Tod Dockstader

Tod Dockstader ( born March 20, 1932 in Saint Paul, Minnesota) is an American composer of electronic music, particularly musique concrète.

Musical Career

Dockstader only studied psychology and art, then painting and film at the University of Minnesota before moving to Hollywood in 1955 to take up a job as an apprentice film editor. His living he earned with cartoons for the local newspapers and magazines. He developed the soundtracks for animated cartoons, and eventually also designed stories and storyboards for cartoons. Since 1958 he worked and learned as a sound engineer at the Gotham Recording Studios, where he also began to deal with more concrete music and composing.

" Pierre Schaeffer's original definition was to work with the sound in the ear, directly with the sound, as opposition to the" abstract " music, were written in the sounds. As Schaeffer, a sound engineer at work, I had exercise as "workers with rhythms, frequencies, and intensities '. As a non- musician, I could not write music, but this "new art of music " did not need a notation. At the beginning of musique concrète was not even recognized as music. Schaeffer's first exhibition was a concert of noise "

In addition, he liked "democratic" orientation of concrete music. Edgar Varèse's Poème Regarding Electronique he calls his "Music of the space " Organized music, the disorganization of the composition takes place by the sounds themselves, the composer "organized" ( or reorganized ) the sounds.

Dockstaders first record, Eight Electronic Pieces, was released in 1960 and was later nominated for the soundtrack of Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1969 ) was used. The piece Travelling Music was his first stereo composition. 1966 appeared on Owl Records a series of four albums on which his compositions from the first half of the 1960s were published, and on which he mainly worked with manipulations of strip material. After winning some notable successes and was back and played back on the radio next to Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse and John Cage, joined the Gotham Studios and Dockstader had no more opportunities to record his music. He applied at different institutions for electronic music, but was rejected for lack of academic experience in this area. Instead, he began to deal with audiovisual media, produced filmstrips and videos for general education schools.

In the early 1990s many of the pieces that appeared on Owl re-released with new unreleased material on two CDs (high country) were. Beginning of the 21st century further published compositions, now on the basis of computers instead of bands on Sub Rosa and ReR Megacorp.

Influences

Among his influences he counts Luciano Berio, Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevski and Karlheinz Stockhausen. In addition, a wide variety of instrumental music, particularly the music of the 20th century, " everything was daramatisch, colorful and adventurous - everything from Igor Stravinsky's Firebird on Olivier Messiaen Turangalîla Symphony to Pierre Le Boulezs marteau sans maître ".

Discography

• Eight pieces Electronic ( 1961) ( Folkways Records, 1968)
• Apocalypse ( 1961) ( Starkland, 1993)
• Luna Park ( 1961) ( Starkland, 1993)
• Drone ( 1962) ( Starkland, 1993)
• Water Music ( 1963) ( Starkland, 1992)
• Quatermass ( 1964) ( Starkland, 1992)
• Two Moons of Quatermass ( 1964) ( Starkland, 1992)
• Four Telemetry Tapes ( 1965) ( Starkland, 1993)
• Aerial # 1 ( 2003) ( Sub Rosa, 2005)
• Aerial # 2 ( 2003) ( Sub Rosa, 2005)
• Aerial # 3 ( 2003) ( Sub Rosa, 2006)