Testing final exams

Hello

if you are reading this and have not tested your final you either need to be here before 5 pm today to test your final presentation or by 1pm on thursday to test for the 3-5 pm show.

No exceptions.

pp

A few words about HipHop Theatre

I had the opportunity to watch some of the live stream of HipHop Theatre hosted by the Digital Worlds Institute a few weeks ago. I wanted to quickly give you impression of the show, since I have never really seen anything similar.

The audio and video effects synchronization behind the whole act simply blew me away, given the fast paced environment with which they had to keep up. The video effects were very well crafted to reflect the proper mood throughout the presentation. The overall theme of the event was quite interesting and I thought that the short skits brought out the multitude of abilities in all the actors, while keeping the crowd entertained. Since I was viewing the event live on ustream, camera control was really important, so that the viewer would see and possibly feel like he was part of the audience. This part of the presentation was also very well executed but sometimes the audio volume created distortions when the actors spoke, hindering some of the experience.

Overall I enjoyed the HipHop Theatre and hope that the Digital Worlds Institute continues to fuse the latest technologies in order to tell compelling stories.

class today

is in the NAVE
we have administrivia to take care of please attend even if you are working on your project.

pp

Final Project

The plan is to use a video similar to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGE6GYiNENA and create an eerie atmosphere with ghost voices, heartbeats, screams and really anything that fits the theme.

Final Project

For my midterm I added sound to a silent film, "Development of a Salamander", that I downloaded from the Prelinger Archives. For my final project I will be mixing my sounds in 5.1 using Pro Tools.

Alvin Lucier - I am sitting in a room

Given the nature of this repetitive and monotonous listening exercise, I would say that it mostly tested your patience more than anything else. As Lucier’s voice becomes more garbled and disperses into the atmosphere of the room one has to appreciate the tedious fine-tuning that was required to bring this piece to fruition. After the 14^th minute any sign of intelligible speech is lost and after the 17^th minute Lucier’s voice is reminiscent to that of a robot. It sounds very industrial and metallic in nature and after the 34^th minute it morphs into something closely resembling chiming bells.   

NES Dark SIde of the moon

Brian Eno Video

Brian Eno brings in a surprisingly fresh and philosophical outlook towards music. In his quest to create a more desirable reality he has embraced a simple idea, but one with profound consequences: “simple systems can produce complex results.” By stripping the complexity and involving a random yet modular approach to creating music Eno produces works of art which dazzle their audience with their brilliant simplicity. One doesn’t need to take the classical or hierarchical approach to making music and let all flow of information propagate downwards. New age artists can mashup different technologies to create a completely different musical experience.

There is too much copying between artists nowadays as they race for top spots on the Billboard charts. Creativity is hindered by greed and the business/marketing aspect of music has corrupted the core behind what musicians stand for. Eno argues that things have simply evolved with the digital age and the current generation cannot savor music like previous generations because digital technology has saturated their ability to fully enjoy it. All the latest tracks are available to us via many mediums so what becomes essential is to capture the musical experience by having festivals and virally spreading it across social networks.

THX sound

Everyone please check this out

http://www.batuhanbozkurt.com/instruction/recreating-the-thx-deep-note

Class on Thursday

Will be held at the REVE and i will demo 5.1 and surround mixing which will make up a large portion of your final projects so please try to attend.
We had class in the REVE the first day as i recall. so let me know if you need directions.

We will cover multi-channel input and output thoroughly
bring sound files [MONO] aif and .wavs to test your own ideas

pp

Brakhage, Matmos, Autechre, Miller, and a Remix

For the listening assignment, I listened to "The Civil War" and the remix of Bjork's "Triumph of the Heart" by Matmos, as well as "Wissensee" by Autechre. It was interesting to me that the visuals paired with the work related to images from Art History: an Escher-inspired animation for "Wissensee," and a woman in pearls for the Bjork piece who is reminiscent of a Klimt painting. I also viewed several of the films of Stan Brakhage's, including "Mothlight"and "Water for Maya," which were like beautiful layers of abstract paintings seen in rapid succession. All this reflects Paul Miller/DJ Spooky's talk about the interrelationship of art forms, and how those participating in digital culture mine all of cultural history for elements of newly crafted work. As an illustration of this theme, below is my favorite remix using the movie "Hook," deftly edited into a soundtrack and video.

Dylan @ Whitehouse reaction

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1935-the-gift-of-the-revenant-passing-on-the-truth-in-an-act-of-mourning.html

Brian Eno: A Tuesday in 1987

After viewing the BBC interview with Brian Eno, I was struck by his willingness to try something that he may not be good at- what could be called Play. As he states, we are told by our culture that we must pay attention to ourselves and that we must take control. By giving up this need for total control, to surrender, we give ourselves permission to enjoy doing things like singing that we might not be good at. We can hunt for fossils without being paleontologists, we can sing in the choir, we make drawings for pleasure without the thought of producing a show piece. I think this lifting of our own urge to self-criticize frees us up to explore, though I can relate to other posts, which refer to having perfectionist tendencies. I think that the automatons shown in this piece are incredibly evocative, juxtaposed as they are with Eno’s creativity, like making maps of the events of his daily life. Whenever I'm feeling stuck in a rut, I’ll have to try that to remind myself that I'm getting somewhere even if I don't yet know what that "where" is.

Installation HOW TO:

OKay our midterm is evolving into an HOW TO set up an installation piece in an art space. As i suggested, prepare your audio for Tuesday.
We will MEET in the Fine Arts Gallery. We will setup our soudn system and check it. I will also be setting up projectors and such for the video portions of the shows. I will curate and play them.

Because of the variable times, I do not demand that you be present at these shows except for during class times.

Audio class deliver me your midterm .WAV for inclusion, try to come by tuesday if you can and you are excused from Thursday's meeting.


IRS CLASS we will spend tuesday setting up the gallery for a multi-projection environment.

Get more out of those midis!

I found a midi that had different instruments/channels when I played it in my media player; however, when I brought it into live, I only had one track to play with.

Turns out that these midis are "format 0" and they need to be "format 1".

"A Format 0 file contains a single track and represents a single song performance. Format 1 may contain any number of tracks, enabling preservation of the sequencer track structure, and also represents a single song performance." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_Instrument_Digital_Interface

It is quite easy to to convert from one format to another. I used the 5 day demo of "gnmidfmten" - http://www.gnmidi.com/gnmidfmten.htm

It converted the file from 0 to 1 (thus converting the channels to tracks) and now I have multiple tracks in live.

you shoot an arrow then you paint a bullseye round it

Another Green World - Brian Eno

One of the first things Eno discusses is singing in church. That's awesome in it's egalitarian power. I am not a singer. Actually, I think I am tone deaf. Still, I really enjoy singing - I think most people do. Catholicism as an influence was also interesting because though I am non-practicing, I also come from a Catholic family. Another idea I like is his thought on creating places where nobody has been before through music. I think the idea of "transcendence" is often hard to articulate and Eno does a great job of explaining it.

In his current incarnation, Brian Eno reminds me a lot of architect Frank Gehry. They refer to him as a "guru", and I think that is a term that is often overused. But I can see that this is an appropriate term for Eno. I also liked how much he loves pop music. He isn't above working with people who do more mainstream things.

This documentary had a wonderful collection of writers and journalists interviewing Eno. I was surprised to see the journalist Malcolm Gladwell. I am a big fan. He wrote one of my favorite books, Outliers: Stories of Success. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. I also I really liked hearing him talk about Music for Airports with Richard Dawkins.

I have a problem with a lot of music that accompanies most visual art shows. I feel like often having a live band overshadows say, a collection of paintings. And I think that just setting a playlist of pop songs is not always desirable, especially if you have say sensitive or controversial content. Plus, I like their to be discussion about the artwork. People have to feel like they aren't interrupting another kind of performance. I think this idea of ambient music is the solution to my problem. I would like to compose some music for a body of my artwork.

Questions:
Where does Eno live now?
His studio is amazing!
What program is Eno using to compose his music?
When he was in art school, what did he study?
Has Eno ever taught courses before?

Brian Eno Documentary

I just finished watching the Brian Eno Video. A lot of what he said about going outside of the box, for example having a drum solo played by someone who never learned drums, really resonated with me. My problem is, in addition to the fact that I've never learned to play an instrument, that I'm a perfectionist in my creative outlets. I rarely take creative license. I want things to be symmetrical and or at least have symmetry to the asymmetry. A great example is the project I'm working on for both the Seminar and this class about the comfort women. I'm using Isadora to create a visual / sound scape highlighting the atrocities in WWII. I set out to make this a creative exploration and yet I find myself spending hours on the most minute of details rather than letting it evolve in to its own piece. Micro-managing really stunts the creative process.

