[microsound] musical structure

Paulo Mouat paulo.mouat at gmail.com
Fri Sep 18 19:04:04 EDT 2009


This is very interesting indeed and almost diametrically opposed to my
approach.
My own principles:
- No synthesized sound (I only use processed acoustic sounds or musical
phrases--filtered and/or stretched and/or contracted repeatedly)
- Retain the 'organic' character of the sounds
- Everything (onsets, durations, pitch shifts) is determined from the sound
itself, although I might nudge things into place here and there

Some consequences of the above principles:
- No live interaction (it's more like tape music)
- There's no concept of individual "notes", but rather "events"
- All "gestures" come from each individual sound, they are not hand-built
from separate notes or events
- Apart from the nudging, I just "let the sounds be" (to paraphrase Feldman)

I do have works that fall outside these parameters (and I am currently
playing with the notion of using synthesized sound), however these
principles have been my focus for the last 10 years. To hear what has come
out of all this, check the pieces on the page in my signature. The pieces I
am most happy with are "Menons klagen um Diotima" (where all material
derives from a 15-sec violin solo phrase) and "Konzentrische" (where all
material derives from an orchestral passage).

//p
http://www.interdisciplina.org/00.0

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Korhan Erel <listekutusu at gmail.com> wrote:

> My principles in digital instrument design on the laptop:
>
> - No random processes - everything is determined by the instrument player
> - No long delays or reverbs that keep on processing the sound even after
> the player has stopped playing. Instrument makes sound when triggered and
> stops when the trigger (nowadays either a Wiimote or an iPod Touch running
> TouchOSC)
> - No wide frequency ranges - every instrument can play only a certain range
> of frequencies at any given time - the total range may be wide, but you
> don't hear the full sound spectrum at the same time
> - The instrument does not require looking at the laptop screen - the player
> may look at it from time to time, just like a guitar player looking at the
> fretboard occasionally, but the instrument's playability should not depend
> on the player focusing on the screen all the time
>
> Since I play almost exclusively with other musicians, most of them being
> acoustic instrumentalists, these principles allow me to play with them, to
> create space for them, to remain silent whenever I feel it's necessary....
>
> My sound sources are usually samples (own sound designs, location
> recordings, recordings from my analog setup) being scanned LiSa-like (using
> Live's Simpler instrument). There may or may not be some processing of these
> sounds, usually the processing is nothing more than playback speed change
> and a slight touch of reverb.
>
> Korhan
>
>
>
>
> On 15.Eyl.2009, at 09:12, Kim Cascone wrote:
>
>  I'm gathering some info for a lecture I'm giving about structure in laptop
>> music (read: electro-acoustic, noise, microsound, etc).
>>
>> What sorts of structure do people use in creating their work?
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