When immersed in complete darkness the recorded sounds of the supremely awesome soar of crashing ocean waves or the shrill artificial shrieks of a computer projected through a 20-speaker surround sound system become exhilarating audio adventures.

This was the perfect audio stage set for opening night of the San Francisco Tape Music Festival held at the ODC theater in the Mission district last Friday. The diverse crowd of experimental music enthusiasts mingled in the theater’s small photo-filled lobby and prepared to take in the sounds of “tape music”.

“We try to create an experience that you can’t duplicate at home by diffusing the sounds around to the different speakers to create a three-dimensional sound,” said Matt Ingalls, founder and co-director of the San Francisco Tape Music Collective.

First used by two Columbia University professors in the early 1950s, the term tape music described the new compositions they were creating by manipulating the recorded sound of classical instruments, according to SF State music department instructor Josh Levine, whose own vocal, instrumental, and electro-acoustic music has been performed throughout the United States, Europe and Australia.

The advent of the recording of sound spawned a new genre, electro-acoustic music, with recorded sound, not live instrumental or vocal performers, as its basis. By this definition, many forms of popular music today are in fact electro-acoustic. What these early tape musicians did was explore the manipulation of these recordings to achieve unprecedented transformations of sound.

Suddenly the recording of a horse’s thunderous gallop down an open field or shattering glass became new opportunities for experimentation aided by the evolution and advancements in montage, otherwise known as tape manipulation. It became possible to compose music using any sounds capable of being recorded, from the violent eruption of an abrupt downpour to the jarring noise of a thick steel pole being dragged down a city sidewalk.

By the time this new genre of music had been given a name in the United States the term “musique concrete” was being used in Paris by Pierre Schaeffer, whose 1948 piece, “Etudes aux Chemins de Fer” or "Railway Study,” is considered to be the first full-fledged electro-acoustic work. The word “concrete” referred to the fact that he composed with real world sounds.

“What perhaps early composers in the early, heady days of the genre in the ‘50s and
‘60s had in common was a fascination with sound itself and a strong experimental bent,” said Levine, describing the philosophical roots of tape music. “It was meant to be listened to for its own sake, not danced to, for example, or intended as sound effects to enhance a song or a visual image.”

Today, the genre has retained its original name despite the fact that almost everything is done digitally using all of the same early techniques of montage.

Splicing, looping and varying tape speed are today simulated by digital audio software workstations and an innumerable array of processed sounds can also be created.

Creatively, the process of composing tape music is as varied as its sources. Some composers, like Kent Jolly, whose piece played on the festival’s second night, take a more organic approach.

“A lot of times I hear a sound that interests me and I like how something sounds and it’s mostly pretty intuitive,” said Jolly. “I don’t have a structure or specific idea that I’m after.”

This is in direct contrast to the ideas behind the work of the late James Tenney, composer and musical theorist. Tenney’s psychoacoustic, scientific compositions are considered seminal pieces and hailed as breakthroughs in the study of the mechanics of music and its influence on human perception.

It was the works of Tenney, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gyorgi Liyeti, all tape piece pioneers, that first brought 28-year-old Tony Dryer to look into the genre.

“I became interested in the stuff being done in the ‘50s and ‘60s by composers dealing with non-instruments as sound sources and sounds from nature put on tape,” said Dryer, who works at Amoeba Records on Haight Street.

At Amoeba, Dryer says he has seen a recent rise in the popularity of modern experimental composers, though tape music remains relatively underground.

For those interested in listening for themselves, the “20th century avant-garde” section at Amoeba is a good place to start. There are also some record labels that specialize in modern experimental music, such as Type Records, based out of the United Kingdom, where the genre is more prevalent than in the United States.
Web sites like www.sonus.ca also provide the opportunity for those intrigued to enter this unparallel and captivating realm of audio stimulation.

For streams of San Francisco Tape Festivals, past and present, visit www.sfsound.org/radio.html.