Abstract
In this presentation, I will briefly introduce previous work I have conducted on electronic music practices, then give insights on an ongoing electronic music corpus study. Digital audio workstations engender singular practices of music-making. By bringing together processes inherited from the hardware studio—sequencing, sampling, sound synthesis and sound processing—they reconfigure musical thinking and open new horizons for producers to explore. Most notably, they place sound transformation at their core, which in turn propels creativity. The subgenre of Bass music, on the hardcore and experimental fringe of EDM, is indebted to the DAW interface, particularly Ableton Live’s, which fosters all-round creative experimentation. How do Bass music producers design groove and musical time in the DAW, between stylistic conventions and software experimentation? By examining a set of Bass music production source files, I suggest that Bass music producers seek to engage with listener’s attention, and more broadly, that EDM production is as much about sequencing sounds (organizing events on the grid) as it is about shaping rhythm through production decisions (designing spectral and dynamic properties of musical sounds).
Bio
Baptiste Bacot’s work explores the materiality, the creativity and the performance of electronic music. After earning a PhD in Music, History, Society from the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris, France), he conducted research at STMS Lab at (Ircam, Paris), and at the CRIStAL computer science Lab (University of Lille, France). He is now postdoctoral research fellow at RITMO, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion at the University of Oslo (Norway).