Music throughout history has been inspired and changed by hackers and makers, and never moreso than in the 20th century. Helen Leigh is one such hacker, who brought a talk to Supercon to give us a crash course in the history of recording, electronics and music, and what the maker movement is doing in the music world today.
The tape recorder was an invention that kicked off a golden period of exploration in sound. Beginning in World War II, the Nazi propaganda machine cut and spliced recorded materials and disseminated them across broadcasting stations in Europe. To the astonishment of the Allies, certain German officials appeared to be making broadcasts from different studios at the same time, due to the high quality of the recording hardware. After the war, this technology was discovered by a group of Parisian recording artists who began to experiment with an art that became known as musique concrète, using tape hardware in weird and wonderful ways to create new sounds heretofore unheard in nature.
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Daphne Oram was an early proponent of advanced recording techniques, and founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Helen’s talk explores this movement as an excellent example of the hacker ethos applied to musical creation. While much of the artistic output was amelodic and somewhat challenging to listen to, it nevertheless had a great impact on recording technology and techniques.
Helen recounts the work of Daphne Oram, who, inspired by musique concrète, went on to perform her own experiments, and eventually founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. This hallowed organisation became a hotbed of electronic and musical experimentation, developing innovative techniques in foley an ..
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