Kees Tazelaar - A Handbook for Teaching Analog Studio Techniques in Function of Composing Contemporary Electronic Music
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Kees Tazelaar
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
One important reason to address the (limitations of) analogue studio techniques in education today, is that they offer a unique possibility to gain insight in the relationship between compositional utopias and studio practice – between ideals concerning sound composition and musical reality.
The Royal Conservatoire houses two unique and predominantly analogue studios: the Karlheinz Stockhausen Studio of the Composition Department, which gives an overview of techniques and equipment from several decades, and the Voltage Control Studio (BEA5) of the Institute of Sonology, which contains one of the largest modular sound synthesis systems currently in operation. Although the handbook in preparation will primarily address Sonology’s analogue studio, users of the Stockhausen Studio will benefit from reading it.
The logic behind Sonology’s analogue studio is inseparable from a serial approach to music composition. Whereas in serially composed instrumental music, the musical dimensions such as pitch, duration and dynamics are treated as separate parameters, in a modular approach to electronic music, the sounds themselves fall apart in parameters. Each module of the analogue system represents a specific function of sound, and together these functions form a network that is physically represented by cables on a patch field. Planning and analysing these networks will be an important aspect of the handbook.
The handbook will discuss analogue studio techniques in education and composition practice not only from a technical perspective but also from a musical one. The author’s previous research in the field of historical production practice by composers such as Jan Boerman, Gottfried Michael Koenig and Dick Raaijmakers will be translated into practical examples.
The research method will consist of experiments in the analogue studio, protocolling the technical configurations and recording the audible results. Working methods of Boerman, Koenig and Raaijmakers will be analysed based on their own documentation, and subsequently translated into the possibilities of the Royal Conservatoire’s studios.
The research will result in a handbook with a theoretical introduction, explanations of pieces of equipment (both in text and in graphical representations), with configurations of equipment divided into the categories of sound production, sound transformation and sound spatialisation, and accompanied by sound examples.
Roelof Vermeulen at Philips: A Search for Space in Music
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Kees Tazelaar
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This article is based on several chapters from Kees Tazelaar, “On the Threshold of Beauty: Philips and the Origins of Electronic Music in the Netherlands 1925–1965” (PhD dissertation, TU Berlin, 2013). These chapters are similar but not identical to Kees Tazelaar, On the Threshold of Beauty: Philips and the Origins of Electronic Music in the Netherlands 1925–1965 (Rotterdam: V2_ Publishing, 2013).
Source Signals 2
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Kees Tazelaar
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Source Signals is an album with music I recorded between 1981 and 1985. The album showcases a transition from pop-oriented guitar tracks to experiments with electronics in which the guitar was the main sound source. Several bass guitar overdubs and one guitar overdub were made before the album was released in 2019. My rediscovery of these tracks and the decision finally to release them also triggered a renewed interest in the guitar as a musical instrument.
After the LP Source Signals was released, I had been playing guitar at home almost on a daily basis, initially without a concrete plan. Gradually, however, an idea developed to compose an acousmatic multichannel work in which guitar playing would be the only source. This became Source Signals 2, an acousmatic eight-channel composition of almost 28 minutes.
Source Signals 2 - Lecture Registration
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Kees Tazelaar
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This is a video registration of a lecture on the composition of the work "Source Signals 2" at Willem Twee, Den Bosch.
After the LP Source Signals was released, I had been playing guitar at home almost on a daily basis, initially without a concrete plan. Gradually, however, an idea developed to compose an acousmatic multichannel work in which guitar playing would be the only source. I deliberately say ‘guitar playing’ and not just ‘guitar sounds’, because I’m interested in guitar sounds produced with musical intentions, expressed through playing skills that are developed through practice. Nevertheless, these ‘played’ sounds still had to function in a larger, abstract musical construction. So, the question was: where lies the threshold between listening to recorded guitar playing and the perception of a higher-level musical construction consisting of played guitar sounds?