Another thing I enjoyed about Eno was the brief discussion about his light installations on the Opera House in Sydney. I really enjoy the environment created with light and sound installations. It reminds of two such installations I have seen. The first was on the show the L-Word, a Showtime series about the lives of lesbians. In the video, Marlee Matlin (Tony and Academy Award winning Actress) is revealing her light/sound installation after having been betrayed by her girlfriend, Jennifer Beals (from Flashdance). I love how the audio, at first, is indistinct and slowly changes into recognizable speech.

Another installation I enjoyed was the light show that happened every night on the hour in Seoul. The Namsan Tower, which is similar to the space needle, had different images and videos projected onto its torso. There was also a laser show at the base of the tower. One thing that would have made the show more dynamic is if it was motion sensor activated, although that created a logistical problem considering the mass quantities of people that are there at any given time.

No Class Thursday

Please work on projects for the March 3/4 event.

I wil post more details Friday

Also watch the ENo Doc i posted and comment for credit

ENO Documentary

PLease view and blog on

thanks

http://vimeo.com/9091096

Six Marimbas, In C, and Sound Unbound

Six Marimbas by Steve Reich

Six Marimbas is quite relaxing and simple in structure. However its drawn out nature and the lack of progression leaves the listener wanting more at the end. It seems that a big part of Steve Reich’s piece is looped. The sound evolution throughout the piece is subtle enough to make you think that you are always hearing the same melody. However, there are few progressions which build up the song and upon reaching a climax the song returns to the original melody.

In C by Terry Riley

In C starts off as a more dynamic piece and it evolves much quicker than Six Marimbas. I am not sure why the metronome effect was used throughout the whole song but it definitely creates a distraction for the listener. The builds up are much quicker and they create an edgier feeling. Towards the middle of the piece a few sounds are introduced which create a cacophonous environment that greatly impact the listening pleasure. Overall I would say that In C is more innovative than Six Marimbas and ultimately made my listening experience much better.

Sound Unbound

Cika-Laka/Cool Noises/Bbb by Shukar, RadioMentale, Raoul Hausmann

Cika-Laka combines vocal elements that for me create a flashback into my childhood memories. The piece resides in a paradoxical environment since it begins with a very formal speech and then burst into silly sounds, eliminating any pre-conceptions of seriousness. Some of the sampled voices have meaning in my home country and this adds extra depth to the relevance of Cika-Laka. The main melody closely resembles a Disney cartoon but the way it is sampled suggests that is done just so that it can be mocked throughout the whole track.

Possible Show titles

Hey I searched and hadn't seen this thread started yet. We need to brainstorm a title for our show on march 3rd and 4th. Pat suggested plunder-phonics. That could work, I also think just "plunder" could be cool. Here's a brainstorm list i just made up with some other suggestions:

Yeti
UF A/V club
Spaceman takeaway
Audio outlet
Audio Design Group Show (boring)
Circuit city
present collections: an audio and visual menagerie
Sight/Sound

I like the second title and the last two the most.

Please everybody add your own suggestions and comment on which names you do and don't like. For the sake of organization everybody please use the comment function and do not start new posts.

Listening assignment 1- I-Hsin,Yeh

The first one “ River Run” remind me the sound of river, slowly and become quickly, and it makes me feel peaceful although I don’t quite understand what the composer tries to express here. And then the sound of monks slowly and regular and indeed touching, it reminds me a little bit about the temple in Taiwan. The second one “Solar Ellipse” sounds mysterious and makes me feel like the one in science movies. I enjoy listening to both of them

Listening Assignment

In C by Terry Riley

The power of these few sounds and few rhythms is surprising. The music reminds me of something that is spiraling out of control (almost Alice in Wonderland like). The repetitious beat feels like a clocking ticking in many ways. I sense the time passing. The song definitely makes me feel uneasy and tense. It certainly could pass for a dramatic scene where someone is running anyway from something.

Six Marimbas by Steve Reich

This is probably the most pleasant piece that we have listened to for this class. The six instruments really fill the sound. I can hear some of the marimbas playing a higher melody while the others play a lower melody. The wooden sound certainly brings a image of nature to mind (forests, streams, tribal living). The flow and intensity of the piece suggests moving or traveling. It brings about the idea of traveling through a tropical rainforest. It is certainly stimulating.

Listening Assignment: Subotnick, Reich, Reily

For this week’s assignment, I familiarized myself with three pieces. The first was Steve Reich’s “Six Marimbas” (1986), performed at the University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center for the Arts in 2008. The video of the performance appeared in two parts on YouTube, and being able to watch the musicians on stage made for a more interesting experience. The instruments were paired back-to-back, and viewed from the end, created a visual puzzle. The six marimbas were played by musicians striking notes in unison for the most part, with one leading the melody for a time, and passing the melodic thread on to another. Not being a fan of minimalist music, I was surprised to find the sounds to have a softness, the mellowness of wood, with a vaguely Latin beat. There was enough melody and structure to be pleasing, and a planned monotony that reminded me of the whimsical clockworks in a medieval European village, I thought perhaps work for an animation soundtrack.

The second piece was Terry Riley's “In C” from a 2006 performance of 124 musicians. Hitting a constant 8^th note in C, it had a steady four count beat with an intermittent sound like a horn. The impression this piece left me with was of abstracted traffic noise as heard from the window of a high rise in New York City. After listening for a while, there was a warbling effect. Not being a musician, I’m not sure what this would be called.

The third piece was Morton Subotnick’s work in the remix "Mandolin/Acid Bassline" from Sound Unbound. This work contained ethnic music, possibly Middle Eastern, and German spoken word passages, and well as phrases about Death. I thought it seemed to be a reflection a mental landscape, of the ebb and flow of Consciousness, and what is sometimes called the “monkey mind” by Buddhists, a restlessness which is difficult to tame. Even though I can appreciate these explorations, much like aural paintings, in researching Subotnick, I came across the work of his son Steven. He is an animator who sometimes works on projects with his father. I can imagine that his character Hairyman might be a being who hears those kind of voices in his head. Just a thought. Guess I was right about the animation soundtrack idea...

Clapping Music by Steve Reich

Clapping Music by Steve Reich is good to watch for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhhIZscEE_g

Six Marimbas - Steve Reich

I should preface this by saying I've heard Reich before and I really liked him. His compositions are exciting to me. I think "Nagoya Marimbas" is my personal favorite.

This piece immediately made me think of Minimalism in terms of visual art. While, I'm not a Minimalist artist myself, I really respond to Minimalism because it is so experiential. A lot of the time something like a Minimalist sculpture is criticized by mainstream viewers as being "cold" or inaccessible. I think that this is mostly because people can't or won't actually go and see these works in person. Also I think people don't necessarily want to do any mental work to view art. The "I don't get it" school of thought comes down hard on all types of Minimalism. They want a pleasing picture with little or nothing to figure out."Six Marimbas" though very pleasant to listen to as well as exciting is more work to listen to than a more mainstream composition. I like work that begs you to try harder, look closer, and see something new.

My favorite minimalist sculptor is Richard Serra. It is a visceral journey to encounter the work of Richard Serra. Actually, you don't just "encounter" the work, you travel through it. Scale has a lot to do with this, minimalist visual art tends to be big, monumental. This I can relate back to the length of "Six Marimbas", it's not a minute and a half pop song. Nearly twenty minutes go by once you have reached the end of it. This is a journey, not a passive listening experience.

Cecilia to band camp

I'm having a hard time getting my cecilia file to upload to bandcamp. everything else works just fine. I've tried all the different formats. any ideas?

In C by Terry Riley / Steve Reich Six Marimbas

I never thought I would like minimalist music. However, after listening (I'm actually still listening to it because it's so long!) to In C by Terry Riley I don't dislike it as much. I really enjoy all the different levels and beats that come in at various times. Some attack quite quickly and unexpectedly and others slowly creep up you hardly notice they are there. The one thing that is getting annoying is the constant 1.2.3.4 1.2.3.4. beat that is keeping in in time. After 10 minutes that starts to be all I hear. I'd like it more if that beat were more in the background or if other beats had more volume and presence.

I also listened to Steve Reich's The 6 Marimbas. I enjoyed this piece much more. I really got into the hollow beats. I'm not sure if this really happened or if it's some clever illusion to keep me interested, but the overlay of quick tempo beats interchanged with slower ones made the overall same repetitive beat in the background go away or a least change speed, which for me is much more interesting to listen to. It keeps me wondering about what will happen next, compared to In C where it was all too similar for me.

Various Assignments

Sound Unbound Listening Assignment

I listened to "Untitled in Cof Minor/A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson (DJ Spooky Remix)". For the first bit it reminded me of the music in a bar (almost like the bar in Star Wars). For the last half it kept that feel with a voice being remixed on top. The voice sounds like an old recording of some sort and reminds me of an old public service announcement. The bar sounds mixed with the old recording creates this surreal celebration of the past. DJ Spooky is mixing up this old recording in an exciting, if not a bit crazy, way.

