Etiuda na... Komponuj z PWM app for iPhone and iPad

Étude for… is an educational music application which introduces the audience into the world of the 1950s Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, where Polish “music for tape” once originated. The first piece composed there using this pioneering technique was Étude concrète (Study for One Cymbal Stroke) by Włodzimierz Kotoński. The composer first recorded the sound of striking a Turkish cymbal with a percussion mallet. The recording was then multiplied and transformed in various ways, until a short music piece was created. The studio techniques that artists had at their disposal at that time were purely analogue: cutting and pasting of tape sections, playing the tape back at slower or faster tempi, playing it backwards, etc. We will attempt to compose our own Étude for…in a similar manner – first record a sound and then transform it, as at the Experimental Studio, putting together bits and pieces of our “tape” into one whole. But what sound can we record? Atishoo! The Study for One Sneeze still waits to be composed!