I like your point about the conceptual process of electroacoustic music not 
being fundamentally different from that of instrumental music.  A professor 
I had once pointed out to me that she noticed that whenever people discuss a 
piece of electroacoustic music, they always discuss the technology (hardware 
and software) and technical means used to realize the piece, whereas 
whenever people discusss an unfamiliar piece of instruemental music, they 
always discuss the aesthetic or compositional techniques.  Discussions of 
compositional technique/aesthetics seem to be far less common when it comes 
to electroacoustic music.  (It's always, "So how did you get that sound? 
What platform are you using?")  I'm pretty new to CSound, but I've been 
composing in both the electroacoustic and instrumental media for about ten 
years now.  Most of my work tends to blur boundaries - I love applying sound 
processing concepts from synthesis to the instrumental realm, and scoring 
for mixed ensembles.


>From: SME 
>Reply-To: smeroma@tin.it
>To: Michael Rhoades 
>CC: Csound List 
>Subject: Re: Approaches to Composition
>Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 09:24:58 +0200
>
>Hello Michael, hello all Csounders,
>
>as a composer and a computer music professor since 25 years, I can tell
>there's no unique answer.
>The fact is, Csound is mainly a tool, not a compositional software
>(provided that such a thing can exist!).
>I am conviced there's no main difference between thinking a piece for
>instruments and a piece for electroacoustics.
>I mean, the first idea of a new piece always begins in the brain (or
>heart, the one you like better), and only when it takes a "physical"
>form I can see a difference. To me, music is "what", media are "how".
>Clearly, the "how" can modify the "what", but the original idea is left
>unchanged, even if it can take different forms.
>Coming to Csound, as I like the maximum of control over the score, I
>make little use of the "automatic generation" features of the language.
>I prefer to write my own score-generation program(s) (usually in Visual
>Basic).
>The most important thing, to me, is that with a set of tools like Csound
>and related software (soundfiles editor, general purpose programming
>languages and so on) we can really have a close contact with the sound.
>
>
>Michael Rhoades wrote:
> >
> > Hello All,
> >      We have a great programming language (getting better all the time)
> > which gives nearly unlimited technical ability in the composition of 
>music.
> > We have the machines capable of rendering these programs to sound files. 
>The
> > question then becomes, what to compose. What are your compositional
> > attitudes, approaches or techniques? What direction has inspiration sent
> > you?
> > What are your plans for the future? With this wonderful tool, many have
> > simply expanded on previous styles or approaches. One has to wonder what
> > truly new direction we will take. It's up to us to decide, we are 
>presently
> > the future of music.
> >     I am curious to see your comments.
> >
> > Michael Rhoades
>
>--
>***********************************
>* Scuola di Musica elettronica    *
>* Conservatorio "S.Cecilia", Roma *
>* prof. Riccardo Bianchini        *
>*                                 *
>* http://space.tin.it/musica/ilipc*
>***********************************
>


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