[microsound] Electroacoustic techniques

[Lorenzo]

Hi again,..


>> 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.
>>      
> I don't really think that this is a fair way of looking at this. Writing intricate yet functional things for traditional instruments require years of training. Playing those instruments also require a massive amount of training. Why should composing for and playing with electronic instruments be different in this sense? It is hard for me to play the violin for example, because I am not trained to play that instrument. But I can write some music for violin because I worked on that stuff. It took some years of my life to do that. It would be extremely frustrating for me to do it properly, otherwise. Same goes with electronic instruments. After all, they don't generate musically interesting sounds that fit into a particular composer's intents, automagically.
>    
I agree on that, any art needs mastering and electronic music is no 
exception, and I still consider myself more of a learner at this stage.
>> 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...
>>      
> I'd suggest an environment agnostic learning approach to sound synthesis first. Tools/Instruments like CSound usually assume that you already know with what "recipe" you are going to create the sounds you have in mind, and they provide the necessary tools for you to achieve them. The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads, although quite thorough, will be an excellent resource if you are serious about getting your hands dirty with electronic sound generation and manipulation in general. You can experiment with the concepts as you go, in an environment of your own choosing. You may start by trying things out with regular software synthesizers and work your way up from there by building your own sound synthesizers (if need arises) in a musical programming language (with a clear image in mind, of what to expect).
>
> Since Max, PD and CSound are mentioned, I should add, you may want to look into SuperCollider too. But please be aware that these environments are only tools/instruments and being able to create interesting experiences with them (easily and comfortably) is not  something that will happen overnight. :)
>    
But I guess one has to chose a tool to get hands dirty :) otherwise 
everything is very theoretical, I mean one can read 100 tutorials on FM 
synthesis 'in theory' but /*/listening* to it is something different... 
with training one can imagine how some synthesis algorithm will probably 
sound, just like the trained composer can hear in 'one's head' how a 
part will sound by just reading the score, but again that needs training.

Best,
Lorenzo
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