tape music

Tape music, a significant development in electronic music, emerged after World War II with the advent of magnetic tape recording. This technology allowed composers to record and manipulate sounds in unprecedented ways. They could superimpose sounds, alter their timbre, create loops for repetition, and splice tapes to rearrange or combine sound elements. Changing tape speed affected pitch and tempo, while playing tape backward reversed a sound's evolution.

Pioneers like Pierre Schaeffer in Paris developed musique concrète, using natural sounds as raw material. In contrast, a studio in Cologne focused on elektronische Musik, utilizing electronically generated sounds. Tape music offered composers precise control over their sonic material, leading to new forms of musical expression and raising questions about its relationship with live performance.12