The genesis of sampling?
2009-03-05 by Hal BerstramJohn Cage and David Tudor – Variations IV (excerpt)
Now here’s an interesting piece of experimental work which could perhaps be one of the first extended uses of sampling (or indeed ‘DJ mixing’) in the recorded medium. John Cage (1912-1992) was a brilliant (and/or notorious, depending on your POV) American composer who spent most of his career exploring the role of chance processes in music. The typical Cage compositional process involved the composer setting up a system for producing music (e.g. rendering star charts as musical notes, or using the I Ching to decide performance length, number of performers, and the score each would play) and then accepting whatever came out of the process. Sometimes this made the results unlistenable to most of us (although Cage would probably have argued that the term ‘listenable/unlistenable’ was meaningless) but sometimes he happened on the most amazing sonic innovations through this technique.
“Variations IV” is a series of excerpts from an audio-visual installation at an art gallery in Los Angeles which Cage set up with friend and fellow composer David Tudor in 1964. The sound sources consisted of tape decks, radios and record players, plus some microphones inside the gallery itself and outside in the street. These were mixed and broadcast in the gallery and recorded to tape for later mixdown and release as an album.
What you’ve got here is an excerpt from the proceedings between 7pm and 8pm. Pretty random stuff, but a massive influence on later artists including Orb, Future Sound of London, Scanner etc. And a good listen in its own right – I particularly like the banjo at 1:55 or so. The poor quality of some of the vinyl reproduction (whether due to worn records, knackered styli, bad original recording, or was that just what record players sounded like back then?) adds to the charm.
More weird and wacky stuff as I get time to post it.
Download MP3 (0:00min / 0MB)
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