Everything can be found in

http://audiodesignufl.bandcamp.com/album/brandon-album

Pro One Project

Here is one of my recording sessions on the Pro One. I started with the "Frequency Modulation Bells" setting in the manual.

Errata Erratum Project

I slowly pulled away all the objects to make it silent.

Cecilia Project

A cool effect made in Cecilia.

Ableton Project

I remixed some of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree".

Songs on Bandcamp

Hey guys i just posted the sounds i've been working on to bandcamp under the album "All My Sounds Thus Far". A lot of the "songs" are really incomplete and more of experiments at this point.

CD Listening Assignment

I listened to the second track of the cd to do this review. I thought their was an Irish feel to the music as it started and through other parts of the piece. I felt the vocals were general ramblings about the word 'holy'. I did like the drum beat that came in at :19. The change in tempo and instrument that came in at about 1:00 had more of a carnival feel and seemed to fit the lyrics more appropriately. As with much of many other pieces I have listened to so far this semester, I just don't get it.

Riverrun and Solar eclipse

I listened to Riverrun a couple of times because the first time I just sat there thinking..."I don't get it." Then after a re-listen I started to find the sounds I'm familiar with. Although I never heard a river running. At first it was similar to a low-flying plane over head. One part that did elicit a strong reaction from me was the high-pitched sounds of the cicada. It sent shivers down my spine and my hair was on end. The sound creeped me out so badly, it almost ruined the rest for me. Solar Eclipse, on the other hand, was quite enjoyable. Like someone else mentioned I heard the chanting and the didgeridoo, but I heard it in the second piece not Riverrun. It reminded me of watching Tibetan monks make a sand mandala when I was a freshman in university. The focus and concentration was incredible. Solar eclipse evoked that sense of meditation for me. Also, the crescendo towards the end and the spiraling downward sounds was reminiscent of the plot to a movie. While I certainly enjoyed Solar Eclipse far more than Riverrun, it is still interesting that natural sounds can me created like that.

Listening Assignment- Dias, Dias, Dias

One of a group from Brazil known as the Noigandres poets, Augusto de Campos was intrigued with both the word-images of Concrete Poetry as well as the sounds of the Samba. In an 1983 interview, he stated:

“I like to read tradition as a trans-temporal music sheet, making, at each moment, synchronic-diachronic ‘harmonies,’ translating culture’s past onto a creative present.”

So it is only appropriate that his words have been translated into our creative present by forming part of the piece entitled, “Dias, Dias (Spoken by Caetano Veloso)/Above The Earth/Contacte.” There is something both ancient and contemporary in this work, both foreign and familiar, as the murmured Portuguese words wash over us, the listeners. The mesmerizing quality of the sounds allows images to flow across the mind, and the unhurried cadence of the measured speech evokes sacred incantations. Like the film collage "Rose Hobart" of Joseph Cornell's, as Catherine Corman writes in Sound Unbound, it is “taking us beyond one location with its specific, identifying sounds, to an unlimited space of devotion- what Simic calls the “cosmic church” (p.378).

The image is Cornell's piece from 1963, "Penny Arcade."

Assignments- Barry Truax and Erratum

The experience of listening to both “River Run” and “Solar Ellipse” by Canadian artist Barry Truax were quite different for me. The first one sounded very much like what I might hear while sitting on the bank of a fast moving river, and I was surprised at how well it elicited the mental images of that environment. I could also hear what sounded like the resonances of the chanting of Tibetan monks, the sound that comes from deep within the chest, as well as the sound of the aboriginal digeridoo. The second piece reminded me more of the soundtracks of old science fiction television shows, which brought back a lot of images from my misspent childhood. Though I am still trying to grasp all the terminology and possibilities involved in Sound Design, I know already that I will come away from this class with a greater appreciation of what goes into creating new sounds and sound environments.

Hamsters Creating MIDI Music

In my search for MIDI files, I came across this project by a Cornell student named Levy Lorenzo. He designed a set up which made it possible for six hamsters to trigger inputs through their movements, which were then routed through a MIDI sequencer. The music was created with 3 voices spanning three octaves and three rhythmic tiers, each with varied by two hamsters which modified the rhythm and the note sequence. The posted MIDI file on the project's webpage is surprisingly easy to listen to, with no random-sounding hamster chortling.

If the hamsters do an album, I hope they call me to design the album cover...

Listening Assignment 1

The novelty of the idea behind Riverrun and the challenges of putting it together into such a long piece is what have propelled Barry Truax’s work into stardom.  The environment which is created by the track is a great example of hearing how granular synthesis operates.  Some parts of Riverrun build up anticipation and thus have the potential of becoming great intros for movie soundtracks. However, with today’s saturated music market and talented producers I feel that there are many more worthy alternatives that could easily replace that role.
Jacob’s room blends in vocals with electronic sounds but the interesting part is that it does it for an opera atmosphere. The voice is synthesized in some parts which add to an already creepy and tense atmosphere.  This piece provides more dynamics, creativity and a richer sound environment which ultimately makes it my preferred choice over Riverrun. 

MIDI Yoke

For those that have had issues installing this in Vista, I found the following information: http://www.midiox.com/cgi/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=MYInstall;action=display;num=1168918461
Using the steps in the first post, I was able to get it to install, although I have yet to figure out how to use it.

VSTs

The set of "LADSPA" plugins are quite useful for audacity:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugins

There are a ton of plugins in this set (so much that it makes the effect list hard to read).

Unfortunately, although I can find many vst plugins, pretty much all of them do not work in my audacity (1.3.10beta). Perhaps they will be more useful in live.

Here are some that I found:

FreeVerbToo v.1.6 (freeware)

http://www.vstplanet.com/VST_effects/Reverb/SIR.zip

Classic Reverb v.1.06

http://www.vstplanet.com/VST_effects/Reverb/classic_reverb_v106.zip

AnechoicRoomSimulator (freeware)

http://www.vstplanet.com/VST_effects/Reverb/AnechoicRoomSimulator.zip

Mutant Reverb (freeware)

http://www.vstplanet.com/VST_effects/Reverb/MutantReverb.rar

TAL Reverb v 1.11 (freeware)

http://www.vstplanet.com/VST_effects/Reverb/TAL_Reverb.zip

Posted Project 1 Mix to Bandcamp

http://audiodesignufl.bandcamp.com/track/mix-brandon

Here are the source files:

freesound :: view sample :: tibetan chant 1.wav

freesound :: view sample :: zen gong.wav

freesound :: view sample :: wind.wav

freesound :: view sample :: wind chimes.wav

freesound :: view sample :: bird tweet.aif

freesound :: view sample :: RushingStream.mp3

Listening Assignment

I was pleasantly surprised when the music on the cds were not the kind of dissonant noise that I have been producing in Ceclia and on the Pro One.

It shows that with some care the sound can resemble music.

However, this "music" was from from entertaining and certainly difficult to listen to for any extended period of time. However, I could certainly imagine hearing this kind of music at some futuristic amusement ride or even as background music to some postmodern play. "Solar Ellipse" from Barry Truax would fit a lot of postmodern pieces.

"Riverrun" was certainly a lot more noisy and disjointed than "Solar Ellipse" ultimately making it less useful as a background song.

For all the songs, there are certainly pieces that could be extracted, looped, and remixed and probably make something surprisingly entertaining.

Music terminologies and sound synthesis

I found that the following links give us fundamental ideas on terminologies and synthesis techniques used in music composition.

http://www.classicalworks.com/html/glossary.html

http://sonicspot.com/guide/synthesistypes.html#rm

notes and links

I sometimes get overwhelmed with all of the new terms and audio design information -- this is my first attempt at anything musical. It's a ot of new stuff. So, I spend a lot of time writing them down and looking them up.

To review:

MIDI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_Instrument_Digital_Interface

And I found a lot of MIDI music here:
http://www.mididb.com/

microtonal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtonal_music

Glitch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitch_(music)

Oh and Lee "Scratch" Perry is alive and well. Here is his myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/leescratchperry

and official website:
http://www.lee-perry.com/

Listening Assignment

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a fan of New Age nor Avant Garde, so this assignment was somewhat painful. While I respect the expertise involved to create these two pieces, neither is the type of music I would sit and listen to for pleasure. Barry Truax' "River Run" sounded to me like something that could be used at the beginning or in the background of a song of another genre or as a sound effect in a movie. Morton Subotnick's "Jacobs Room" I actually listened to online at http://www.mortonsubotnick.com/gallery.html and found it extremely hard to listen to. Actually, I couldn't make it through the entire video. I realize that there are people that consider it "art" and maybe it is, but not art that appeals to my taste. If you tune out the soprano (which reminded me of Yoko Ono), the music itself sounded like it could serve as a foundation for a more elaborate piece.

