This article reflects on a number of issues surrounding the appropriation of culturally identifiable sound material for artistic purposes – both overall or broader concerns and those that may arise particularly in conjunction with electroacoustic musical composition. More specifically, we explore questions potentially raised by three electroacoustic compositions recently commissioned by the Instruments INDIA project, a unique cultural partnership between Liverpool Hope University (represented by Dr Manuella Blackburn) and Milapfest (represented by Alok Nayak). Those three compositions were created exclusively with materials from an extensive library of Indian music performances, curated and recorded by Blackburn specifically for Instruments INDIA, and premiered in concert in Liverpool, UK, 20 January 2017. Following the broader discussion of relevant concerns, we briefly review some perspectives offered by the three composers (one of whom is the author), as they relate to cultural appropriation in general, and working with the Instruments INDIA sound library in particular.

In this article, based on four decades of experience of using samples in diverse ways in experimental, particularly electroacoustic compositions, the author investigates the world of what he calls ‘sample-based sound-based music’ and suggests that there is a relative lack of scholarship in this important area. The article’s contextual sections focus on briefly delineating this world of sonic creativity and placing it within today’s sampling culture as well as dealing with two political aspects of sampling, a musician’s attitude towards the reuse of sonic materials and the legality of sampled sounds, including musical passages, in the discussion of which current legislation related to sampling is challenged. Following this, a number of categories are presented in terms of the types of sampling material that is being used as well as how sample-based works are presented. The subsequent section is perhaps the most poignant in the article, namely the opening up of this form of innovative composition from a more traditional ‘artist creates work’ mode of operation to a more collaborative one which is essentially already part of most other forms of sampling culture. The objective here is to suggest that such collaborative approaches will enable sample-based sound-based music to become part of the lives of a much broader group than those currently involved with it.

This article specifically addresses electroacoustic music compositions that borrow from existing musical and sound resources. Investigating works that borrow and thrive upon existing sound sources presents an array of issues regarding terminology, authorship and creativity. Embedding borrowed elements into new electroacoustic music goes beyond the simplicity of ‘cut and paste’ as composers approach this practice with new and novel techniques. Musical borrowings have been widely studied in fields of popular and classical music, from cover songs to quotations and from pastiches to theme and variations; however, borrowings that take place within the field of electroacoustic music can be less clear or defined, and demand a closer look. Because the components and building blocks of electroacoustic music are often recorded sound, the categories of borrowing become vast; thus incidences of borrowing, in some shape or form, can appear inevitable or unavoidable when composing. The author takes on this issue and proposes a new framework for categorising borrowings as a helpful aid for others looking to sample in new compositional work, as well as for further musicological study. The article will consider the compositional process of integration and reworking of borrowed material, using a repertoire study to showcase the variety of techniques in play when sound materials change hands, composer to composer. Terminology already in use by others to describe sound borrowing in electroacoustic music will be investigated in an effort to show the multitude of considerations and components in action when borrowing takes place. Motivations for borrowing, borrowing types, borrowing durations, copying as imitation, and composers’ reflections upon borrowing will all be considered within the article, along with discussions on programmatic development and embedding techniques. At the heart of this article, the author aims to show how widespread and pervasive borrowing is within the electroacoustic repertoire by drawing attention to varieties of sound transplants, all considered as acts of borrowing.

Reproduction (playback) is responsible for the presentation of the full spectrum of sound character captured during the recording process. The control of this and the faithfulness to an original sound has informed modern sound aesthetics. Current modes of reproduction, such as streaming, see the listener more interested in an approximate presentation of sound, rather than a broad and more psychoacoustically pleasing one. In the sonic arts, the practice of sound recycling and its associated methodologies, reproduction is re-contextualised, involving material that is borrowed, reworked and often disconnected from its source. Such issues are considered in this article through the examination of sound recycling in 94 diskont (1995), an album produced by the German act Oval. By studying the use of material and medium in the work, an attempt is made to discuss approaches to sound recycling through conceptual frameworks proposed by Bregman, Deleuze, Guattari and Smalley to provide a forum towards the interpretation of sound recycling in wider sonic arts practices.

The medium and genre of the mixtape, a form dependent upon borrowed, repurposed and re-contextualised sonic material, has recently re-emerged as a vital component of contemporary commercial and creative music culture. This article suggests that analysis of the mixtape’s history and ethos can provide useful insight into ongoing tensions between cultures of active and passive listening, questions of ownership with regard to recorded sound and between the roles of producer and consumer within contemporary audio culture. It also proposes, via reference to relevant contemporary works, that the mixtape may now be considered a vital hybrid creative form, part composition/part compilation, with which composers, producers and sonic artists may actively engage. It historically and culturally contextualises this form, placing it within a lineage of military, political, creative and commercial conflict, which, among recorded sound technologies, is unique to tape and shows that the mixtape may be seen as an expression or utilisation of these factors. Consistent commercial and industrial efforts to suppress tape’s subversive qualities are outlined as are creative methodologies which have been adopted to resist such efforts. Contemporary music industry strategies to channel and commodify the aura and ethos of the mixtape as forerunner of the curated playlists vital to its current business model are detailed and contemporary cassette culture is considered as an alternative inheritor of the mixtape’s legacy and as alternative model for future musical creation and distribution. Finally, a set of characteristics which distinguish the mixtape as a creative form are identified and their potential application and implications are discussed.

