Music + Electronics + Live + Interactive Research Papers (original) (raw)

Computer-based interactive music systems date back as far as the late 1960s, but increasingly accessible technologies have prompted significant growth in interest in digital musical instruments (DMIs) over the last decade. To date, the designers of DMIs have generally borrowed paradigms from acoustic instruments or the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). However, it can be argued that DMIs are a fundamentally different case and the suitability of these paradigms is debatable at best. For instance, DMIs lack the haptic feedback of acoustic instruments. Musical instruments are also highly specialized rather than general-purpose tools, and musical performance is not typically task-based. Additionally, Jordà notes that their designers have tended to focus on isolated parts of the problem, to the detriment of instrumental cohesion and character. While a few authors have considered DMIs as more fully rounded constructions, and the term ‘composed instruments’ has been used to describe the specification of the input-output relationship as an intentional act of composition, we argue that this is insufficient. Drawing on theories of affordances and ecological music creation, we describe an alternative model that considers DMI design as part of a broader compositional process that also includes text and hybrid acoustic-digital space. The traditionally distinct roles of designer, composer and performer are seen to blur, and the notion of composition-specific instruments is discussed. As an example of the model in practice, the interdisciplinary collaborative piece Desire Lines is described. This serves to aid an initial assessment of the model and its implementation, and informs some remarks around its limitations and future possibilities.

- by and +2
- •
- Live Electronic Music, Music + Electronics + Live + Interactive, Live Electronics, HCI & Digital Musical instrument design
- by Alessandro Raeli
- •
- Music Education, Aesthetics, Music Technology, Music Aesthetics

Au cours des dernières années, l'apprentissage profond s'est établi comme la nouvelle méthode de référence pour les problèmes de classification audio et notamment la reconnaissance d'instruments. Cependant, ces modèles ne traitent généralement pas la classification de modes de jeux avancés, question pourtant centrale dans la composition contemporaine. Les quelques études réalisées se cantonnent à une évaluation sur une seule banque de sons, dont rien n'assure la généralisation sur des données réelles. Dans cet article, nous étendons les méthodes de l'état de l'art à la classification de modes de jeu instrumentaux en temps réel à partir d'enregistrements de solistes. Nous montrons qu'une combinaison de réseaux convolutionnels (CNN) et récurrents (RNN) permet d'obtenir d'excellents résultats sur un corpus homogène provenant de 5 banques de sons. Toutefois, leur performance s'affaiblit sensiblement sur un corpus hétérogène, ce qui pourrait indiquer une faible capacité à généraliser à des données réelles. Nous proposons des pistes pour résoudre ce problème. Enfin, nous détaillons plusieurs utilisations possibles de nos modèles dans le cadre de systèmes interactifs.

Questa tesi indaga attraverso la formula del Live Electronics il rapporto tra umano e non umano mettendo in relazione l’estemporaneità del performer strumentista con due mondi molto diversi: le macchine, che elaborano una serie di algoritmi all’interno di un computer, e il mondo organico delle piante. E’ possibile entrare in relazione sonora con il mondo vegetale? In che modo questa relazione viene filtrata attraverso l’uso delle macchine? Per quanto la natura biologica delle piante non segua dei parametri comprensibili per la natura umana, è possibile entrare in empatia con loro attraverso i mezzi tecnologici?

- by Edwin Lucchesi
- •
- Computer Science, Music, Musical Composition, Posthumanism

Краткая история электроакустической музыки, обобщение способы исполнения произведений для сольного фортепиано с живой электроникой, исследование исполнительских особенностей на примере трёх произведений: " ...sofferte onde serene..." Л.... more

Festival/conference at Tufts University, March 23-26, 2016, in collaboration with Harvard University

- by Anne C. Shreffler and +1
- •
- Electronic Music, Contemporary Music, Live Electroacoustics, Live Electronic Music

In recent years, the expansion and use of mobile Internet and social media have changed live music engagement and fandom quite considerably. It has not only allowed fans to find and connect with each other at shows, but also to tweet and text concert set-lists and other information as they happen, thereby allowing non-attendees around the world to feel part of the event. This study examines the responses of fans engaged in this activity, identifying the key themes and patterns apparent within this behaviour, arguing that fans are using social media and mobile technology in an effort to contest and reshape the boundaries of live music concerts. It demonstrates how these online tools are involving fans that are not physically present at the show, seemingly incorporating them into the real-time “live” experience. This article explores how fans of prolific touring artists U2 and Tori Amos undertake this, with assigned concert attendees tweeting the set-list to online fans, where they gather to enjoy the show together, from the comfort of their computers.

