THE QUEST OF A MUSICAL PHILOSOPHER'S STONE?

 

I am currently testing GRM Tools (better late than never...). After the IRCAM plugins, I am exploring the infinite transformations and hybridizations of my own recordings in unexpected and exciting directions.

I like the idea of working with sound material in a chain of processing and remodeling, which sculpts its form, volume, motor skills, temporality, and space.

 

These tools can be used with an in-depth knowledge of sound physics. 

 

I prefer to approach them more intuitively, a bit like a painter working with colors or a sculptor working with raw stone or wood.

 

That's how I compose my music.

 

But once the tracks are recorded and mixed, they become the starting point for new sound experiments.

 

Years of practicing with hardware, analog, modular, and digital synthesizers, then virtual instruments, as well as years of listening to classical, contemporary, and electronic music, have trained a bit my ear.

 

By experimenting with today's new tools as a tinkerer rather than an engineer, I hope one day to hear the unheard and perhaps find the musical philosopher's stone that every musician dreams of!

WHEN A GREAT CREATOR DIES...

 

"When a great creator dies, history—including his own history—holds its breath, looks around, and wonders what to do, as if waiting for new directives or new insights that might suddenly shine through the opaque shell of habit. History waits to gather and summarize the significant episodes of creative power; it waits for a new autopsy of the organs and expressive organism of the great creator. Or it waits for a lazy and unexpected silence to be broken.

 

When, moreover, the great creator who dies has recently crossed the border into a new territory rich in meaning, because it has been long and organically prepared, then we wonder, distraught, what else this man might have discovered and offered us if he had lived longer. (...)."

 

Luciano Berio (about Stravinsky)

 

This beautiful text reminds me of the musicians who have inspired me so much over the years, and whose creative work I would love to see continue forever....

 

To name but a few, I am thinking of Klaus Schulze, Hector Zazou, Harold Budd, Jon Hassell, Morton Feldman, John Cage and so many others who are gone ...

 

THE ARTIST'S TASK...

 

 

"The artist's task is not limited to finding solutions to existing problems, but rather—as the works prove—to constantly inventing new problems."

Luciano Berio — Electronic Music (in: Ecrits sur la Musique, Philharmonie de Paris, 2025, p. 284)

 

 

Reading Luciano Berio's writings on music is a fascinating experience... They are so insightful, both in their reflection on his work and in their more general theoretical propositions.... 

This definition of the musician's task is so relevant, both in terms of his creative process and its effects on listeners.

Yes, all creation, whether musical, pictorial, literary, or intellectual, is measured by the problems it creates, not those it solves...

To create is to think, using the tools of the intellect, the senses, the body, and the imagination...

 

MUSIC STREAMING

 

Luminate’s 2025 annual report highlights a paradox at the heart of the global music industry. While the volume of music available on streaming platforms has reached unprecedented levels, actual listening remains extremely concentrated.

By the end of 2025, 253 million tracks were available worldwide — an increase of nearly 38 million songs in one year, or 106,000 new uploads per day. At first glance, this growth suggests creativity and diversity, but the data tells a far less optimistic story.

Nearly half of all tracks (120.5 million) received fewer than ten streams in 2025. Overall, 73% of songs had fewer than 100 listens, and 88% failed to reach 1,000 streams annually. In practice, almost nine out of ten tracks have no real economic impact in the streaming ecosystem.

Listening is also highly concentrated. Just 0.2% of tracks accounted for almost half of all global streams, confirming that streaming strongly favors a tiny elite of songs and artists. While major record labels represent only a small share of releases, revenue remains heavily skewed toward a limited number of hits.

The report warns that this imbalance may worsen as AI-generated music accelerates the flood of new releases. As the number of tracks continues to grow faster than audience attention, the industry faces a critical question: can hundreds of millions of songs be fairly compensated when listening remains focused on a tiny minority?

Ultimately, the music market appears trapped in excessive growth, raising concerns not only about artist remuneration but also about the cultural value of music itself.

(summary of a post by Radio FG: link  )  

IRCAM LAB — TS 2

I'm starting to learn, play, experiment, and create soundscapes with IRCAM's TS software... The processing radically transforms my original audio track, creating a kind of very beautiful, immersive, minimalist drone that's very hypnotic and reminds me of Pauline Oliveiros, Stuart Dempster, Somei Satoh, and other composers... 

 It really is a window onto a new creative universe... It's probably not going to be a commercial hit, and it's unlikely to make it into the dance music or techno charts (but who knows? ), but it's definitely a direction I'd like to explore in the future... (I've acquired other IRCAM softwares, I'm at the beginning of the learning curve, it's exciting!).

[READING] BERIO ON THE IDEA OF MUSICAL THEATER

Opéra National de Paris. Pelléas et Mélisande – Elena Tsallagova (Mélisande), Stéphane Degout (Pelléas), Stage set up by Bob Wilson, 2012  © Charles duprat

 

"We are close to an idea of musical theater that is a theater of the mind and memory, perhaps a virtual theater, a theater that invites our attention to constantly oscillate between listening and looking and back again, a theater that constructively challenges those who watch and those who listen, that arouses the desire to listen with one's eyes and look with one's ears. Eyes that can listen to different things from the same perspective and ears that may see only one thing, but from different perspectives. In other words, we are thinking of a theater made intelligible not only by the things we see and hear, but also by the desire to penetrate, discover, and confuse the different times of sounds and images.

Seeing music. The need to seek a link between image and sound comes from far away, from an ancient synesthetic vision of the world. Exodus 20:18: “And all the people saw the thunder and lightning and the sound of the shofar.”

The link between light and sound, between light and speech, is common to almost all stories of origins, primordial events, myths, and world consciousness, and music often seems to become the most powerful intermediary between the eye and the ear, between the moving and extreme points of a space that must always be explored and questioned anew. A space that sometimes seems to lead us to the threshold of a mystery. A space that we also try, with the tools of theater, to explore and stubbornly secularize, but which, in fact, always contains an intangible and perhaps sacred core."

Luciano Berio, "Des sons et des images (1995)"
 

[RADIO] THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE ON HEARTS OF SPACE!

 

Many thanks to Stephen Hill and to Hearts of Space for including two tracks of "The Nortwhest Passage" in this week radio program! I feel very honored!

 

LINK

 

Link to my album: https://christianwittman.bandcamp.com/.../the-northwest... (HD tracks)

and all streaming and download platforms!