Musique concrète: Difference between revisions

At the premiere of Pierre Schaeffer's ''Symphonie pour un homme seul'' in 1951, a system that was designed for the spatial control of sound was tested. It was called a ‘relief desk’ (''pupitre de relief'', but also referred to as ''pupitre d'espace'' or ''potentiomètre d'espace'') and was intended to control the dynamic level of music played from several shellac players. This created a '[[stereophonic]]' effect by controlling the positioning of a [[monophonic]] sound source. One of five tracks, provided by a purpose built tape machine, was controlled by the performer and the other four tracks each supplied a single loudspeaker. This provided a mixture of live and preset sound positions (Poullin, 1957). The placement of loudspeakers in the performance space included two loudspeakers at the front right and left of the audience, one placed at the rear, and in the center of the space a loudspeaker was placed in a heighthigh position above the audience. The sounds could therefore be moved around the audience, rather than just across the front stage. On stage, the control system allowed a performer to position a sound either to the left or right, above or behind the audience, simply by moving a small, hand held transmitter coil towards or away from four somewhat larger receiver coils arranged around the performer in a manner reflecting the loudspeaker positions. Gradenwitz gives the following description of the potentiomètre d'espace in normal use;