- by Lucy Bennett
- •
- Music, Technology, Media Studies, New Media

Il presente scritto riguarda un campo di indagine la cui definizione ha margini sfumati sia in ambito artistico che scientifico. L'arte tecnologica, aumentata e interattiva si presenta a prima vista come una materia talmente vasta e eterogenea da non avere direzioni di ricerca comune.
L'argomento generale affrontato ruota attorno all'interazione uomo macchina utilizzata come mezzo espressivo.
Una storia di questa materia, per tracciare la quale è stato necessario attingere da ambiti disciplinari diversi, è esposta nei primi quattro capitoli dello scritto.
La sezione centrale raccoglie analisi e riflessioni sull'interazione nell'intento di fornire spunti e stimoli per un'elaborazione personale del lettore.
Come ultimo elemento, nei due capitoli finali, viene presentato il lavoro pratico svolto fino ai primi mesi del 2017 da chi scrive, nel campo dell'interazione performativa.
In appendice, infine, si trova la relazione di un incontro con Ariella Vidach e Claudio Prati, pionieri italiani della danza interattiva.
In generale, questo scritto non si pone come un manuale ma piuttosto come un libro di riflessioni e pensieri sui sistemi interattivi nell'ambito dell'arte performativa, costantemente in bilico tra arte e tecnica, a cavallo di un confine sottile che separa discipline umanistiche e scientifiche.

The better quality pdf is downloadible from here: "http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/LEAVol19No3-Mailman.pdf
Through recent artistic practices and technology of interactive systems for music, composition and improvisation have more and more blended and interconnected with each other – a sui generis situation now called comprovisation. The concept of comprovisation applies equally well to the spontaneous generation and manipulation of computer graphics, especially as such graphics are systematically coordinated audio-visually, while being subject to spontaneous manipulation by a performer.
This is explained in terms of the Fluxations and FluxNoisations Human Body Interfaces, interactive dance systems that generate music and graphics spontaneously in response to hand and body movement. They enable spontaneous expressive shaping of coherent complexity and variety. Thus a multi-layered multimodal experience arises. The aesthetic experience of this multimedia spectacle relates to experiences of various prior music and visual art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, as well as to hypothetical physical realities. Thus a kind of cybernetic phenomenology of art is pursued and enacted through an embodied cybersynthesis of art with simulated alternate reality. Call it a pragmatic speculative realism, an adventurous technoetic ‘what if.’ As compared to more traditional forms of improvisation, the opportunities for risk-taking and aesthetic exploration rise to a new level of uncertainty, as the reactions of the improviser simultaneously draw from and target both visual and aural modalities, such that the intentions toward each fuse together."

- by Joshua B Mailman
- •
- Applied Mathematics, Set Theory, Algorithms, Human Computer Interaction
- by Trent C Leipert
- •
- Theodor Adorno, Jean-Luc Nancy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Electroacoustic Music

