Experimental Music 1980-2000

The 1980s was a time where technology was moving fast giving bands room to experiment with different kinds of sounds using this new technology.  In 1983 Tellus Audio Cassette magazine started adding cassette tapes to its magazine.  These contained Experimental Music from both past and present.  Non rock acts were also starting to experiment.  Aphex Twin placed pictures in spectograms and returning them to audio signals.  The artist Merzbow worked with a series of radios all positioned differently for receiving different FM and AM frequencies and making music from the sounds coming from the signals.

2000-present

As musical technology became more advanced, more bands were able to work with this new technology to create new soundscapes.  The band Neptune designed a series of microtonal guitars to create new sounds.

Around the year 2000, artists like Alva Noto added another genre to experimental electronic music.  They added normally unwanted noises like the sound of skipping CD’s and electric hum.

The origins of Experimental Music can be traced back to a group called The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète (GRMC), lead by Pierre Schaeffer, who organised the First International Decade of Experimental Music between 8 and 18 June 1953.  This appears to have been an attempt by Schaeffer to reverse the changing of musique concrète into the German elektronische Musik.  He instead tried to incorporate musique concrète, elektronische Musik, tape music, and world music under the title “musique experimentale”.  Publication of Schaeffer’s manifesto in 1957 was delayed by four years, by which time Schaeffer was favouring the term “recherche musicale” (music research), though he never completely abandoned “musique expérimentale”.

John Cage was also using the term as early as 1955.  Cage’s definition is described as “an experimental action, the outcome of which is not foreseen”.  He was especially interested in completed works that had an unpredictable outcome. In Germany, the publication of Cage’s article was given in a lecture delivered by Wolfgang Edward Rebner at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse on 13 August 1954, titled “Amerikanische Experimentalmusik”. Rebner’s lecture took the genre back in time to include composers such as Charles Ives, Edgard Varèse, and Henry Cowell, as well as Cage, which was due to their focus on sound rather than the method of composition.

In 1974, Michael Nyman went on from Cage’s definition and developed the term “experimental” which was also used to describe the work of other American composers such as Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Meredith Monk, Malcolm Goldstein, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, John Gale, and Steve Reich.  There were other composers who fell into this category such as Gavin Bryars, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury, Frederic Rzewski, and Keith Rowe.  Nyman opposed experimental music to the European avant-garde of the time and works by Boulez, Kagel, Xenakis, Birtwistle, Berio, Stockhausen, and Bussotti.  Nyman described these composers for whom “The identity of a composition is of paramount importance”.  John Cage described the word “experimental” in the former, “is apt, providing it is understood not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success or failure, but simply as of an act the outcome of which is unknown”.

As late as 1997 and 1998 the differences between Experimental Music and avant-garde were still being discussed.  David Cope described the differences between experimental and avant-garde, by saying that Experimental Music as that “which represents a refusal to accept the status quo”.  David Nicholls added, saying that “…very generally, avant-garde music can be viewed as occupying an extreme position within the tradition, while experimental music lies outside it”.

Warren Burt, however advised caution that, as “a combination of leading-edge techniques and a certain exploratory attitude”, Experimental Music requires a broad and inclusive definition, “a series of ands, if you will”, encompassing such areas as “Cageian influences and work with low technology and improvisation and sound poetry and linguistics and new instrument building and multimedia and music theatre and work with high technology and community music, among others, when these activities are done with the aim of finding those musics ‘we don’t like, yet’, in a ‘problem-seeking environment’.

In a recent dissertation, Benjamin Piekut argued that this “consensus view of experimentalism” was based on a “prior grouping”, rather than asking the question, “How have these composers been collected together in the first place, that they can now be the subject of this description?”  That is, “for the most part, in experimental music, a category without really explaining it”.  However he did find exceptions in the work of David Nicholls and, especially, Amy Beal.  He concluded that “The fundamental shift that marks experimentalism as an achievement from representation to performance”, so that “an explanation of experimentalism that already assumes the category it purports to explain is purely an exercise in metaphysics not ontology.

In 1994, Leonard B. Meyer, on the other hand, named composers in experimental music that were rejected by Nyman such as Berio, Boulez, and Stockhausen, as well as the techniques of “total serialism” saying that “there is no single, or even pre-eminent, Experimental Music, but rather a plethora of different methods and kinds”.

