Ownership and Control of the Creative Process in the Composition and Performance of Electroacoustic Music

The evolution of electroacoustic music has been significantly shaped by the functional characteristics of the technologies used to produce it. These external influences materially affect the working environments of those who work in this medium and in turn raise important questions about the ownership and control of the creative process—particularly the extent to which such ownership and control must be shared between composers and technology developers. The author examines these issues from an historical perspective, highlighting the significance of features directly attributable to the evolution of the technology itself; during that evolution, the increasing power and operational versatility afforded composers has generally been associated with growing levels of complexity in the technology’s musical application. The imaginative use of variable speed tape recorders to loop and process sounds, and the extensive application of laboratory test gear to generate electronic material in the early pioneering days of electroacoustic music both provide important examples of musicians taking command of their own destinies through the exploitation of audio tools not specifically engineered for such purposes. With the development of custom-designed equipment and the advent of a commercial manufacturing sector during the 1960s, technology ceased to be an essentially passive agent and became a highly proactive and influential force in the development of the electroacoustic medium. The author also examines the nature and significance of the partnerships between artists and technologists in the context of ownership and control, leading to his proposition that the development of a mass culture in terms of generally available technical resources has not wholly benefitted the creative process. Whereas an initial assessment may point to the greater accessibility that has been achieved for all those who seek to exploit the medium, a number of important objectives have not yet been fully delivered. Sophisticated and versatile system designs have often come at the expense of artists having direct contact with key processes that lie at the heart of the underlying technology; the author pays particular attention to the effects of this disengagement upon the creative process. The opportunities to work with sound within the electroacoustic medium have no precise parallels to conventional music-making, where creative discourse continues to be expressed in terms of sound-producing agents whose physical design and functional characteristics have changed very little for several centuries. The electroacoustic composer has to contend not only with the challenges of directly generating and modifying sound material, but also with the constant change in the functional characteristics of the technology itself. Interdisciplinary partnerships between artists and technologists raise fundamental questions of empowerment, which the author evaluates within the broader tradition of music composition and performance.