concrete music

As far as most of my research was concerned, a French fellow named Pierre Schaeffer pioneered the concrete music "movement".  Its public debut was in 1948 at a concert in Paris.  As a result of new technology full of possibilities, namely a tape recorder/player, though the very first concrete musicians used record players and mixing boards, people began experimenting with the ways they could use such technology to create something new.  Concrete music is not by any means restricted to the use of traditional instruments - many musicians would use common objects, like we saw in the video in class with bottles and a box of gravel.  Anything that made an interesting sound could be recorded and collaged back together with other sounds to create a song of sorts.  Some of them are more melodic than others, though it seems there is generally a pretty strong influence on some sort of rhythm, albeit an unconventional one.  Anyway, after he first played his music for the public, Schaeffer went on to form various groups focused on furthering this musical experimentation.  The longest-lasting group was called Groupe de Recherches Musicales; as far as I found, the group still exists.  Using record players, recorders, mixing boards, and microphones, these musicians experimented and refined the budding musical concept.  When magnetic tape came out, I believe in 1949, it created many new possibilities for concrete musicians.  Essentially, concrete music was the analog precursor to electronic music.  Then, musicians would have to create all of their own sounds and recordings, and today, with so many complex computer programs, musicians can search databases to find the sounds or instruments they want.