“Musique Concrète can often be misunderstood as simply referring to music made entirely of naturally occurring sounds, and not containing instrumental and human input” – Marc Henshall.

Initially, this is how I thought of music concrete, it took for me to read Marc Henshall’s Musique Concrète – Pioneering Electronic Music – Part1 to change my perspective. When first playing with the idea of music concrete, Pierre Schaeffer came to a quick realisation that using the sounds just as recorded, his compositions all had a sameness to them. He realised that manipulation was needed in order to create more interesting compositions, which he did by experimenting with the speeds of his recordings. He found, however, that just experimenting with the speed wasn’t enough to create something new; examining sounds on a micro-level, he found he could manipulate the attack and timbre of a sound, amongst other qualities.