Midi Tracks

"Chariots of Fire" from http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/prodigy/130/midi2.html

"Brave Heart" from http://byron.nysen.com/Midi/

"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" from http://www.mmacdonald.com/midi/index.php?path=XG/

"Poker Face" from http://www.cool-midi.com/lady-gaga-free-midi-22.htm

"When the Saints Go Marchin' in" from http://apeyman.free.fr/Midi%20Files/

Eno Interview: PLease read:!

When influential music website Pitchfork listed its 100 greatest albums of the 1970s – which in certain other lists is calculated to be the greatest decade for rock music – the modestly immodest, driven, musical non-musician Brian Eno was directly and indirectly involved in at least a quarter of them, including the number one, Low, on which he collaborated with a nomadic, post-"Fame" David Bowie and the producer Tony Visconti. As an intellectually mobile loner, scene-setter, systems lover, obstinate rebel, techno-prophet, sensual philosopher, courteous progressive, close listener, gentle heretic, sound planner, adviser explorer, pedant and slick conceptual salesman, and devoted fan of the new, undrab and surprising, wherever it fell between John Cage and Little Richard, or Duchamp and doo wop, or Mondrian and Moog, Eno busily and bossily remodelled pop music during the 70s. He looked at what the Velvet Underground, Can, Steve Reich and the Who had done, went forth and multiplied. Eno created an atmosphere, and helped determine what the history of electronic music was between the avant garde 1950s and the pop 21st century.

He demonstrated – as an abstract part of the early and surreal Roxy Music, the evocative Bowie Berlin trilogy Heroes/Low/Lodger, the nervy NY Talking Heads, as a floating collaborator with Nico, John Cale, Robert Wyatt, Cluster, Robert Fripp, Kevin Ayers, Jon Hassell and Harold Budd, as stern futurist mentor to Devo and Ultravox, as discerning curator of the beautifully conceived contemporary music label Obscure, as careful discoverer of the pulseless, wordless, eventless, timeless music he lovingly called "ambient" – that pop music was where you could be the kind of artist he wanted to be. In 1981, he designed the influential sound and content of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with David Byrne – the prestigious culmination of his solo and group work in the 1970s, the studio combining of inner space, other worlds, random impressions, scrupulous visions, found sound, taped memories, cut-up text, stolen rhythms, daring edits, painted space, original borrowing, inquisitive permutations, mutant gospel and electronic interference.Then there was U2 and recently, as if relishing the snobbish horror of those who dismiss U2 as pompous irritants, he's attended to another ambitious four-piece male rock group with delusions of splendour, Coldplay, producing their last multi-million selling album and now, at the age of 61, finishing their next. A mischievous ghost of the glammed up art pop star Eno that was first noticed as part of the theatre of Roxy Music now haunts the sound and image of the two biggest rock bands in the world who would claim to be, in fact, post-Eno as much as post-punk. Coldplay didn't really belong anywhere before Eno apart from inside their own success. Now they have attached themselves via Eno to a very particular history of avant pop practice. Eno himself is prone to chuckle good naturedly when faced with bemusement at his connection to Coldplay.

He stays behind the scenes, more likely to curate an art festival or present a public lecture on something to do with pleasure, beauty, atheism, perfume or nuclear disarmament than appear to have anything to do with rock or pop music. If Roxy Music are ever spotted together on stage, he will be somewhere else, searching for something new to astound him. Much, naturally, has changed since the volatile, fussy, sublime Eno of For Your Pleasure, Here Come The Warm Jets, Discreet Music, Heroes and Once in a Lifetime, but he's still talking about what he does, and why, working out his place, the place of art, the history of progress, the enigma of meaning, the mechanics of creativity, the mystery of aesthetics, reluctant to think too much about his past in case, as he says, he starts to feel "useless awe towards his former self" but politely prepared to look back at his work if he thinks someone might find it useful. When you meet him to discuss something or other to do with his always perfectly organised research and development thoughts about something or other, you arrive as he is finishing one conversation with someone about, say, how technology changes the way our brains work, and as you leave someone else is arriving for a conversation about, say, the shrinking divisions between art and science. Or how Jeremy Clarkson almost moved into the house next to his office which was previously owned by Jason Donovan.

I talked with him as part of a series of conversations that were filmed for a BBC Arena documentary.

On talking: 1

"I heard a recording that had been made of me 35 years ago chatting with some friends and I thought the tape must have sped up because I sounded so fast. When ­others spoke, they were at a normal speed. It was me, I was speaking so fast. What I find both disappointing and reassuring is that I was saying exactly those things I will be saying today. I don't know what to make of that. A few different references, but the basic ideas haven't changed at all. No difference whatsoever! I suppose it's good to see I've been consistent as sometimes over the years it seems as though it's all been a bit incoherent, a bit of this, a bit of that, a while doing this, then one of those, followed by three of those. It seems all over the place when I'm doing it. Listening to me now talking then suggests there has been a pattern."

On the intensity of ideas

"If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas. You expect to be engaged with ideas strongly whether you are for or against them. If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture."

On listening

"If you think of the mid- to late-50swhen all of this started to happen for me, the experience of listening to sound was so different from now. Stereo didn't exist. If you listened to music outside of church, apart from live music, which was very rare, it was through tiny speakers. It was a nice experience but a very small experience. So to go into a church, which is a specially designed and echoey space, and it has an organ, and my grandfather built the organ in the church where we went, suddenly to hear music and singing was amazing. It was like hearing someone's album on a tiny transistor radio and then you go and see them in a 60,000-seater. It's huge by comparison. That had a lot to do with my feeling about sound and space, which became a big theme for me. How does space make a difference to sound, what's the difference between hearing something in this room and then another room. Can you imagine other rooms where you can hear music? It also made a difference to how I feel about the communality of music in that the music I liked the most, singing in church, was done by a group of people who were not skilled – they were just a group of people, I knew them in the rest of the week as the coal man and the baker."

On destiny

"It was a dilemma for me at the end of my time at school. Am I going into music or painting ? The Who were important to me when I was working out whether I would go into fine art or popular art. I felt they had found an important position between the two. Then the Velvet Underground came along and also made it clear how you could straddle the two somehow. It helped make my mind up to go into music."

On recording

"I came out of this funny place where I was interested in the experimental ideas of Cornelius Cardew, John Cage and Gavin Bryars, but also in pop music. Pop was all about the results and the feedback. The experimental side was interested in process more than the actual result – the results just happened and there was often very little control over them, and very little feedback. Take Steve Reich. He was an important composer for me with his early tape pieces and his way of having musicians play a piece each at different speeds so that they slipped out of synch.

"But then when he comes to record a piece of his like, say, Drumming, he uses orchestral drums stiffly played and badly recorded. He's learnt nothing from the history of recorded music. Why not look at what the pop world is doing with recording, which is making incredible sounds with great musicians who really feel what they play. It's because in Reich's world there was no real feedback. What was interesting to them in that world was merely the diagram of the piece, the music merely existed as an indicator of a type of process. I can see the point of it in one way, that you just want to show the skeleton, you don't want a lot of fluff around it, you just want to show how you did what you did.As a listener who grew up listening to pop music I am interested in results. Pop is totally results-oriented and there is a very strong feedback loop. Did it work? No. We'll do it differently then. Did it sell? No. We'll do it differently then. So I wanted to bring the two sides together. I liked the processes and systems in the experimental world and the attitude to effect that there was in the pop, I wanted the ideas to be seductive but also the results."

On being like nothing else

"In my house in Oxfordshire, we have this big, beautiful Andrew Logan sculpture of a lovely Pegasus with blue glass wings. When I get a taxi from the station, a driver will always comment on it because it is so striking. What they often say is, 'What does that stand for then?' Or, 'What does that mean?', based on the idea that something exists because it has to tell you something, or it refers to something else, and I realise that this notion is foreign to me. The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn't refer to anything else. They stood alone and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else."

On singing

"I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant. Ultimately, the message of gospel music is that everything's going to be all right. If you listen to millions of gospel records – and I have – and try to distil what they all have in common it's a sense that somehow we can triumph. There could be many thousands of things. But the message… well , there are two messages… one is a kind of optimism for the future rather than a pessimism. Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is. Gospel music is always about the possibility of transcendence, of things getting better. It's also about the loss of ego, that you will win through or get over things by losing yourself, becoming part of something better. Both those messages are completely universal and are nothing to do with religion or a particular religion. They're to do with basic human attitudes and you can have that attitude and therefore sing gospel even if you are not religious."

On the synthesiser: 1

"One of the important things about the synthesiser was that it came without any baggage. A piano comes with a whole history of music. There are all sorts of cultural conventions built into traditional instruments that tell you where and when that instrument comes from. When you play an instrument that does not have any such historical background you are designing sound basically. You're designing a new instrument. That's what a synthesiser is essentially. It's a constantly unfinished instrument. You finish it when you tweak it, and play around with it, and decide how to use it. You can combine a number of cultural references into one new thing."

