Avant-Garde

Avant-Garde in music may refer to an extreme form of musical improvisation in which little or no regard is given by soloists to any underlying chord structure or rhythm, such as free jazz and some forms of noise music. It can also be used on any form of music working within traditional structures, while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner and be ahead of its time, i.e. containing innovative elements or fusing different genres.

Musique concrète (meaning concrete music in French) is a technique used sometimes in avant-garde music that starts from recorded acoustical sounds (which may be from traditional musical instruments or singing or speaking voices, as well as from natural environmental sounds and other non-inherently musical noises, or even electronically generated sounds) which are transformed in the recording studio to create musical structures.

Pieces that have used Musique concrète include "Étude aux chemins de fer" (1948) and "Variations sur une flûte mexicaine" (1949) by Pierre Schaeffer, "Revolution 9" by The Beatles (1968), "Lumpy Gravy" by Frank Zappa (1967), "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" by Jimi Hendrix and "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict" by Pink Floyd (1969). Influences of musical improvisation, free jazz and minimalism can be found on The Velvet Underground album "The Velvet Underground & Nico" (1967) and on Patti Smith's "Horses" (1975).

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Avant-garde".