Composing with Analog Tape in a Post-Digital Age

Authors

  • Sean Russell Hallowell Stanford University, San Francisco, United States Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2019.2.3.82

Keywords:

analog and digital signal processing, permutational techniques of composition, timbre in electronic and electroacoustic music, the phenomenology of sound, musical temporality

Abstract

This essay explores the practical and theoretical dimensions of composing with analog tape in a post-digital age. Its point of departure is the belief that, instead of dismissing them as outmoded and impractical, we ought to embrace analog devices as invaluable tools for exploring the liminal realm in which encounters between concrete reality and abstract form take place. By working on sound as continuously varying electrical voltage as opposed to binary units of discrete value, a variety of compositional possibilities disclose themselves, particularly in relation to techniques of permutational variation. By reflecting on such techniques as implemented with analog rather than digital tools, crucial aesthetic insights emerge. The question of analog timbre is likewise explored, specifically in terms of aesthetic properties that testify to the unique physical origins of any given sound. Phenomenology as conceived and practiced by Husserl serves as a framework for these investigations. Its distinctive tools and methods enable exploration of the metaphysical dimensions of perceptual facts uncovered during encounters with analog and digital audio devices.

Author Biography

  • Sean Russell Hallowell, Stanford University, San Francisco, United States

    Sean Russell Hallowell is a musician and composer now living in San Francisco. He makes experimental music guided by fascination with the aesthetic potential inherent in pre-given sound and attentive to the sound-making devices that mediate it. His compositions have been featured at such events as the Open Circuit Festival at the University of Liverpool, the Sound/Image Colloquium at the University of Greenwich, Electro-Acoustic Mini-Fest at Washington State University, the Charlotte New Music Festival, and the annual meeting of SEAMUS. In August of 2019 his article “Towards a Phenomenology of Musical Borrowing” will be published by Organised Sound: An International Journal of Music and Technology. He holds music degrees from Brown University (AB) and Columbia University (PhD), where he wrote a dissertation on the metaphysical dimensions of compositional tradition in Medieval Europe. Since 2017 he has held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University.

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Published

15.12.2019

How to Cite

Composing with Analog Tape in a Post-Digital Age. (2019). INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology, 3, 82-99. https://doi.org/10.51191/issn.2637-1898.2019.2.3.82