| Hi. The CSound List introduction that I received said that I shoud write
a short bio of myself. I'm a CSound novice, though I've done a fair bit
of hobby synthesis over the years on a variety of instruments, mainly
digital but also analogue.
I've done the occasional bit of music synthesis programming too, mainly
in C on Silicon Graphics machines.
This year, I'm involved with some Sound for Multimedia courses for both
undergraduate and graduate multimedia courses. We'll (I'm officially
responsible for the courses, but a professional musician will be
teaching most of the material (I'll be covering mainly a one hour
tutorial on programming issues).
However, what I've seen of CSound so far has knocked me out, and I'm
really enthusiastic about using this incredibly powerful, if rather
difficult to learn (I saw the quote 'vertical learning curve'
somewhere) tool in my own (hobby) music.
Being what's known in Japan as a 'Kuchi ga heranai yatsu' ('someone whose
mouth never runs out'), I have to respond to one of the emails that
I've received.
Oliver wrote:
> I have to say something about a BIG problem in NEW music.
> Sorry, this is still not about CSound even if I am one of it fanatics.
>
> Don't you think nothing happened since maybe 15-20 years? OK, there are new
> sounds, new technics of composition and so on. But after having seen many and
> many concerts, I feel a bit like Varese.
My opinion (for what it's worth) is, if you think this, then why don't you
do something about it by inventing the new wave of music yourself? In
popular music at least, it's said that sudden steps forward sometimes come
after periods of stagnation (e.g. Beatles). I personally think that electronic
dance music is where the most new ideas are evolving, but that's a popular
music form, and those interested in more serious or academic music forms
probably disagree.
Could anyone point me towards academic resources concerning stochaistic/
generative music. In my ignorance I thought that the current application
of this (not the concept itself, didn't Mozart write a paper on the
composition of waltzes by the use of die?) was fairly new. As a fan of
popular music, many of my preferred artists are those who take elements of
more serious forms of music and present them in a more consumable form
(Varese through Zappa, Minimalism through Eno etc.)
What about interactive music, which is quite technically possible with
modern technology? (E.g. I haven't yet learned how CSound interacts
with realtime MIDI, but this should allow one aspect of interaction
between the listener and the music). This isn't new, as live musicians
and groups thereof can interact with their audience, but perhaps linking
the listener directly into the guts of a synthesis engine itself would
give quite different results.
Personally I think that some modern techno music sounds (to my non-academic
ears) more like (e.g.) African percussive music than traditional melody+
harmony, defined structure western music, based around complex interacting,
evolving patters. But, it sounds quite different. If we wanted to, we
could say that after Og the caveperson first made audio sounds for
enjoyment, the concept of 'music' was old hat.
(Prepares to be shot down in flames by the 'real' musicians :-))
Cheers,
Ross-c |