In discourse on the topic, the question of what constitutes a musical ‘borrowing’, if raised at all, is usually restricted in scope and framed as one of terminology – that is, of determining the right term to characterise a particular borrowing act. In this way has arisen a welter of terms that, however expressive of nuance, have precluded evaluation of the phenomenon as such. This is in part a consequence of general disregard for the fact that to conceive of musical borrowing entails correlative concepts, all of which precondition it, yet none self-evidently. Further preclusive of clarity, the musico-analytic lens of borrowing is typically invoked only in counterpoint to a quintessentially Western aesthetic category of composition ex nihilo. As a consequence, the fundamental role played by borrowing in musical domains situated at the periphery of the Western art music tradition, specifically pre-modern polyphony and twentieth-century musique concrète, has been overlooked. This article seeks to bridge such lacunae in our understanding of musical borrowing via phenomenological investigation into its conceptual and historical foundations. A more comprehensive evaluation of musical borrowing, one capable of accounting for its diverse instantiations while simultaneously disclosing what makes all of them ‘borrowings’ in the first place, is thereby attainable.

Sonification presents some challenges in communicating information, particularly because of the large difference between possible data to sound mappings and cognitively valid mappings. It is an information transmission process which can be described through the Shannon-Weaver Theory of Mathematical Communication. Musical borrowing is proposed as a method in sonification which can aid the information transmission process as the composer’s and listener’s shared musical knowledge is used. This article describes the compositional process of Wasgiischwashäsch (2017) which uses Rossini’s William Tell Overture (1829) to sonify datasets relating to climate change in Switzerland. It concludes that the familiarity of audiences with the original piece, and the humorous effect produced by the distortion of a well-known piece, contribute to a more effective transmission process.

This article begins with an outline of the Manovich general definition of borrowing followed by an introduction to the theme of borrowing in music, particularly within the context of acousmatic music. Two scenarios proposed by Navas in his taxonomy of borrowing are used to further the discussion in relation to material sampling and cultural citation. With reference to material sampling, some examples of remix, appropriation and quoting/sampling taking place within acousmatic music are highlighted. With regards to cultural citation, two levels of reference will be considered: cultural citation from sound arts, that is, intertextuality, and cultural citation from other media, that is, intermediality. The article closes with some reflections a posteriori about my own composition, Variation of Evan Parker’s Saxophone Solos, and how this relates to wider notions of musical borrowing.

Analysing electroacoustic music is a challenging task that can be approached by different strategies. In the last few decades, newly emerging computer environments have enabled analysts to examine the sound spectrum content in greater detail. This has resulted in new graphical representation of features extracted from audio recordings. In this article, we propose the use of representations from complex dynamical systems such as phase space graphics in musical analysis to reveal emergent timbre features in granular technique-based acousmatic music. It is known that granular techniques applied to musical composition generate considerable sound flux, regardless of the adopted procedures and available technological equipment. We investigate points of convergence between different aesthetics of the so-called Granular Paradigm in electroacoustic music, and consider compositions employing different methods and techniques. We analyse three works: Concret PH (1958) by Iannis Xenakis, Riverrun (1986) by Barry Truax, and Schall (1996) by Horacio Vaggione. In our analytical methodology, we apply such concepts as volume and emergence, as well as their graphical representation to the pieces. In conclusion we compare our results and discuss how they relate to the three composers’ specific procedures creating sound flux as well as to their compositional epistemologies and ontologies.

This article proposes a conception of sound as the material of artistic experimentation. It centres on a discussion of the nature of sound’s ontological status and aims to contribute to a new understanding of the role of materiality in artistic practices. A central point of discussion is Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of the sound object, which is critically examined. The phenomenological perspective that underlies the concept of the sound object depicts sound as an ideal unity constituted by a subject’s intentionality. Thus, it can barely grasp the physicality of sounds and their production or their reality beyond individual perception. This article aims to challenge the notion of the sound object as a purely perceptual phenomenon while trying to rethink experimentation as a practical form of thought that takes place through interacting with sonorous material. Against the background of recent object-oriented and materialist philosophical theories and by drawing on the Heideggerian concept of the thing and Gilbert Simondon’s theories of perception and individuation, this article strives to outline a conception of sound as a non-symbolic otherness. The proposed idea of thingness revolves around a morphogenetic conception of the becoming of sonorous forms that links their perception to their physicality.