I read the article a short week after i read Michel Chion's 
interview in the new WIRE regarding the same exact thing regarding 
tape music, acousmatics and real-time manipulation, wherein he 
recommends a guitar over RT manipulation.


On Tue Aug 05 09:25:32 EDT 2008, Michael Gogins 
 wrote:

> Yes, there was also an article/interview with Paul Lansky in the 
> New York Times -- I think it was yesterday, or anyway quite 
> recently -- about this.
> 
> Needless to say, I have no argument whatsoever with Paul Lansky's 
> decisions as a composer. I'm a big fan of his music, and I've 
> bought recordings of most of it.
> 
> But what Lansky is saying requires discussion. I think for many 
> of us, the major interest lies in Lansky's contention that 
> musical performers add something quite valuable to music as such. 
> It's not actually quite clear that Lansky's contention goes as 
> far as "music as such," but I'm sure many people will read it 
> that way.
> 
> I do agree that performers add something quite valuable to music 
> as it has been made to date, or to certain specific styles of 
> music, but I do NOT agree that performers can always add 
> something to music "as such". In fact, I think this idea has 
> positively harmed computer music and experimental music by 
> diverting composers to do interactive computer music. Although I 
> have heard some interactive computer music that I thought was 
> very good, and although I think this style should certainly be 
> pursued, I think that our field is definitely losing out by not 
> focusing more on what we used to call "tape music" where the 
> composer writes a program, or fiddles around on the computer, and 
> produces a soundfile that is the definitive rendering of a piece 
> of music.
> 
> Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, this is where the power is in 
> music. Not just in computer music -- in music, period. This is 
> where the authorship is, where the composing is. You can compose 
> the performance as well as the sound, and this is what is not 
> acknowledged by Lansky.
> 
> Lansky also oversimplifies the situation by not mentioning or 
> discussing what is actually the most common, indeed the dominant, 
> methodology of making music today, which is tracking. This is a 
> hybrid of performance and composition, where once musicians have 
> performed -- at home, in the recording studio, or even on stage 
> -- recordings are cut up into little pieces, processed and 
> transformed, and re-assembled (that is, re-composed) into a 
> simulated performance. A collage. This is not the way classical 
> music is made -- or at least, it is not the way classical music 
> is made on stage (although it increasingly is the way even 
> classical music is made into recordings). But it is the way most 
> popular music is made, and the way all film music is made. I 
> expect that, as time goes on, the amount of skilled performance 
> in the studio will continue to decline, leaving more and more of 
> the musical decisions up to the composer(s). And I also expect 
> that more and more of these decisions will be implemented 
> algorithmically. I don't expect the amount of skilled performance 
> to go to zero, or anything like zero, because it DOES add 
> something vital to many styles of music. And think there will 
> even be a revival of live performance, and not just for economic 
> reasons.
> 
> But I also expect that the artistic importance, and popularity, 
> of purely algorithmic music -- algorithmically synthesized, or 
> algorithmically composed, or both -- will gradually increase. 
> Partly for the same reasons that the artistic importance of 
> abstraction in the visual arts has gradually increased. But even 
> more, because the increasing power of the computer and of 
> software will continue to vastly, vastly increase the musical 
> resources available to the composer. I don't think it will ever 
> take over, but I do think it will become more and more important, 
> into the indefinite future. There is just no arguing with the 
> musical power of the complete, utter, and mind-expanding 
> abstraction that lies in the computer.
> 
> Regards,
> Mike
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: DavidW 
>> Sent: Aug 5, 2008 1:58 AM
>> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
>> Subject: [Csnd] Paul Lansky throws in the towel
>> 
>> Some of y'all might be interested in this thread about Paul 
>> Lansky's  move drop making CM which is occurring on the 
>> supercollider list:
>> http://www.nabble.com/Paul-Lansky-pulls-the-plug-to18817595.html#a18823931
>> 
>> it is referencing this article:
>> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/06/arts/emusic.php
>> (it took ages to load but that might be because the bits are 
>> slower in  winter)
>> 
>> 
>> ciao4now
>> 
>> David
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 



Patrick Pagano,M.F.A
Sound and Light Technologist
Nadine McGuire Theatre & Dance Pavilion
GAINESVILLE  FL  US  32611-5900
University Of Florida
(352) 273-1483