Concrete Music Contest

Concrete Music Contest : A tribute to the godfathers of sampling (Pierre Scheaffer, Steve Reich , ...and more).

What you cannot use: 1 : no acoustic ,analogue, digital or virtual musical intstruments. 2 : no sampling or midi file from other artists. 3 : only personal samples, no samples from the web or whatever.

What you can use: 1 : domestic sounds : like kitchen , bathroom or whatever. 2 : urban & industrial sounds : like truck , machinery or whatever. 3 : sounds of nature. 4 : sounds from TV or Radio (movie, scientific progam, news, ...but no soundtrack, jingle). 5 : your voice. 6 : you can use all effect (vst, rack,... all fx, and also load your samples in vsti or other) 7 : detune, distord or strech as you whant your samples. 8 : for midi expert, you can create your own midi bank. 9 : all that is not specified in “what you cannot use”. of course, this contest is open for any musical genre ! and you can post more than one track!

You can your share samples with other user who take part to the contest (ex. 2 users or more can use the same samples).

All tracks should be detailled like this:origine of the samples,software,effects & technique used. all tracks will be posted in a special zone called : "Concrete Music Contest" ... DEADLINE : 01/03

Some ideas : you can create drum kit with your Baking Pans, use chinisestiks like drumstiks, bass line with elastics,...but is only some exemple... there’s many possibility ! Try to be original !

How to record your sounds :.easy ! one microphone (you can find very cheap one in HiFi or music store, a little more than 5 euros) one recorder, minidisc, dictaphone, dat, computer, digital cam..., the tracks are not expecialy judged for sound qualty but more for the creativity so if you only have low-fi material, it doesnt mater, remember that you can share sample with other user and if you dont like you always can correct or adjust a sound with softwares.

Tracks quotation (vote) : creativity 0 to 10 points , originality 0 to 7 points, sound quality 0 to 3 points ('quality' will highly rely on recording capabilities, so people with expensive microphones have more chances to win ? NO, thats why 'creativity' and 'originality' are quoted with more points. )

Price to win : an Ebel T-shirt

More info, ask your questions on this thread or PM me (lorsen), thx to ZARk & heatfuse for helpin me in this project.

A little page of history : Musique concrète (French; literally, "concrete music"), is the name given to a class of electronic music produced from editing together fragments of natural and industrial sounds. It is the opposite of traditional composing (known to some as Musique Abstraite, literally, Abstract Music) as the sounds are recorded first then built into a tune as opposed to a tune being written then given to players to turn into sound. Concrète was pioneered in the late 1940s and 1950s, spurred by developments in technology, most prominently microphones, and the commercial availability of the magnetic tape recorder, utilized as tape loops. Pierre Schaeffer, a Paris radio broadcaster, created some of the earliest pieces of Musique Concrète, including "Étude aux chemins de fer" ("Study with Trains") and "Étude aux casseroles" ("Study with Baking Pans"). Each of these pieces involved speeding up, looping, and reversing recordings of sound sources like trains, piano and rattling cookware. Schaeffer also collaborated with another Musique concrète pioneer, Pierre Henry. Together, they created pieces such as "Symphonie pour un homme seul" ("Symphony for a Man Alone"). After the 1950s, Concrète was somewhat displaced by other forms of electronic composition, although its influence can be seen in popular music by many bands, including The Beatles, in their song Revolution 9, and Pink Floyd (notably the finale of the song "Bike"). In 1966, minimalist composer Steve Reich created Come Out, a piece comprised of tape loops culled from a recording of a young man arrested in the infamous Harlem riots. The manipulated use of recorded speech as a repetitive rhythmic element qualifies the piece as an early precedent of sampling and a precursor to the hip-hop genre. Around 1967 and 1968 Frank Zappa made several musique concrete pieces with the help of the "Apostolic Vlorch Injector" at Apostolic Studios in New York City. The resulting sound, as heard on "The Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny" and "Dwarf Nebula Processional March & Dwarf Nebula," is a series of bizarre, swirling buzzes, beeps and whooshes. Traditional and non-traditional Concrète experienced a revival in the 1980s and 1990s, artists like Ray Buttigieg experimental series "Earth Noise" and "Sound Science Series" uses found and intended sounds in old and cutting edge techniques, although modern sampling technology is now often used in place of magnetic tape. Recently, the growing popularity in all forms of electronica has led to a re-birth of Musique concrète. Artists such as Christian Fennesz, Francisco Lopez, Ernesto Rodrigues and Scanner use many Concrète techniques in their music while often being classified under more common electronica genres such as IDM or downtempo.

(source wikipedia.org , an interesting link on this site about history of sampling: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28music%29 )

posted 12/01