Exploring Pierre Schaeffer’s “Étude aux chemins de fer” (Week 3)

Pierre Schaeffer’s “Étude aux chemins de fer” is one of the first examples of a movement called musique concrète, created by manipulating recorded sounds, in this case, trains. This work broke away from traditional music by using industrial noises as raw material. Schaeffer used tape manipulation techniques like cutting, looping, and splicing in the creation of this piece.

What makes this work so interesting to me is how Schaeffer treats sound itself as music. The sound of train tracks and engine hums, things we usually dismiss as noise, are re-contextualised, becoming something abstract and expressive. This aligns with modernism’s push to find art in the everyday. It’s also interesting to me to think about how this work influenced modern electronic music and sound design, techniques Schaeffer pioneered are everywhere now, with some artists still using tape manipulation techniques like these to this day.

I like this piece because of how it turns ordinary sounds into something transformative, challenging how we define music. It’s experimental, raw, and industrial, which feels connected to how I like to approach sound design—breaking conventions and finding beauty in the unexpected.