[microsound] Electroacoustic techniques

Tue Feb 23 16:22:26 EST 2010

These answers are interesting, and do suggest one possible approach,
which seems to be to let the electronic timbres grow out of the
timbres being produced by the acoustic instruments.

However, I don't seem to be able to find any concrete information on
how, for instance, I might use CSound or other software to emulate
such techniques...

CSound is itself a monster of a program to learn, so anything that
might point me towards useful techniques might be useful--I can
produce basic sounds but I'm not fully sure how to create a workflow
and actually compose with it. Creating instruments that respond to
MIDI does look somewhat promising, and I suppose I could go as far as
creating an instrument for each electronic sound I wish to create, and
simply trigger as needed.

I sometimes feel like despite all the advances done with electronic
music tools, it is extremely time consuming to do anything nontrivial,
involving many hours of set up; whereas I can write something
extremely intricate for, say, violin and piano, and get the most
incredible palette of sounds by writing a few notes on a piece of
paper. I don't understand why it should be so inherently hard to
create anything "musical" with electronic means??? I don't feel the
need to build my own piano and violin to write for piano and violin,
yet I feel like that is what I'm being required to do to compose
electronic music.

One side note, is that for the first run of things, I'm only making a
recording... so I don't need things to work in realtime per-se, they
just need to be able to be aligned with a score. I will also probably
use MIDI for the piano part, since I don't have the means to record a
proper piano right now, so that gives me some additional flexibility.
I'm hoping what I learn could eventually be extended to actual live
performances with acoustic instruments, but I don't have to get all
the way there in one leap.

I currently don't have any way to access either JSTOR to get articles,
or the scores of the works mentioned, although the Avant Garde Project
at least has Subotnick audio files, which I'm downloading this very
minute.

It is unfortunate that despite the supposed open access to information
provide by the internet, much of the good stuff is locked away and
only accessible to university students and faculty, unless one has a
fair amount of disposable income. In the last year this problem has
been hampering me more and more, to the point where I am considering
enrolling in university courses simply to afford access to research...

~David

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Steven Ricks <stevericksmusic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms are essential pieces if you're
> interested in a "traditional" approach to composing for traditional Western
> acoustic instruments plus electronics.  All of them include scores which
> become increasingly more specific in terms of notating what the electronics
> are doing and how the live instrument syncs up with them.
>
> I apologize if I've misunderstood your question and these works are known to
> you.  Anyway, in an an interview with guitarist David Starobin, Davidovsky
> says something to the effect of wanting to imbed the sound of the guitar (or
> whatever instrument he's dealing with) into the electronics, and vice
> versa.  It's an approach in which the sounds/timbres of the two mediums are
> meant to dovetail and be closely related, at least much of the time.
>
> SR
>
> On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Randal Davis <randal_davis at operamail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> David,
>>
>> You might start by looking into Morton Subotnick's "ghost scores."  You
>> can find some program and technical notes on his website, recordings and
>> additional texts at the Avant Garde Project site, and a good article from
>> some years back in The Musical Quarterly (requires JSTOR access).
>>
>> I'd look particularly closely at the works in The Double Life of
>> Amphibians, which include works for solo cello, solo voice and string
>> quartet (all with electronic "ghost scores."
>>
>> RD
>>
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "David Powers" <cyborgk at gmail.com>
>> > To: microsound at microsound.org
>> > Subject: [microsound] Electroacoustic techniques
>> > Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:03:26 -0600
>> >
>> >
>> > Greetings,
>> >
>> > For a new project (actually Pi Day), I have decided to take a
>> > different route and compose my piece in a more traditional manner,
>> > basically as a piano piece, and then add in electronic elements, some
>> > of which will probably be based on probabilities and some more or less
>> > notated.
>> >
>> > So with that being said, in my mind the great weakness in the classic
>> > books for electronic techniques that I've read ('Formalized Music' and
>> > 'Microsound') is that, in my opinion, they fail to bridge the gap
>> > between the world of composing as I know it, and new ways of
>> > approaching sound. I am not interested in discarding traditional
>> > techniques but rather extending them.
>> >
>> > So, I would be interested to hear from composers who work with
>> > traditional musical materials and instruments alongside electronic,
>> > especially those who use "normal" notation, manipulate cells and
>> > motives, and do not rely on improvisation for the performance of the
>> > electronic elements. How do you approach the use of electronics in
>> > your work? How do you bridge the gap in sound between the electronic
>> > and acoustic elements in your piece? Any software and technology that
>> > you find to be especially helpful? If you work on micro timescales,
>> > how do you bridge the gap between that timescale and the more normal
>> > timescale of notated music?
>> >
>> > I'm considering finally digging into CSound to do the current piece;
>> > the other options that occur to me offhand are ChucK, for the Physical
>> > Modeling code, and PD, which I know reasonably well but usually only
>> > use to generate data which I send via MIDI or OSC elsewhere. Any
>> > advice would be appreciated.
>> >
>> > ~David
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > microsound mailing list
>> > microsound at microsound.org
>> > http://or8.net/mailman/listinfo/microsound
>>
>> >
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Steven Ricks
> Composer
> Associate Professor, BYU School of Music
> (801) 422-6115
> www.stevericks.com
>
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