In 1959, Lejaren Hiller and L. M. Isaacson described the term in connection with music that was computer-controlled, as in the scientific sense of “experiment”. They made predictions for new compositions based on established musical technique.  The term “Experimental Music” was used for electronic music, particularly in the early work of Schaeffer and Henry in France.  The term was also described at length by Michael Nyman in his book Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, published in 1974.

Several early 20^th Century American composers such as Charles Ives, Charles and Ruth Crawford-Seeger, Carl Ruggles and John Becker are often known as the “American Experimental School”.

John Cage began writing music in the early 1930s, but it wasn’t until he gained recognition in the mid 1940s that he earned the title as the father of American Experimental Music.

In the 1950s, the term “experimental” was often used by conservative music critics, along with a number of other words, such as “engineers art”, “musical splitting of the atom”, “alchemist’s kitchen”, “atonal”, and “serial”.  It was a deprecating term, which was regarded as an “abortive concept”, as the music did not “grasp a subject”.  This was an attempt to marginalize, and thereby dismiss various kinds of music that did not conform to established conventions.  In 1955, Pierre Boulez said that Experimental Music was a “new definition that makes it possible to restrict to a laboratory, which is tolerated but subject to inspection, all attempts to corrupt musical morals”.  “Once they have set limits to the danger, the good ostriches go to sleep again and wake only to stamp their feet with rage when they are obliged to accept the bitter fact of the periodical ravages caused by experiment.”  He concluded that there was no such thing as Experimental Music but that there was a real difference between sterility and invention.

In the 1960s, “Experimental Music” began to be used in America for almost the opposite purpose.  It was an attempt to legitimize a loosely identified group of radically innovative, “outsider” composers.    

Nyman said that experimental music was not a genre, but an open category, “because any attempt to classify a phenomenon as unclassifiable and (often) elusive as Experimental Music must be partial”.

Frank Zappa was a pioneer of experimental music

Experimental Music is compositional tradition which first emerged in the mid-20^th Century. This was more evident in North America and Experimental Music was simply described as music which is composed in such a way that there is no obvious outcome. The most famous name associated with Experimental Music is John Cage. Experimental Music can also be described as music which is composed in a way that pushes against boundaries and traditions. It has also been described as “transethnic music” this mixing of recognisable music genres and sounds.

Experimental popular music – 1960-1980

In 1963 Frank Zappa appeared in the Steve Allen Show, where he did an experimental music piece called Playing Music on a Bicycle. This performance mirrored John Cage’s song, Water Walk which he played in 1960 on the I’ve Got a Secret show. Zappa later became mainly famous for his rock music. By the end of the 1960s rock groups like The Beach Boys and The Beatles began adding outside musical influences to their music which went against the grain on the idea of popular music of those days. They incorporated non-western music and musical instruments as well as using ideas, concepts and techniques used for traditional classical and modern classical music. These bands also experimented with all kinds of new recording techniques like reverse tape recording.

As well as mainstream artists, a collection of underground artists such as The Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, White Noise and The Residents began using the aspects of experimental music previously used by Varese, La Monte Young and John Cage. They also added new extending techniques like audio feedback and other electronic sound effects. The Residents started out in the 1970s as an idiosyncratic musical group who mixed all kinds of music genres such as pop music and electronic music. There was also Experimental Music with movies, comic books and performance art. Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno, John Zorn, Pere Ubu, Faust, DNA, Robert Fripp, Cabaret Voltaire and Boyd Rice were other pop musicians who made Experimental Music.

The band Throbbing Gristle experimented with electronic noise and what was known as cut-up techniques with short pieces of tape with recorded sound on it. Fred Frith and Keith Rowe began looking at new Experimental Music with prepared guitars. In the 1970s, Chris Cutler began experimenting with an eclectic drum kit and added all other acoustic sounds as well as electric. Cutler’s self-titled debut album of This Heat was recorded between February 1976 and September 1978. It was characterised by the use of tape manipulation and looping, and combined it with more traditional performance, to create dense, eerie, electronic soundscapes.

In the late 1970s Rhys Chatham composed multi guitar compositions based on La Monte Young’s work. In fact Chatham worked with La Monte Young for some time and produced the piece Guitar Trio using experimental music ideas and mixing them with punk rock. Glenn Branca based his work on Harry Partch.

Lydia Lunch started using spoken word with punk rock and other groups such as Mars used sliding guitar techniques.