Musique Concrete: The benefits of banging your head against a brick wall.

musique concrete: chimera bC8 synth from todd barton on Vimeo.


This delectible ditty birthed from a psycopath's fever dream may come to you as it came to me; irritating and bizarre. However, these noises are (like most things in music) part of bigger picture. Although it sounds like someone is rolling their face across the sound effects board on the set of the faked moonlanding; there is method in the madness. It starts not with Todd Barton (afformentioned psycopath) and it does not start with a word. It begins with something far more terrifying. To understand this piece's 'raison d'etre' we must start...with the French.

It was October 1948 and it was a particularly luke warm month for the cold war except that the Russians sent their first R-1 rocket into space and the arms race was cooling down (in a bad way). Tensions between the world's super powers distracted from the real threat. Monsieur Pierre Schaeffer stood under the radar listening to trains and recording them developing a plot to destroy musical culture centuries in the future. His resultant phonographically recorded track was this:

The worst thing about this music is it came in five parts. Another was the Etude violette another toe curling and dissonant soundscape paving the way for avant-garde music. The name is translated roughly into Study in Purple. I made the surefire mistake of listening to the song as I wrote this. Unlike many electronic beats and modern music using sampling, this music doesn't seem to effect my productivity positively. I have since the hour (from which I am displaced fourty minutes) been considering death and his many names I am convinced that he goes by the name of Musique Concrete.

Schaeffer's revolution of music rested heavily on the play on the word play meaning to enjoy one's surrounding and to play as in an instrument. His freeflow free form experiments with everyday sounds birthed his concrete music. These sounds produce a hypnotic state as if my brain can't seem to relate or understand the noises being put together in an arrangement. This terrifying lack of synergy creates what I would like to describe anti-music.

mu·sic/ˈmyo͞ozik/Noun

1. The art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.

 This brings me to my main qualm I have with this music or rather my own hatred of it. As anti matter is to matter this 'anti-music' is to music. They are opposites but in their own context flourish and serve similar purposes. It's easily conceded that bold art and intricate science goes into making this music, but what is most surprising is it's emotional resonance, harmonic qualities and en-tropic beauty. It can without a doubt be (if done correctly) very deep and fulfilling music. I believe it's limits do not lie with unhappiness. Sampling the right sounds you can create happiness through everyday noises put together in succinct patterns.

I will leave you with a modern example of Musique Conrete which sounds like they're taking sounds from a vacuum cleaner and other electrical appliances. What's most terrifying and potent is the strange way the noises sound like voices or singing truly adding a sense of verisimilitude to ol' Pierre's playtime.

- James Barton