Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006
• Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito At the Edge of Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006
• Christiane Paul Digital Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd
• Frank Popper From Technological to Virtual Art, MIT Press
• Alan Liu, "The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information, University of Chicago Press, 2004
• Bruce Wands Art of the Digital Age, London: Thames & Hudson
• Margot Lovejoy Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age Routledge 2004
• Christine Buci-Glucksmann, "L’art à l’époque virtuel", in Frontières esthétiques de l’art, Arts 8, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2004
• Edmond Couchot, Des Images, du temps et des machines, édité Actes Sud, 2007
• Fred Forest Art et Internet, Editions Cercle D'Art / Imaginaire Mode d'Emploi

See also

• Detournement
• Mashup
• Remix
• Sampling (music)
• Some Assembly Required

Sources

1. ^ Bush, John. "Christian Marclay", AllMusicGuide. Accessed 04:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC).
2. ^ Jaffe, Stephen. Conversation between SJ and JS on the New Tonality, Contemporary Music Review 1992, Vol. 6 (2), pp. 27–38.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound, p.182-187. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-18215-7.