Shortwave Radio - Shortwave Broadcasts and Music

Shortwave Broadcasts and Music

Some musicians have been attracted to the unique aural characteristics of shortwave radio which—due to the nature of amplitude modulation, varying propagation conditions, and the presence of interference—generally has lower fidelity than local broadcasts (particularly via FM stations). Shortwave transmissions often have bursts of distortion, and "hollow" sounding loss of clarity at certain aural frequencies, altering the harmonics of natural sound and creating at times a strange "spacey" quality due to echoes and phase distortion. Evocations of shortwave reception distortions have been incorporated into rock and classical compositions, by means of delays or feedback loops, equalizers, or even playing shortwave radios as live instruments. Snippets of broadcasts have been mixed into electronic sound collages and live musical instruments, by means of analogue tape loops or digital samples. Sometimes the sounds of instruments and existing musical recordings are altered by remixing or equalizing, with various distortions added, to replicate the garbled effects of shortwave radio reception.

The first attempts by serious composers to incorporate radio effects into music may be those of the Russian physicist and musician Léon Theremin, who perfected a form of radio oscillator as a musical instrument in 1928 (regenerative circuits in radios of the time were prone to breaking into oscillation, adding various tonal harmonics to music and speech); and in the same year, the development of a French instrument called the Ondes Martenot by its inventor Maurice Martenot, a French cellist and former wireless telegrapher. A notable chamber piece by Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas—Ocho x radio, 1933—features a complex texture of pseudo-mariachi musics, overlapping and cross-fading as if heard from distant stations: quite similar to shortwave radio signal propagation disturbance. John Cage used actual radios (of unspecified wavelength) live on several occasions, starting in 1942 with Credo in Us, while Karlheinz Stockhausen used shortwave radio and effects in works including Hymnen (1966–67), Kurzwellen (1968)—adapted for the Beethoven Bicentennial in Opus 1970 with filtered and distorted snippets of Beethoven pieces—Spiral (1968), Pole, Expo (both 1969–70), and Michaelion (1997).

Holger Czukay, a student of Stockhausen, was one of the first to use shortwave in a rock music context. In 1975, German electronic music band Kraftwerk recorded a full length concept album around simulated radiowave and shortwave sounds, entitled Radio-Activity. Among others, The The whose Radio Cineola monthly broadcasts draw heavily on shortwave radio sound, The B-52s, Shearwater, Tom Robinson, Peter Gabriel, Pukka Orchestra, AMM, John Duncan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (on their Dazzle Ships album), Pat Metheny, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Rush, Able Tasmans, Team Sleep, Meat Beat Manifesto, Tim Hecker, Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, Roger Waters (on Radio KAOS album), Wilco, code 000 and Samuel Trim have also used or been inspired by shortwave broadcasts.