Daniel Teruggi

The Technical Developments in INA GRM

and their Influences on Musical Composition

Abstract

Since 1948 the Groupe de Recherches Musicales has developed systems and machines to help composers in their research for new means of working with sound. This research has proved to be very rich, the GRM catalogue contains today more than 1300 works of original music. A short history of this adventure is sketched here with its principal technical achievements and their relations to musical composition.

Origins of GRM

The Groupe de Recherches Musicales begins as a project with the first musical experiences with recorded sounds used as musical elements made by Pierre Schaeffer in 1948 in the French Radio. The radio context was extremely useful for this new adventure since it provided an organized technical and communicational environment in which sound and sense experimentation were a part of everyday work.

The first developments in music technology began in the early fifties; the first studios of 'concrète' and electronic music, used either radio facilities or measurement equipment that were diverted from their original purpose. There existed technical teams that developed specialized machines: in the French radio were developed the now mythical phonogène à coulisse and the phonogène chromatique, that permitted sound transposition (continuously, or step by step), as well as sound fragmentation and sound prolongation (a kind of mechanical sampler).

In 1960, there appeared in the RTF (the French Radio and Television Office) a section called Le Service de la Recherche (the research department) whose aim was to develop technic and artistic products that would have a firmly experimental objective. This department produced original radio programs, films, equipment, and made theoretical research on creation and communication problems. The GRM (Music Research Group), that exists with this name since 1958, was a part of this department (department created and directed by Pierre Schaeffer) and a certain number of important technical developments were done during the sixties.

An important element in the Service de la Recherche, was the GRT (Technical Research Group), that developed for the GRM new phonogènes, the morphophone (a tape recorder with 10 mobile playing heads used for sound multiplication), and a modular analog synthesizer that was coupled with an experimental mixing desk (the two latter ones were in use in one of our production studios until 1991, and will be exhibited in the new Musical Museum at the Cité de la Villette, in 1994). Also the first prototype of a quadraphonic studio was done and a system for controlling circular