From two interviews recorded in January and May of 1965, and later broadcast on KPFA in August of that same year, Charles Shere talks to Philip Winsor about his 1961 work, “Sound Study I,” written at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and his “Sound Study II,” produced at the Milan Italian Radio Studio, which he completed about three years later. Together the two compositions try to sort the differences in achievement out of the similarities of means. Winsor mentions how the pieces were written for four channel tape and the first piece had originally been performed over as many as 30 speakers, and how in this radio broadcast much of the spacial qualities are lost. He also relates the challenges he had with the Italian engineer who assisted him in his creation, and who was more used to working with electronic music composers who came into the studio with a score to be realized using electronic instruments, rather than one who came in with prerecorded music and sounds that were then experimentally manipulated in the studio. At times inquisitive and at times perhaps slightly perplexed, Shere provides a perfect example of a classically trained composer trying to get his, and our, head around the process of composing electronic music. |
