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The tenth generation of the recording automatically plays when viewing this page, but you can pause it and play the earlier generations below:
Generation 1
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Susan Broyles Soundscapes, Spring 2008 project one On the first page of his 2003 book Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City, Paul Morley writes, ÒAt the moment I think my two favorite pieces of music are I am sitting in a room by Alvin Lucier and ÔCanÕt Get You Out of My HeadÕ by Kylie Minogue.Ó (1) MorleyÕs book, a sort of music memoir / surreal prose poem / conglomeration of lists / proto-poptimist manifesto, uses the relationship between the Lucier piece and Kylie MinogueÕs comeback pop hit as its starting point, with Minogue and Lucier (as well as John Cage, the author himself, and others) acting as characters. Morley explores the obvious differences between the pieces, but his discussion brings the two pieces closer together than one might imagine, championing the significance of pop songs while calling ambient music Òintellectual easy-listeningÓ (with the utmost respect for easy listening, which he likens to SatieÕs idea of ÒFurniture MusicÓ) (2). MorleyÕs discussion of these two pieces gave me the idea for my first project, CanÕt Get You Out of My Room. Basically, I subjected ÒCanÕt Get You Out of My HeadÓ to the I am sitting in a room treatment. I had some help from my friend Aaron Russell, whose living room was the site of the recording and whose equipment we used. We placed a Nady SCM 1000 microphone, using its omnidirectional mode, about four feet from his stereo (a JVC hooked up to JBL 2600 speakers), then hooked the microphone up to an interface (a MOTU 828) and the interface into his computer (a Macbook running Logic Pro 8). We started by playing an mp4 of the song on his iPod, which was hooked up to the stereo. The first track of the recording is the result of playing this mp4 and recording the sound of it playing in AaronÕs living room. Next we played this first track and recorded the sound of it playing, and so on, for ten generations. We had assumed it would take a long time for the song to deteriorate and hunkered down with beer and pretzels expecting a lengthy undertaking. But by the third generation, Kylie MinogueÕs voice was already difficult to make out. By the tenth generation, it seemed as though the process had stopped having any appreciable effect on the song any longer, and we stopped recording. ItÕs interesting that in Alvin LucierÕs spoken words in I am sitting in a room, which comprise both the source material and an introduction to the piece, he said that the process would make his speech completely unrecognizable Òwith perhaps the exception of rhythm.Ó It is rhythm that dominates ÒCanÕt Get You Out of My Head,Ó and perhaps this is the reason that subjecting the song to this process results in something rather dull. Although Morley writes that in the early 2000s, Òsounds stripped down in number-one songs, sounds creeping around the back of pop hits, were more experimental than rock bands lifting ballads out of a world where Elton John duetted with Radiohead,Ó (3) when the monotonous bass note that creeps around behind ÒCanÕt Get You Out of My HeadÓ (I think it's an A) comes to the forefront, itÕs not particularly exciting. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experiment, and raises a number of questions about current debates on discourses of artistic validity, the role of technology in music production, the harmonic structure of the contemporary pop song, etc. (1) p.1 (2) p. 52-3 (3) p.49
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