***spiel alert***
reverb and echo are such important sonic markers in recorded music because they signal clearly the understanding/concept that the recording is a manifestation of something that EXISTS as a STRUCTURAL SPACE. that's to say that it EXISTS rather than DESCRIBES.
it goes back again to my favourite john chowning quote (sorry to repeat it):
“Some of the music involved loudspeakers. Hearing what some of these composers were doing was life-changing — Karlheinz Stockhausen had a four-channel electronic piece involving [pre-recorded] boys’ voices. The spatial aspects caught my attention: that one could create, with loudspeakers, the illusion of a space that was not the real space in which we were listening.” John Chowning hearing Stockhausen in Paris at Le Domaine Musicale
chowning could hear that
Gesang Der Junglinge made manifest a previously impossible-to-describe space. but really ANY recording of sound has this quality - however we have, in our "civilised" manner, got used to fudging the fact intellectually.
again - ALL recorded music has this quality - but we are accustomed to SUSPENDING DISBELIEF that this is true (which is ironic because SUSPENDING DISBELIEF is usually tooled the other way around - we are supposed to SUSPEND DISBELIEF when something which is FAKE is presented as REAL)
but reverb and echo in musical recordings - make it much harder to SUSPEND DISBELIEF - and therefore they reveal the fundamental psychic and emanationist quality of music.
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