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>From: mps@is.com (Michael Pelz-Sherman)
>
>Oh what the hey, I'll jump in on this one...
(snipped stuff I agree with)
>For my money, there's no substitute for a great melody
>line, played with feeling, or intricate, complex rhythms that dance on
the edge of notateability.
>Striking that perfect balance between change and continuity, the proper
relationship between
>time and materials, etc. Coaxing these out of a machine is damn hard
work, and computational methods are
>severely handicapped in this area.
But the work is worthwhile, yes? Or do you feel that it's just an
unsatisfying substitute for unavailable musicians or instruments?
>Tools like CSound offer so much signal processing power that one is
tempted to focus on timbre to the
>exclusion of all else.
I disagree. I consider it an advantage of csound, cmix, etc. that there
are possibilities for timbral control beyond anything that exists with
acoustic instruments. The possibility of writing music focused on
structures of timbre rather than of pitch greatly enriches the world, at
least for me.
>The problem with CSound, and with most electronic music, is that it
lacks
>the dynamic interaction between composer, performer, instrument, and
audience that gives traditional music
>its expressive power.
"It's not a bug, it's a feature." Speaking as someone who also plays and
composes for some run-of-the-mill "real" instruments (electric bass,
guitar, voice), when I am composing by typing a score file, or an rt
note list, or whatever, I find the non-realtime aspect of it completely
fascinating. There's something eerie and compelling about the
relationship between what I think I am writing and what comes out of the
DAC. The first sound is almost always surprising. After that there is
the process of editing the instructions, adding to the instruments, etc.
in a "dialogue" with the test playbacks. I can get into a contemplative
mode that is most similar to experiences I have had with sculpting--
adding something, stepping back and looking at the whole, stepping
forward and moving some large structural parts around, cutting off a
small bit, tacking on something else, stepping back again ... this
process is very involving and deeply satisfying and is very unlike what
I do with a guitar and a noteboook.
>IMO, the really hard, truly interesting problems of computer music are
not in
>how to produce beautiful sounds, but how to imbue the computer with the
musical "common sense" that
>made the careers of Mozart, Beethoven and Stravinsky possible.
?? What is this "common sense"? You're talking about some pretty
uncommon composers there. If you mean that you want your electronic
music to sound intuitively similar to familiar acoustic music, well,
that's one way to do it... though I've never seen the point myself. If
I've misunderstood you... well then I've misunderstood you!
--PW
==============================================================
Paul Winkler --- music & sound --- zarmzarm@hotmail.com
a member of
ARMS --- an ongoing pop music experiment --- our first album,
URBAN SUNDIAL is now available.....on CD, vinyl, and cassette
from Label 12 13..................contact: sonic113@pobox.com
Also -- improvised & electronic music releases are coming real
soon, dirt cheap from plan B cassette works and label 12 13...
==============================================================
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