On the synthesiser: 2

"Instruments sound interesting not because of their sound but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments which is what you like and respond to. If you were sitting down now to design an instrument you would not dream of coming up with something as ridiculous as an acoustic guitar. It's a strange instrument, it's very limited and it doesn't sound good. You would come up with something much better. But what we like about acoustic guitars is players who have had long relationships with them and know how to do something beautiful with them. You don't have that with synthesisers yet. They are a very new instrument. They are constantly renewing so people do not have time to build long relationships with them. So you tend to hear more of the technology and less of the rapport. It can sound less human. However ! That is changing. And there is a prediction that I made a few years ago that I'm very pleased to see is coming true – synthesisers that have inconsistency built into them. I have always wanted them to be less consistent. I like it that one note can be louder than the note next to it."

On the naming of things

"A way to make new music is to imagine looking back at the past from a future and imagine music that could have existed but didn't. Like East African free jazz, which as far as I know does not exist. To some extent, this was how ambient music emerged. My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to, not because I wanted a job as a musician. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist. It's like having a ready-made formula if you are able to read it. One of the innovations of ambient music was leaving out the idea that there should be melody or words or a beat… so in a way that was music designed by leaving things out – that can be a form of innovation, knowing what to leave out. All the signs were in the air all around with ambient music in the mid 1970s, and other people were doing a similar thing. I just gave it a name. Which is exactly what it needed. A name. A name. Giving something a name can be just the same as inventing it. By naming something you create a difference. You say that this is now real. Names are very important."

On talking: 2

"I like to talk about all sorts of things. I've never seen the downside of it. I've never minded the egghead tag. It makes sense with my physiognomy anyway. I've fought for years the idea that rock and popular art is only about passion and fashion and nothing to do with thinking and examining and if you do think there is something suspicious about you."

On hindsight

"Instead of shooting arrows at someone else's target, which I've never been very good at, I make my own target around wherever my arrow happens to have landed. You shoot your arrow and then you paint your bulls eye around it, and therefore you have hit the target dead centre."

On a celebration of human frailty

"The other day I heard a band who had the worst singer, the most out of time drummer and most out of tune guitarist I've ever heard on a professional record, and I thought, at last, the reaction against pro-tools perfection has set in. A pro-tools engineer would have sorted it all out, but this band was an actual celebration of human frailty. It was so rough it was really encouraging."

On Abba

"In the 70s, no one would admit that they liked Abba. Now it's fine. It's so kitsch. Kitsch is an excuse to defend the fact that they feel a common emotion. If it is kitsch. you put a sort of frame around something – to suggest you are being ironic. Actually, you aren't. You are really enjoying it. I like Abba. I did then and I didn't admit it. The snobbery of the time wouldn't allow it. I did admit it when I heard 'Fernando'; I could not bear to keep the secret to myself anymore and also because I think there is a difference between Swedish sentimentality and LA sentimentality because the Swedish are so restrained emotionally. When they get sentimental it's rather sweet and charming. What we really got me with "Fernando" was what the lower singer was doing, I don't know her name. I spent months trying to learn that. It's so obscure what she's doing and very hard to sing. And then from being a sceptic I went over the top in the other direction. I really fell for them."

On Frank Zappa

"Zappa was important to me because I realised I didn't have to make music like he did. I might have made a lot of music like he did if he had not done it first and made me realise that I did not want to go there. I did not like his music but I am grateful that he did it. Sometimes you learn as much from the things you don't like as from the things you do like. The rejection side is as important as the endorsement part. You define who you are and where you are by the things that you know you are not. Sometimes that's all the information you have to go on. I'm not that kind of person. You don't quite know where you are but you find yourself in the space left behind by the things you've rejected."

On working with U2 and Coldplay at the same time

"It was fine. A few jokes. I felt like a ­philanderer who was with another woman and might make a slip and call her by the wrong name in bed. I had one computer that had all of the Coldplay stuff and all the U2 stuff. I had to very carefully label each folder because I was paranoid that I might end up with the same basic track for each group and I wouldn't notice until it was too late. There was a chance the same track might have appeared on both albums."

On ego

"Bono commits the crime of rising above your station. To the British, it's the worst thing you can do. Bono is hated for doing something considered unbecoming for a pop star – meddling in things that apparently have nothing to do with him. He has a huge ego, no doubt about it. On the other hand, he has a huge brain and a huge heart. He's just a big kind of person. That's not easy for some to deal with. They don't mind in Italy. They like larger-than-life people there. In most places in the world they don't mind him. Here, they think he must be conning them."

On reporting in the 1990s that there was too much music being released and he was not going to add to it any more

"I didn't think it through to be honest."

On the end of an era

"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."

Bandcamp for sharing projects

Hey everyone, I thought it would be constructive to share our work with each other, so I started a bandcamp for anyone who's interested. The link is http://audiodesignufl.bandcamp.com/. The username is "audiodesignufl" and the password is "patpagano". There is also a gmail account with the same key. To add a file, simply sign in and click "new track" located on the top toolbar. I figured each assignment could be an "album", and then each of our submissions could be a track in that album. I feel like we can learn a lot from each other!

I'll kick things off with our first assignment, the freesound project. These are the sounds i used:

Lokelani Ambience.mp3

LED_VynilCrackle.wav

Reese 1 (Mono).aiff

hip hop drum beat.wav

dumdum.mp3

badass2 stretched.wav

I put them together into this: http://audiodesignufl.bandcamp.com/track/quick-library-mix-alexander. I made it in the library 2 weeks ago, and I probably spent way too much time with the Reese 1 (Mono) sound, which is the bass that comes in at 1:35, my favorite part :]

-Alexander

VST Downloads

VoCoder

VocInput

Telephone

FreeVerb for OSX

Floorfish for OSX

FruityPlugs2

West African Polyrhythm - The Jamani Drummers

In relation to Chapter 5 of Sound Unbound:

More VSTs

Here are a few more VSTs that I found on vstplanet.com:

Retro Delay v.1.0.3 - Retro Delay is a flexible all round delay effect in VST format.
It has the character and sound of a vintage delay unit but features many modern options. Besides delays, it can produce a wide range of modulation, chorus, flanger and phaser effects.

Elottronix v.1.3  - VST processor which emulates the famous Robert Fripp's effect called "Frippertronics": Two Revox B-77 making a continuous loop(2-8 seconds delay).

Mechaverb v.1.0 - Atom Splitter Audio has released MechaVerb, a freeware reverb effect plug-in for Windows PC.Mechaverb is a reverb effect where you can set the ranges of the internal delays which make up the reverb sound, you can also pan the bands and set there mixing amount which gives you a range of possible sounds from large halls to ringy metallic reverbs.

---------
And for those that were not able to make it to class, Professor Pagano showed us the following high quality VSTs and how they work in Ableton

Livecut
Glitch

Audacity VST's

I found the following VST's on Audacity's Wiki at http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=VST_Plug-ins, which also explains how to install them:

Telephone.dll - simple, very realistic telephone audio simulator.
Freeverb2.dll for Windows (They also have a version for OS X).
BassChorusV23.dll
TapeIt.dll

BJ Flanger.dll
BJ LoFi.dll
BJ Overdrive.dll
BJ Ringmodulator.dll
BJ Tremolo.dll
BJ Wavechanger2.dll (These are all in one zip file named bojo.zip)

DSP Applets: Fourier Series and Digital Filters

For anybody interested, I found these Java applets to be very helpful:

The Fourier Series is the mathematical theory behind the Fourier Transform and the Inverse Fourier Transform. The Fourier Transform allows us to reconstruct any periodic waveform with a number of harmonically related sinusoids. In the applet you can choose the "Playing Frequency", this is the fundamental frequency. It's the lowest in pitch. All other sine waves are multiples of this frequency. This is essentially Additive Synthesis, what Patrick showed us in class with Pure Data. You can recreate common waveforms like triangle, square, and ramp with this by first changing each sinusoid's amplitude and phase in special, mathematically related ways, and then taking the sum. The Inverse Fourier Transform is the opposite process: taking any periodic waveform and observing it's frequency components. This is used in the Digital Filters applet, the "Spectrum" window.

There are also great explanations in the "examples" link for each, and don't forget to turn the sound on!

Homework- week 1, Freesound mix, ES

Here are the files I used to make a new mix with Audacity:

pitched: wind1.wav

non-pitched: string noise.wav

ambient: From_Darkness.wav

noise: crystal_glass.wav

random: women singing.wav

I will have to think about what to do to post the sound file later. It's called Kafka's Dream.

