Posts tagged oswald

John Oswald - ‘Aria’ from Plunderphonics 69/96

From the liner notes:

We had a computer listen to Mr Gould playing the aria to the Goldberg Variations through a device which converts analogue pitches into digital notes. We fine-tuned or perhaps I should say finely untuned this ability so that the computer would hear approximately the right notes; it would add extra notes and spurious activity when it wasn’t sure what he had played. But it was good at getting most of the notes and the precise timing of the original. Once this info was collected into the computer it could be played back on any MIDI instrument or sampler. The sound could be electronic, or a toy piano or one of our klangprobes. But we had the opportunity to record a couple of the pianos Gould actually used, including the flagship CD318. This piano naturally has all the characteristics one associates with Glenn Gould’s style; including its quick, close action, and its lightness. So we then create a composite sampled keyboard using these recordings. There were some tuning anomalies with one of the pianos; we did some tuning of the samples intended to complement the harmonic structure of the ‘aria.’ Then the computer gave us a real time performance of its interpretation and we recorded it.

John Oswald: “Z24”

On Plunderphonics

from the liner notes:

In 1993 we bought every version of ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ available on CD. There were two dozen of them. We lined them up on a multi-track so the horn entry begins at the same point for all tracks, so the very beginning, where the organ pedal tone comes in, is earlier for some versions than others, and, beyond the horn entry things begin to smear, because none of the versions are in exactly the same tempo, so the degree of the smear increases as it goes along, and some versions end about twenty seconds later than others. I scaled the dynamics a bit to fit the climax in.