Musical montage (literally "putting together") is a technique where sound objects or compositions are created from collage. One example is Christian Marclay's playable sound collages produced by glueing together sectors of different vinyl records. In music a sound object (objet sonore: Pierre Schaeffer 1959, 1977, p. ... Musical composition is: an original piece of music the structure of a musical piece the process of creating a new piece of music // A musical composition A piece of music exists in the form of a written composition in musical notation or as a single acoustic event (a live performance... Collage (From the French, coller, to stick or glue) is the assemblage of different forms creating a new whole. ... Christian Marclay is a visual artist and musical composer based in New York, who is exploring the pattern languages connecting sound, photography, video, and film. ... Sound collage is the production of songs, musical compositions, or recordings using portions, or samples, of previously made recordings. ... Historically, glue only refers to protein colloids prepared from animal tissues, such as hide glue, bone glue, or fish glue. ... 33⅓ LP vinyl record album The vinyl record is a type of gramophone record, most popular from the 1950s to the 1990s, that was most commonly used for mass-produced recordings of music. ...

Micromontage is the use of montage on the time scale of microsounds, its primary proponent being composer Horacio Vaggione in works such as Octuor (1982), Thema (1985, Wergo 2026-2), and Schall (1995, Mnémosyne Musique Média LDC 278-1102). The technique may include the extraction and arrangement of sound particles from a sample or the creation and exact placement of each particle to create complex sound patterns or singular particles (transients). It may be accomplished through graphic editing, a script, or automated through a computer program. (Roads 2001, 182-187) A time scale specifies divisions of time. ... Microsound includes all sounds on the time scale shorter than musical notes, the sound object time scale, and longer than the sample time scale. ... Horacio Vaggione (born 1943 in Cordoba, Argentina) is an electro-acoustic and musique concrete composer who specializes in micromontage, granular synthesis, and thus microsound. ... Transient means passing with time. ...

Regardless, digital micromontage requires (ibid):

• creation or compilation of a library of sound files on several different time scales
• importation into the library of the editing and mixing program
• use of the cursor, script, or algorithm to position each sound at a specific time-point or time-points
• editing of the duration, amplitude, and spatial positions of all sounds (possibly done by a script or algorithm)

Granular synthesis incorporates many of the techniques of micromontage, though granular synthesis is inevitably automated and micromontage may be realized directly, point by point. "It therefore demands unusual patience," though it may be compared to a pointillistic paintings of Georges Seurat. (ibid) In music a time-point (point in time) is the beginning of a sound, rather than its duration. ... A duration is an amount of time or a particular time interval. ... Amplitude is a nonnegative scalar measure of a waves magnitude of oscillation. ... Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method for digital musical instruments (synthesizers) that operates on the microsound time scale. ... Detail from Seurats La Parade (1889), showing the contrasting dots of paint used in pointillism. ... Le Chahut was painted by Seurat from 1889 to 1890. ...

See also

• Granular synthesis
• Sampling

Digital Montage can now be executed live with I-Tunes, Windows Media Player or using specially designed software for sound editing, such Ableton Live, Steinberg Cubase, DigiDesign ProTools, et cetera... Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method for digital musical instruments (synthesizers) that operates on the microsound time scale. ... In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or element of a new recording. ...

Source

• Roads, Curtis (2001). Microsound. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0262182157.