LISTEN

Portishead - Chase The Tear from Mintonfilm on Vimeo.

pd-tutorial.com

I will be adding this tutorial into our studies for sound exploration. You may pick a patch from here to dissect for the class.

http://www.pd-tutorial.com/

make sure you look at the Additive Synthesis tutorials and patches

http://www.pd-tutorial.com/english/ch03s02.html

and download ALL PATCHES FOR CLASS WORK

http://www.kreidler-net.de/pd/patches/patches.zip

we will use these as stepping off points for our first patches.

PLEASE READ AND BLOG ON: PP ADDP READING 1

http://www.herbertbrun.org/techcomp.html

As read to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Stockholm, June 10, 1970.

I.

Between 1877 and 1896 Edison and Berliner developed their cylindrical and disc phonograph systems, providing us with the new ability to store audio signals and to retrieve them from storage by electro-mechanical means. About half a century later, and nearly 30 years after Lee DeForest had initiated Electronics with the first vacuum tube (the triode audion), the phonograph-disc was joined by magnetic tape and the phonograph by the tape recorder. During the last 15 years great progress has been made in learning how the computer could assist the musician towards achieving ever higher degrees of precision in storing and retrieving audio information.

The emergence of electronics, vacuum tubes, transistors, and all kinds of increasingly sophisticated circuitries supplied the impetus to delve anew into the still only vaguely answered questions about the physical nature of sound, the possibilities of analyzing and of synthesizing any desired sound, the problems of psycho-acoustical phenomenology. It also led to a vast arsenal of electronic sound sources, sound modifiers, devices for control and amplification of sound, to microphones and loudspeakers, but most important of all: it led to an improved concept of storage, to the concept of simulated memory, to the programmable studio and to the even more programmable digital and analogue computer system.

Although composers became aware of these developments rather early -- although Busoni, Schoenberg, Varese, Schillinger, Stokowski, Chavez, and many others wrote and talked about the promising influence of science and technology on composers in their search for new compositional procedures -- it was not until rather late in the game that some notable connections between technology and composition were established. Most of the time since 1906, when Dr. Thaddeus Cahil demonstrated his Telharmonium or Dynamophone, was dedicated to the invention and enormous improvement of techniques for the production, manipulation and performance of sound. In 1916 Edgar Varese asked for new musical instruments and enrichment of our musical alphabet, and a few years later for the cooperation between electrician and composer. From 1927 till 1936 he tried to get financial support for the development of an electronic instrument for composition at Bell Telephone Laboratories, where Harvey Fletcher and Rene Bertrand would have collaborated with him on the project. He could neither get a Guggenheim Fellowship nor any help from sound studios in Hollywood. In the meantime Hammond had produced his organ, the Novachord, the Solovox, and one can follow this instrument-oriented trend through the years up to the present.

In the United States composers began work with tape and tape recorders in about 1950. The next ten years saw the establishment of various studios and laboratories, where composers, musicians, and technicians could collaborate in furthering all kinds of projects pertaining to the relationships between electronics and music. In North America almost all such studios are located at and affiliated with universities. Major examples are the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, and the studios at the Universities of Illinois and Toronto. Now there are hundreds of such installations to be found in the western hemisphere; and if ten years ago many a music department chairman did not know what an electronic music studio was, today that chairman would at least always know whether the school has one or not.

For some time now music has been getting involved with the computer. This also began mainly at universities, notably at the University of Illinois, where Lejaren Hiller and L. M. Isaacson completed their first computer assisted composition in 1956. If one combines positive experiences with apparently justified expectations then one can predict that the interaction between computers and the composer will prove far more fertile with regard to compositional procedures than will either the availability of new instruments, or the more and more streamlined modular compactness of portable studio equipment and tape recorders, or even the integration of performing humans into ever-more sophisticated circuitries that allow for unlimited amplification of naturally redundant autobiographical sound portraits.

As the composer meets technology through the computer, both have a chance to see one another far more clearly than the usual barriers, namely sound and industry, permit. The composer has begun to recognize that technology is not merely the provider of instruments, of devices, of conveniences; in short, the composer is learning that technology is not just techniques and engineering. The composer now defines technology as the science and art of applying knowledge to the desire for problem solving and I, for one, concede that technology would have a far more beneficial impact on society if its potentials were controlled by technologists rather than by industrialists and politicians.

It is desirable that the technologist take a fresh view of the composer. The time has come for the technologist to see that composers are not merely music makers, or art makers, who think that their products have to measure up to an established standard of culture and who are eager to call them merchandise and sell them. Many composers today would like to live in a socially concerned and courageously heuristic environment: they are looking for problems; they do not claim to know but are eager to create models for solutions; they would rather produce some dynamic input than find their product flatly output and consumed; they have experienced the width and the narrowness of at least one medium in depth and so can move in it or on to the next. They would want contemporary technology to return the respect they have for it by using and assisting them so that their work may escape the psychologist's case study and the aesthetician's collection, and instead, be given a chance to become a dynamic input to the contemporary social system. Together with technology, the composer defines input as something that induces and initiates such changes of state in a system as would not occur, without this input, at the moment or possibly ever.

II.

The story of music and technology tells of a very old couple which composers keep visiting in order to have their dreams materialize, their intentions implemented, their problems solved. It depicts in various terms, largely depending on the storyteller's choice of emphasis, the emergence of our need for the control of acoustical events for a purpose, and our ways of catering to this need through a maze of apparently continuous chains of either observed or stipulated problems, and either found or invented or stipulated solutions. The story would show composers to be motivated by a more-or-less intuitive allergy to the inevitable decrease of information in the systems through which they see their world at any given time; even the systems they love exhibit symptoms of decay and stagnation, and all they can do is retard the final curtain by creating systems wherein that which passes swiftly in reality would stay alive a little longer in an analogy. It does not matter much in what language and in which terminology composers happen to think their thoughts: their concepts of what is to be music next are always related to some technological considerations, and this relationship ranges from extreme subtlety to gross obviousness. There ought to be no need at this point to elaborate on the rather commonplace notion that technological considerations show the way from a musical idea to its realization, first in some code and then in a performance; and that technological considerations lead to the availability of the acoustical phenomena needed by composers for an audible representation of their musical ideas. It may be appropriate, however, to remember that musical ideas are thinking models in more or less deliberately stipulated linguistic systems; that, for reasons to be discussed later, the complexity of such systems is increasing in many a sense and dimension and that, therefore, composers now have to turn to technology with the additional request for assistance in handling the systems they stipulate.

But as composers turn to technology today, they are bound to find themselves forced into two intertwined admissions: that the belief according to which we live in a technological era is merely a belief, unsubstantiated by any sufficiency of facts; and that the concept conjured up by the word composer needs broadening until it embraces more than just music, painting, or the arts in general; that it must extend its pretensions towards the regions where the languages thrive, grow old and wither, the natural, artificial, formal, and the dead alike.

As long as technology is ruled and controlled by hard and fast beliefs and as long as it makes its way to the people through a veritable maze of filters consisting of almost exactly those same hard and fast beliefs, we are living in the era of hard and fast beliefs, in the ideological, not in the technological era. The services that technology renders to all those who---being no technologists---need destructive power in order to survive better knowledge, and to those who---not being composers---use the languages of an incurably sick system to curse and condemn even the discussion of attempts at composing a yet-unpolluted one: these services never were designed by technologists.

Technology being the science and the art of applying knowledge to the desire for problem solving, it takes a believer and ideologist to present as applied knowledge the advanced techniques of murder, brain-washing, and destruction. Where such a presentation is accepted and successful there one cannot help but rebel against the power that language wields over thought, imagery, and desire. For much of the power of presentation rests in language, in the grammatical and syntactical innocence with which it acceptably supports even the unspeakable. As long as all this power and innocence act in favor of the believer's and ideologist's presentation, attenuating the voices of everyone else, so long the technologists and the composers have an axe to grind in common.

If ever there will be a technological era worth talking about, it will be thanks to technologists and composers. By their joint efforts, extended over a prolonged period, they may contrive to emancipate thought from language sufficiently for a rehabilitation of both, and continuing from that, introduce an era for mankind where every thought has its language, and where all people have at their disposal a device that will respond to each person's input according to the language stipulated by that person. Today we still labor and suffer under the oppression of those who can hide their determined unwillingness behind a modestly confessed lack of understanding, behind less modestly uttered claims for everyone's right to misunderstand, behind aggressive attacks on an allegedly unrealistic but in effect only nonconformist intellect. Tomorrow, in the technological era, if it is to merit this label, this kind of hide-and-seek game should have lost its power-illuminated glamour, and have made place for a prosaic and, thus, nonviolent confrontation, in language and in action, between those who can articulate the desire for an intelligent society and those who understand, but do not want it. There should be no question as to what an intelligent society is, nor as to who wants it and who doesn't. The difference between technology and composition will dwindle to an insignificant degree of a nuance; whereas the difference between nuances of thought will acquire significant proportions, worthy of the discriminating potentials of the human mind.

