" I bought a little tape recorder which I will always take with me now. It’s an overcast day, with rain looming on the horizon, and you’re in the Hudson Valley, up in the Catskills for the Summer, at a. "It's totally fun to lay down some ideas and try something you never did before," Gourski told me over email. One hundred years after his birth, John Cages ideas about the possibilities of music still inspire. (Kay Larson, Where The Heart Beats) Imagine yourself at the end of August in the year 1952. Known as ' amplified cactus,' this genre was pioneered by renowned American composer John Cage in the 70s, when he used cacti and other plant material to make the songs " Child of Tree" and " Branches" as part of broader experiments in aleatoric, or chance, music.Īt this point Gourski is unsure of whether he will continue to produce music using cacti, but says he is open to the idea. Thus Cactus Trap was born.Īlthough Gourski is likely the first to have used a cactus to make trap music, the use of succulents to produce music is a well-established genre. Years before the invention of the synthesizer, he was in the forefront in the exploration of electric and electronic sound sources, using oscillators, turntables, and. Trap music is defined by its use of 808s, artificially rendered deep bass kick drums, to propel its rhythms and according to Gourski, an 808-heavy bass track was the most fitting addition to the cactus sounds. Featured artists with Houston ties include Buxton, Hayes Carll, Rodney Crowell, John Egan, Robert Ellis, Craig Kinsey, Little Joe Washington, The Wild Moccasins. One of his best-known and most sonically intriguing innovations, the prepared piano, had become an almost commonplace compositional resource by the end of the twentieth century. However, the hallmark of the 20 th century is the many styles that were used. He didn't alter the pitch of the cactus sounds, but did equalize them and applied a compressor, an effects unit used in electronic music to reduce loud sounds or amplify quiet ones, thereby compressing the range of the audio.įrom there it was merely a matter of finding a bass rhythm that fit the cactus tones. Beyond 4’33, his Song Books, music that involved contact microphones on cactus, and kitchen furniture, that incorporated spoken text and stage action his work took us beyond the boundaries of how we perceive music. He produced 'Cactus Trap' using only the sounds produced from individual needles on the cactus and an underlying deep bass rhythm. The aleatory is realized on three levels. According to Gourski, after noticing the singular sound made from plucking individual cactus needles he began to formulate a melody around these sounds. Cage specifies amplified cactus and pea pod shakers as two of ten instruments that are to be chosen by the performer.
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