Music 'similarity'

I recently discovered that, as an artist, I am 100% similar to the following:

• Humair, Ducret, Chevillon + Eskelin
• Muhal Richard Abrams & Roscoe Mitchell 
• The Fonda / Stevens Group
• Jean-François Bovard Et La Compagnie d'Eustache 

And that the genres I'm working in are Juma, Gammarec, and freepurp1e. Now I have to find out what those are...

Machine Learning Systems in Concert

My partner in crime (Dr. Bob Sturm) and I recently hosted a concert of music co-created with computers. The concert ended with the first performance of my piece Bastard Tunes:

Read about the composition process of this piece and about the research that went into creating the system.

'Folk' Tune 'Arrangements'

Standing on the shoulders of giants such as Bartok or Berio, I recently finished writing an ensemble piece titled Bastard Tunes. The piece was composed with the help of a machine learning system trained on transcriptions of Celtic music. The system produces short melodies that share many characteristics with the style it learned. But, with the possible exception of the fourth Bastard Tune, my piece applies more freedom in the way the system's output is used as compositional material. The piece will be premiered in a concert with other examples of music composed by and with computers.

Electronic Music - not so very new

120years.net provides a wealth of information on developments in electronic music. 

"The focus of this project is in exploring the main themes of electronic instrument design and development previous to 1970 (and therefore isn’t intended as an exhaustive list of recent commercial synthesisers or software packages.) As well as creating a free, encyclopaedic, pedagogical resource on the History of Electronic Music"

Music-Sound-Design

Blurring the lines between sound design and music, between diegetic and non:

Graphic Score

This set displays a variety of approaches to graphic representation of sound. This group effort results in a full 'score' for a fairly extensive composition:

Risset's Rhythm illusion

An analogy of the endless glissando is an ever increasing (or decreasing) tempo. The method is explained here. Dan Stowell  created a version with supercollider.

Pd patches

• A repository for Pd with an interactive website, examples patches, and documentation of a variety of project.
•  Pd website includes a section of patches shared by users
• A modular synth build with Pd with some examples. 

Automatic composition

In the words of the author:

"Autocousmatic generates electroacoustic music intended for acousmatic presentation. Based only on a seed directory of source sound files, a desired duration and number of output channels, the program creates multi-channel spectromorphological tape pieces. Audio analysis capabilities are used to discover 'useful' portions of sound files and assess processed files. The project investigates a deeper relation from machine listening to algorithmic composition tasks, and welcomes feedback."

Listen to some of the examples on the website and judge for yourself. And you can read Nick's CMJ article about the system.

Endless glissando

This is an illustrated video of a famous auditory illusion:

R. Murray Schaffer talks about soundscape

R. Murray Schafer - WFAE2011 from sonicstudies on Vimeo.

Spectral Music

Some examples:

• Gerard Grisey: Partiels
• Kaija Saariaho: Verblendungen
• Giacinto Scelsi: Konx-Om-Pax (though it wasn't called spectralism then). 
• Jonathan Harvey: Still. 

François Rose's Perspective of New Music article explains some of the composition methods.

Live coding

Here is a documentary explaining what is live coding. And a version of Reich's Piano Phase done with live coding. 

Analysing electroacoustic music

New sounds, new techniques, new approaches to understanding(?):

• Several Analysis articles from eContact.
• The orema project is a growing resource with analysis examples, discussion of approaches, and other useful resources.
• Rajmil Fischman's graphic score for Point-virgule.
• graphic score of Schaeffer's Etude aux Objects. 
• And a temporal analysis of another Schaeffer study. 

Soundscape Composition

Listen:


Organised Sound 7:1 is an issue dedicated to soundscape composition with papers by some prominent practitioners including Hilegard Westerkamp and Barry Truax. 
Issue 14:1, on the topic of sound art, also has good, relevant articles. While issue 16:3 (listening) is also highly relevant.
Andra McCartney on Soundscape composition and electroacoustic music. 

Interaction

Analogue 'sequencer' using distance sensor (with the arduino platform).
Silent Drum from Jaime Oliver (not jamie) using Pd/Gem to map gesture to audio creating a new instrument.

Non-standard notation

When using live electronic manipulation of sound composer's often resort to non-standard forms of notation.

• Pedro Rebelo uses various notation idea including graphic scores and partially notated instructions in many of his pieces. Exposure is one example (video of performance and downloadable score) but you can also look at other examples on his site.

• Another score which combines conventional notation with graphics is Echoic by Edgar Barroso (scroll down to hear a recording of the piece).

• Other interesting examples include Harvey's Advaya and Pres by Saariaho (both for cello).

Paul Lansky

American composer Paul Lansky has been involved with electronic music since the 70s. His piece Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion uses a processing technique called linear predictive coding (LPC) to transform a recorded voice. He is using a single reading of the poem to generate 6 'versions' of the poem. Three of those are available on his website (compare, for instance,  'Her Reflection' with 'Her Song').  Notjustmoreidelchatter is another voice based piece. You can read more about Lansky, with detailed examination of several of his compositions.

Delay

This chapter from Miller Puckette covers all aspects of delays very well with several examples of how you create and use delays for different effects in Pd. A video tutorial covering the basic Pd objects for delay and reverb. A different approach to reveb is using convolution (a technique that can be used very effectively for processing sounds).

Noise and Subtractive Synthesis

We use the term noise for:

a) auditory sensation arising in response to non-periodic sound waves/signals, with flat and dense spectral distributions (vibrational/physical frame of reference) 

b) auditory sensation that is undesirable/unpleasant/unintended within a given context, interfering with auditory sensations that are desirable/pleasant/intended (i.e. sounds) within the same context (cognitive/semantic frame of reference, focusing on communication)

 Vassilakis et al lecture notes 

Also see Truax about the meaning of noise. 

A tutorial about using filters for subtractive synthesis (see also section 4-3 & 4-4 Music & Computers). Noise elements are actually used in music often, a very interesting example is the work of Italian composer Luigi Nono. Other examples include Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai (alva noto) - Impulse or Fades.
and this is an article explaining different approaches to noise generation refining our understanding of the range of possible sounds: 

Atomic noise

KRISTOFFER JENSEN (2005).
Organised Sound, Volume 10, Issue01, April 2005 pp 75-81
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=306542