When, many years ago, I was first invited to give talks and lectures, the invitations meant that I was to be a composer of music who is to discuss and to present music for an audience interested in music. I felt that, therefore, I had to show how the thoughts I really wished to talk about were relevant even to music. Under this pressure I soon found out that the composition of music, is, in fact, relevant to the thoughts I consider important at any given time. Finally, I asked myself: What if it were true that composition simply is the generator of relevance, and that composers, no matter of or in what, are people who desire that whatever they create be relevant to whatever they consider important? If this were true (and I stipulate it is), then I could go on and state: The thoughts I consider important, and the medium in which I try to create what otherwise might never happen, are related through my desire for relevance; thus they become representatives of two systems which ought to show a high degree of mutual analogy, once a structure composed by me is applied to both. Wherever such an attempt is successful one can consider the process as a model of some effective method for reaching a desired state; this, then, allows for a new look at what may now appear to be---besides and beyond being desired---also desirable.

The definition of a problem and the action taken to solve it largely depend on the view which the individuals or groups that discovered the problem have of the system to which it refers. A problem may thus find itself defined as a badly interpreted output, or as a faulty output of a faulty output device, or as a faulty output due to a malfunction in an otherwise faultless system, or as a correct but undesired output from a faultless and thus undesirable system. All definitions but the last suggest corrective action; only the last definition suggests change, and so presents an unsolvable problem to anyone opposed to change.

To the composer, however, a suggestion of change is a signal sent out by the system, signifying a deficiency of input and the urgent request for the creation of what otherwise may never happen, be it even a new and different system. The composer's basic attitude is system-conscious and is nourished by observations which give repeated reassurance that it will always look only the way the composer looks at it, and so may look different if looked at differently.

Discerning between composition of art and the far broader concept of an art of composition I contend that the latter need reach a higher level if the former is to be an input for, not only an output of, society. I suspect that an intuitive awareness of the recent meagerness of input has led, almost justifiably, to the contemptuous sneer at the word culture prevalent in many circles, intellectual and otherwise. Many words, including this one: culture, could be rehabilitated if they were to refer to the dynamics of input rather than to the kinetic triumphs of output. Not that there is a lack of continuously offered input. But the words that indeed refer to it also reject it. The message announcing an offered input is called a threatening disaster, disorder, anarchism, and the like; yes, this society's language is in such a panic that it frequently, in its confusion, calls a threatening disaster that which actually was nothing but a message of its own accomplished output. Such an obvious disorder in so highly a respected system as our language is a challenge to all those composers who are not exclusively interested in their music. It is a challenge to the art of composition in general; and the composer---oscillating between music, languages, linguistics, analogies, systems, structures, logics, logistics, some mathematics, and an enormous repertory of words burdened with apparently indelible and frequently quite obsolete meanings---calls it all just so much language and begins to search for some way in which the composer might construct languages that do not yet support any power but their own.

In the meantime I shall use the term language for denoting structured systems which are made by humans, which humans thus can change or replace, and which, as a significant property, possess the capacity for involvement in the storage and transmission of intended messages or unintended messages or both. Technologists in all the branches of science and engineering, and composers in all the arts, both continuously design, construct, create, and change languages of all kinds, in order to store and transmit the thoughts or images they had in mind. Little of this is heard in an environment where power can be seized, and more power gained, by redesigning, reconstructing, and recreating thoughts and images that comfortably fit the language everybody knows and speaks already, where trust and confidence can be earned by proving these thoughts and images to have existed for generations as popular grammatical fictions in a language common to us all. No wonder then if within such boundaries everybody thinks they know what everybody is talking about and words are said to mean simply what people take them to mean.

But wherever it is true that, as the saying goes, words mean what people take them to mean, these words cannot escape the meaning given to them by people. Where there is no escape, there are no alternatives, there is no freedom; and any meaning that argues with words which never escaped it just tells the story of its life. Every thought, idea, or concept, as it emerges for the first time in a given society, needs words so that it be expressed, be presented, be heard, understood, and finally communicated. In search of such language one has to either create new words, or add and attach new meanings to old words. If a word, in the course of time and usage, has accumulated many kinds, shades, nuances of meaning, then we have to consider the context in which the word appears in order to know which particular meaning it is to carry. From this it follows that a new meaning of a word may be suspected, or assumed, if the context is such that none of the conventional meanings would fit. It is easier to coin and integrate into language a new word, a new sound, a new visual unit, than to make an old one mean something new. This is because the newly coined word announces its newness in every context. Its function is unambiguous and thus not context-bound. A new meaning, on the other hand, cannot be announced by an old word alone but only by a context to which the old word is a newcomer, in which it had never functioned before. The older a word is, the more meanings it has accumulated, the more ambiguous it becomes, the more context-bound it is. Whereas a new word adds to the language by enlarging the vocabulary, a new meaning adds to the language by increasing the significance of context.

All this I contend to be analogously the case in all systems in which the elements enter into temporarily significant coalitions, and where some communicable meaning becomes associated with either their moments of appearing or with the particular structure causing their appearance. Words in language, gestures of sound in music, definitions of visual units and colors in painting are just a few of the many terms denoting such coalitions.

On the one hand, I concede that in order to relate or permute established thoughts and ideas it may be sufficient to know what the listener takes words to mean, and to form one's language accordingly. The success of this language is then measured by the degree of comprehensibility. The problem of the speaker here is a problem in communication. The speaker's aim consists in having a new constellation of old thought understood by the currently valid rules and usages. For the presentation of new thoughts, on the other hand, the speaker should be requested to make words mean what they heretofore had not meant, thus adding to the available repertory of a word's meanings that new meaning which is necessary for the presentation of the new thought. The success of this language can only be measured by the degree to which it questions the sufficiency of meanings already associated with words, and by the quality of the thoughts that so become audible for the first time; at which time there is, obviously, never enough of the kind of evidence available that would allow for completely correct evaluations.

As this is the point where the arts, including music, come in, let me formulate a useful term. Where a new thought is presented, the speaker's problem is not any longer only a problem in communication, but one of communication. My useful term is introduced thus: A speaker with a new thought has to solve a problem of anticommunication. The syllables "anti" are used here as in antipodes, antiphony, antithesis, not meaning "hostile" or "against" but rather "juxtaposed" or "from the other side". Anticommunication faces communication somewhat as an offspring faces the progenitor. And just as the offspring eventually will in turn become a progenitor so will anticommunication, in time, become communication. This knowledge ought to make it possible for a community of people to have a good time with either. Indeed it should be noted that the good time lasts longer with anticommunication which leaves a lot open for the next occasion than with communication which puts everything neatly away on the spot. Anticommunication is an attempt at saying something, not a refusal to say it. Communication is achievable by learning from language how to say something. Anticommunication is an attempt at respectfully teaching language to say it. It is not to be confused with either non-communication, where no communication is intended, or with lack of communication, where a message is ignored, has gone astray, or simply is not understood. Anticommunication is most easily observed, and then often can have an almost entertaining quality, if well-known fragments of a linguistic system are composed into a contextual environment in which they try but fail to mean what they always had meant and, instead, begin showing traces of integration into another linguistic system, in which, who knows, they might one day mean what they never meant before, and be communicative again.

However, when something new is conceived, introduced, and noticed, then there appears a temporary gap, an interregnum which will disappear only when that "something new" begins to be accepted, understood, and used: when it begins to grow old. This time of transition is a time in which messages are sent that no one receives and in which messages are received that no one sent.

This is the time in which a language gained is a language lost. By most people this time is experienced only occasionally, in passing, in some concert, some exhibition, some reading, and then usually not too happily; for it gives them a hard time or no time or too much time, but no answer to their question: "What does it all mean?"

It is this time, however, that is the almost continuous time present for those poets, painters, and composers who move with it, who always think of themselves as living and working just in that mute and dumb moment where the language they gained got lost, where it won't do and say what they would have it do and say. It is therefore a sign of understanding and perceptivity if one expects their productions, their works and words to escape the prevalent level of communicativity under the condition that all of their activities and objects be at least propositions and at best provisions for the next, now the future, level of communicativity. Creative Art resides in poetry, music, dance, painting, architecture, theater, film, television, writing, and even in "Happenings" only if each of these sub-disciplines functions by anticommunication, which is my term for potential and virtual expression in a field devoid of communicative guarantee. One ought to expect, yes, as an ambitious audience, even demand that this field be cultivated at a time later than the last harvest and earlier than the next.

But what if it is not only the much maligned audience, the people who come to listen and to see who have the wrong expectations? What if it is society itself, and therewith also the performers, the dancers, the actors, the musicians, who do not know that their profession consists in handling competently the temporary incompetence of their language? What if it is a property of all our social systems not to have matured enough in order to liberate and promote language from its fictitious status of a slave which will do the best it can, to the status-independent existence of students and scholars, who will try to do better than the best they or anyone can?

III.

