''Williams Mix'' (1951–1953) is a 4'15"

musique concrete Musique is the French word for music. Musique may also refer to: Music *Musique (disco band), a 1970s studio band produced by Patrick Adams *Musique, a British dance act consisting of Moussa Clarke and Nick Hanson best known for their 2001 song ...

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

by John Cage for eight simultaneously played independent quarter-inch magnetic tapes. The first octophonic music, the piece was created by Cage with the assistance of

Earle Brown Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since� ...

Morton Feldman Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School ...

, and

David Tudor David Eugene Tudor (January 20, 1926 – August 13, 1996) was an American pianist and composer of experimental music. Life and career Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan W ...

, using many tape sound sources and a paper score he created for the construction. "Presignifying the development of

algorithmic composition Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music. Algorithms (or, at the very least, formal sets of rules) have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in Western counterpo ...

granular synthesis Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale. It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are split into small pieces of around 1 to 100 ms in duration. These small pieces ar ...

and sound diffusion," it was the third of five pieces completed in the ''Project for Music for Magnetic Tape'' (1951–1954), funded by dedicatee architect Paul Williams Jr.Hall, Patricia and Sallis, Friedemann (2004). ''A Handbook to Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches'', p. 189. . The material, recorded by

Louis and Bebe Barron Bebe Barron ( – ) and Louis Barron ( – ) were two American pioneers in the field of electronic music. They are credited with writing the first electronic music for magnetic tape composed in the United States, and the first entirely ele ...

, was organized in six categories: city, country, electronic, manually produced, wind, and "small" sounds; "subjected...to '' I Ching'' manipulations, producing constant jumps from one sound to another or buzzing, scrambled textures of up to sixteen simultaneous layers." The 193-page score, "a full-size drawing of the tape fragments, which served as a 'score' for the splicing," is described by Cage as similar to "a dressmaker's

pattern A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated li ...

– it literally shows where the tape shall be

cut Cut may refer to: Common uses * The act of cutting, the separation of an object into two through acutely-directed force ** A type of wound ** Cut (archaeology), a hole dug in the past ** Cut (clothing), the style or shape of a garment ** Cut (ea ...

, and you lay the tape on the score itself." Thus, like a recipe, the piece may be recreated using different tapes and the score. The work was premiered at the 25th Year Retrospective Concert Of The Music Of John Cage on May 15, 1958, and was recorded by Columbia Records producer George Avakian and issued by him on a three-LP set with a booklet including extensive notes and illustrations of scores. Larry Austin later created a computer program, the "Williams (re)Mix(er)", based on an analysis of ""Williams Mix"", which could "yield ever-new Williams Mix scores." With this software, Austin created ''Williams (re)Mix d' (1997–2000), an octophonic variation of ''Williams Mix'' using different sound sources. In 2012,

Tom Erbe Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name) Characters * Tom Anderson, a character in '' Beavis and Butt-Head'' * Tom Beck, a character ...

became the first person to recreate "Williams Mix" from the original score, entering each tape edit from the 193 page score into the computer, and creating performance software carefully following Cage's notes. Erbe's debut performance of "Williams Mix" was on Cage's 100th birthday, September 5, 2012, at Fresh Sound in San Diego. Bobby Bray
"Random Music Box", San Diego Reader, April 29, 2012
. Erbe also created a version of "Williams Mix" for clipping.'s 2014 album '' CLPPNG'', using clipping. samples to re-record the work according to the original instructions.

Discography

* John Cage (1994). ''The 25 Year Retrospective Concert of the Music of John Cage''. Wergo

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* (2000/2005). ''OHM: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music''. Ellipsis Arts

690 __NOTOC__ Year 690 ( DCXC) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 690 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era ...

* Larry Austin (2001).
Octo-Mixes, Larry Austin, Octophonic Computer Music, 1996–2001
'. EMF CD 039. * John Cage (2010). ''Fontana Mix''. Él. * Clipping. (2014). Last track on '' CLPPNG''. Subpop SP1071.

Discography

References

Further reading