Halim El-Dabh and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center
by Denise A. Seachrist

The idea that noise is a physical material that El-Dabh could sculpt or chisel to create a beautiful sound sculpture also was expressed in Meditation on White Noise (1959), for tape. It was as if he were meditating on a large noise which evolved into the interactions of people, the world, space, and the universe. It started with a noise element like a storm, a vacuum cleaner, or a heavy truck; so that sound could be sculpted. El-Dabh believed that everyone is affected by all these sounds. The noise element is part of life, and when one meditates on that white noise, one begins creating from it. So El-Dabh's meditation is on that noise which is physically harmful to the body. The meditation causes the noise to be recreated into something enhancing and healthy to the body. This may be likened to the pain of an arthritis sufferer which produces something negative. When one meditates on the pain and is capable of reducing it, it turns into a positive.

El-Dabh views his Meditation on White Noise as his own personal meditation. He likens the process to finding a huge piece of rock in the middle of the street and realizing that the rock could harm someone. Yet, that rock also has an image in it, and when an artist takes a chisel and cuts into the rock, a beautiful image is created. During this time, El-Dabh was surrounded by noise. He was thoroughly entranced by New York, and he enjoyed the sounds of the subways, the screeching sounds of the rails. He took the screeching and made it creative; it became enhancing. This is what El-Dabh was doing with the noise of the trucks, of the vacuum cleaners, of the airplanes, of the things that typically disturb, as for example, hearing the high frequencies of florescent lights, which affect one's health everyday. El-Dabh aspired to turn the harmful into something healthful and beautiful.

For his sound sources, El-Dabh used a noise maker, bells, and metal that he dragged along the floor. After he collected a sound, he filtered it, and added reverberation in a multi-tiered process. Each time he treated a sound, El-Dabh gathered it on a tape which was then hung on the wall as a particular generation. The magnetic tape, as a material which contains metal oxides, became a process itself, and sometimes he scraped the tape with razor blades to eliminate the oxides, which also contain sounds. Therefore, the elimination of the oxides created different formats, as well.

El-Dabh enjoyed his time at the studio and was enthralled with the work of Otto Luening, Vladamir Ussachevsky, and Edgard Varese. He spent wonderful moments conversing with Varese in French, and the two would often ride the subway to the electronic studio together. The studio provided a wonderfully creative environment in which to work, but one day El-Dabh, becoming obsessed with the realization that the human range of hearing is limited, was overwhelmed by a strange and disturbing thought. Although the sound frequencies are there, humans are not capable of perceiving them. The equipment has very sensitive capabilities, and usually if a composer creates a sound that clashes at the higher frequencies, it will automatically create a sound in the lower frequencies. Essentially, out of nowhere sounds will be produced. In other words, El-Dabh discovered that he could play with sounds that he could not hear, and as a result, suddenly new sounds would appear. While working with this process, he started contemplating all the sounds traveling throughout the universe and galaxies. He envisioned the interconnection with the sounds, and perceived that through this force the entire building was capable of flying into space. He ran to Luening and screamed, "Hey, if you don't watch it, I know this place is going to fly . . . the whole building is going to end up in space."

This experience of running to Luening with his fears prompted El-Dabh to conceive of the idea of elements and beings, of himself, the entire universe, and the primeval sound of things. He felt that this is what it must be like living in that kind of space, and as a result Elements, Beings and Primevals (1959), for tape, was composed entirely with electronic sounds at the Columbia/Princeton Electronic Music Center. El-Dabh persisted in asserting to Luening that this was an extremely serious matter, and that someone needed to be responsible to inform the government officials that the building could fly into space. El-Dabh declared that he would not be responsible if it did. Luening assured El-Dabh that he would notify someone in the government or the space program and suggested that the two go out for a whiskey sour and discuss the situation. That satisfactory answer appeased El-Dabh, who eventually became aware that Luening left him alone most of the time following this incident.