I challenge technology to escalate its push towards a socially beneficial technological era by designing and constructing for all of us the compound facility wherein and wherewith many people can be induced to come and enjoy the effort of learning how to compare and measure their languages against and with their imagination and their desires. I am speaking of an artificial system which should function as an accepted member of society and be respected and used equally by the few and by the many, as long as this differentiation will have any validity left.

I imagine a building in which the arts are met by technology and the sciences on their common ground. They all investigate, stipulate, create, and exploit systems. They are all faced with the puzzles and the functions of structure. And their aims and results complement one another because of their difference. While the sciences observe or stipulate systems which are to be analogous to an existent truth or reality, and while technology stipulates and creates systems that are to function in an existent truth or reality, the arts stipulate and create systems which are analogous to an existence desired to become true or real.

All three must be represented with all their branches and departments in the team that has to invent, to stipulate, to study, to discuss, and eventually to decide on the interior and exterior requirements that such an artificial system must be able to fulfill. Let me mention just one area of research that might demand no less than such a team's collective efforts before it will even begin to reveal its dimensions and secrets.

What if it were true that, as the saying goes in many quarters, the human mind is limited by nature to the potentials we already know, and that we may thus not expect it to ever possess the properties necessary for the creation of what we call an ideal society? If this were true we would need artificial systems that possess those properties to guide us. And if it were true that, as the saying goes in other quarters, the human mind has shown here and there the potential for change and development but that precisely the rarity of such an event generates hostility against it in the many who did not participate in it, then we would need artificial systems that remove the property of rarity by demonstrating the participation of all. No matter on which assumed truth it is based or to which conjectural reality it may be meant to correspond: any such artificial system should possess properties that we either cannot have, or do not yet have, but that we need and thus should be able to imagine or be taught to imagine.

It is quite obvious: any such artificial system will contain a computer installation. But what kind of an installation? Nobody knows yet because it should not be developed before the software, the programs that define the structure of the system, have been written. And these programs should be written, and the assembler code should be constructed, only after a decision has been reached as to what the whole system is supposed to do for the user. The user, however, is not to be seen as a paying consumer, whose demands have to be educated until they fit the available offers.

The word user refers instead to a member of one subset of the set of all possible kinds of input. The first task then is to define this subset until it contains every possible kind of user. Every user is an element of at least two social systems: the social system the user sees and at least one social system that sees the user. The artificial system must be able to insist on getting just so much input from the user as it needs for identifying the social systems in which the user's existence is definable. The response of the artificial system could then adopt the property of an input to any one or all of the systems defining the user's existence. The complete set of all possible kinds of input would thus contain all users and all responses by the artificial system. If we roughly define input as something that induces and initiates such changes of state in a system as would not occur without this input, at the moment or possibly ever, then we may expect that the artificial system thus would be capable of supporting what I called corrective action as well as what is called creative acts.

What is asked for is a heterogeneous assembly of input-oriented minds that would define an intelligent society, redefine the user, and develop an artificial system that by its response capability would show its users their roles in an intelligent society so that they may become induced to also want it in reality.

Inevitably such a project progresses in stages of partial fulfillment of set goals. At every significant stage, however, the results reached should be incorporated into a systems program which is to be submitted to and analyzed by technologists. They, in response to this input, would proceed to invent and construct the apparatus, the hardware, the computer, the input-output interface which best can represent, simulate, execute, and display the functions of an artificial system that possesses properties which we either cannot have or do not have yet. Clearly this installation will also be used to reach the next stage of significance, and will, if intelligently conceived, eventually only have to be modified and improved. Should there ever come the day, and an invention or discovery be made, that would render obsolete this whole machinery, possibly even the whole project, it will be either a no-man's day or a day for world-wide celebration.

Work on the project has to begin simultaneously in as many places as possible all over the world. Every school, every university or equivalent institution could assign to a selected but preferably heterogeneous group of its members the task of starting research towards a definition of the potential user in the immediate environment up to and including the areas overlapping with those defined by neighboring groups.

The building I imagine should be planned and constructed at each place, combining special features reflecting local preferences with those more general features that would make it a compatible member of a world-wide network of equivalent institutions. Everywhere it should grow as the results of such research accumulate everywhere.

Composers in the technological era are professional members of such projects. Their profession is the art of composition and their work establishes and demonstrates connections of various kinds between various elements, stipulated and desired connections that cannot occur in the eternal feedback loop of empirically functioning thinking processes.

Technology in the technological era sees the composer's work as an input of a particular nature, as an analogy to a desired reality which may have to be implemented and to be observed in functional action before anyone can possibly judge whether such a reality is---besides and beyond being desired---also desirable.

To the question whether a statement is true, let there be added the question: what if it were true?

To the question whether a composition is music, let there be added the question: what if this were music?

So that language may not become a fossilized fetish, let it be praised for the thought it expresses, but ruthlessly criticized for the ideas it fails to articulate. Language is not the standard against which thinking is to be measured; on the contrary: language is to be measured by a standard it barely reaches, if ever, namely the imagery of human doubt and human desire.

To measure language, with imagery as a standard, is the function of art in society. The arts are a measuring meta-language about the language that is found wanting. If the imagery succeeds in containing, anticommunicatively, for later, the simulation, the structural analogy to that which was found wanting, then, who knows, it may tell us or someone some day with breathtaking eloquence and in the simple terms what we, today, almost speechlessly have wanted so much.

Our present era meanwhile dictates in ever more venomous terms that we must turn to artificial systems if we wish to conduct intelligent research and intelligent experiments without causing bloodshed, corruption, and misery.

(A few days after this paper had been read, the chairman of the meeting requested that I submit to the experts present at the symposium a proposal summarizing the goals and ideas implied by my paper. The experts, then, were to vote on whether to recommend that steps be taken towards an implementation of the proposal.)

I propose that an international apparatus be defined and initiated which would investigate and analyze submitted ideas, compositions, statements and general propositions with regard to their function (potential or real) as structural models. The apparatus should be so formed and equipped that it can answer the following questions: What is the composition and the structure of that system in which the submitted item would have the greatest significance? In which system, social, political, physical, would the submitted item be compatible with concepts of truth, reality, practicability, etc.?

(The assembled experts declared this proposal to be incomprehensible. They requested that I resubmit it with an explanatory addition.)

Explanatory Addition

The apparatus mentioned above would face each and every statement, but not with the question: "Is this a consistent statement?" The question would be: "Which system needs to be stipulated so that, therein, the statement becomes consistent?"

This kind of questioning statements is and has always been the composer's profession. In looking at the composer's work we perceive the extent to which the composer succeeded in establishing that system in which the composed statements are consistent; we no longer discuss the value of statements but rather the value of the systems implied by the statements.

As the composer stipulates systems, elements, and structures, the composer becomes increasingly proficient in recognizing the problems that appear in systems.

Problems may attack a system from within---a malfunction in the system---or from without: the system as a whole is questioned. The states, and thus also the problems of large complex systems, do not show themselves in their real totality but rather in smaller less complex subsystems which imply---by analogy or by disintegration---the system wherein they are consequences and consistent or inconsistent statements.

In contradistinction to Industry and Business who must dominate the system to which they adjust, Technology and The Arts need neither dominate nor adjust. Composers and technologists are not concerned with the exploitation of, and adjustment to, problems. They are concerned with the solution of problems and, as a first step in this direction, with the design of models, structural analogies, of the desired solution.

The construction of models for problem-solving in the broadest and most general sense is the goal which Technology and Composition have in common. In order to reach and to effectively demonstrate this goal they have to preserve their independence from temporarily ruling values which always imply and reaffirm only the system that ought to be investigated and that gave rise to the problem. If technologists and composers were to join forces in an internationally supported endeavor of systems-research and systems-creation they could hope to avoid loops of futility, to preserve their independence from temporarily ruling values, to reach and to effectively demonstrate their goal. Their findings, discoveries, suggestions, and explanations should throw considerable light, be it welcome or not, on our ability of changing, if need be, just those concepts which we most automatically take for granted.

The contemporary distance between composers in the technological era and the systems that rule their lives is a required prerequisite for their effectivity as temporarily inabsorbable, critical, and necessary inputs to their society.

(Whereupon the experts, who, really, were only specialists, refused to vote on the proposal. Some argued that it was irrelevant to the meeting's theme. Some argued that it would offend member states in UNESCO. This argument was flatly denied by the participating representatives of UNESCO, but to no avail.)

Notes

1. Hugh Davies: Repertoire Internationale des Musiques Electro-Acoustiques, International Electronic Music Catalog. London, 1967, The M.I.T. Press, 1968.

2. Lowell Cross: Electronic Music, 1948-1953 in Perspectives of New Music Vol. 7, No. 1, 1968.

3. L.A. Hiller and L.M. Isaacson: Experimental Music McGraw-Hill Book Co., N.Y. 1959.