NEWS
2/5/09 6:00pm
By Rose Cahalan
Today's musicians have a staggering array of advanced technologies at their fingertips, ranging from every flavor of synthesizer to Auto-Tune, the pitch correction software now used almost universally in recording studios to make vocals sound closer to perfect pitch. Although the creative opportunities unleashed by computer music are boundless - Girl Talk, anyone? - there is also a growing back-to-basics movement dedicated to making music from even the most banal sounds: everyday speech and all manner of ambient noise, such as whirring machinery and birdsong.Background noise is foregrounded, usually in a blend with more conventional instrumentation, and the result is neither organic nor artificial - but definitely musical. This technique has been applied in genres as diverse as acoustic folk-rock (The Books, who create catchy songs out of obscure spoken samples) and rap (Decomposure, who finds melodies even in the sound of matches striking together). Larkin Gifford's Harmonica, an environmental soundscape from composer Phillip Bimstein, adds classical music to that list.