Questo articolo è focalizzato su Atomi distratti, un lavoro per ensemble e live electronics del compositore italiano Mario Garuti, ed è organizzato su tre differenti livelli:
1. analisi poietico-estesica del brano;
2. presentazione dell’ambiente esecutivo del live electronics approntato per la prima esecuzione;
3. elaborazione di un algoritmo di sintesi in ambiente Max/MSP per l’esecuzione della parte di tastiera elettronica.
Dopo una breve introduzione in cui si chiarisce l’idea all’origine delle scelte musicali operate nel brano, viene precisata la metodologia di approccio all’analisi.
Il primo livello include un’analisi dei cambiamenti contrastivi in cui viene mostrato come, in Atomi distratti, a un’organizzazione gerarchica debole (Imberty) corrisponda un’esperienza del tempo musicale coesa e unitaria, attraverso cui la rappresentazione simbolica e fantasmatica sottesa al
brano (proprio la frammentazione del tempo interno, mise en abyme dell’ipotesi stessa) viene trasmessa integra ed intelligibile. Al fine di ottenere un tracciato delle immagini linguistiche, poetiche, musicali ed extra-musicali all’origine
del brano viene utilizzato il mezzo dell’intervista, in cui il compositore è chiamato in prima persona a indagare il proprio lavoro.
Il secondo livello include due sotto-livelli: in primo luogo viene data descrizione del materiale pre-registrato e del suo ruolo nell’economia del brano, quindi una descrizione tecnologica dell’ambiente esecutivo del live electronics di Atomi distratti si accompagna a un’osservazione comparata longitudinale delle opere di Mario Garuti che includono in organico il mezzo elettronico, al fine di chiarire il ruolo del live electronics all’interno del brano e l’evolversi del rapporto che il compositore modenese intrattiene con l’elettronica nei suoi lavori. Anche in questo caso l’intervista è lo strumento privilegiato per accedere al mondo interno del compositore.
Il terzo livello è strutturato a partire da una traduzioneinterpretazione in termini tecnologici delle descrizioni, registrate utilizzando il mezzo dell’intervista, che il compositore fornisce dei due preset di tastiera elettronica presenti in partitura. Di seguito viene descritto il progetto per lo strumento di sintesi, della cui realizzazione in ambiente Max/MSP si dà descrizione nel paragrafo conclusivo

- by Marco Marinoni
- •
- Computer Science, Music, Musical Composition, Musicology

A proposal for developing a theory of interactive musical works by defining and evaluating 'interactivity' according to the type of control input, directness of control, sound techniques under control, performer type, and performance type.

- by Cathy Cox
- •
- Music, Music Theory, Musicology, Music Technology

Panayiotis Kokoras (Greece, 1974) is an active composer whose compositions were selected in over 280 international calls for scores, awarded over 70 prizes, and received more than 850 performances. In the oeuvre of Kokoras, instrumental chamber music and electronics play a prominent role. One can find spectralist influences in his style, as his compositions usually develop timbre-based musical structures. The scores of Kokoras meticulously explore the usage of extended techniques with continuous timbrical permutations. Kokoras self-defines his musical style under the umbrella term “holophony”. Holophony implies a musical texture where independent events (“φωνή”, “phone”, in Ancient Greek, “voice” or “sound”) lose their individual identity to be perceived as a whole (“όλος”, “holos”, which means “entire” or “whole”). This type of musical attitude can be traced back to the early 1950s with the development of Musique Concrète and Elektronische Musik.

- by Bohdan Syroyid Syroyid
- •
- Music, Musical Composition, Music Theory, Musicology

In questo articolo si opera un’analisi di Anthèmes 2, un
lavoro di Pierre Boulez datato 1997 per violino e dispositivo
elettronico della durata approssimativa di 20
minuti. Il brano del compositore francese, di estrema rilevanza
per ciò che concerne la storia della composizione legata
all'uso delle nuove tecnologie, è stato fatto oggetto di
analisi musicale e tecnologica condotte sulla partitura al
fine di individuare le strategie e i processi compositivi
messi in atto. I dati emersi sono stati in seguito posti a
confronto con le dichiarazioni del compositore: la sostanziale
concordanza tra queste ultime e le evidenze analitiche
ha permesso di costruire un quadro integrato di inferenze
circa l’approccio bouleziano al live electronics,
evidenziandone linee guida (asimmetria nel rapporto tra
strumento ed elettronica; monodirezionalità
dell’interazione; funzione demiurgica del compositore;
utilizzo della ridondanza all’interno di una drammaturgia;
finalità costruttiva del dialogo tra funzione mimetica/
elettronica e funzione diegetica/materiali strumentali) e
finalità (manipolazione mirata dei meccanismi psicologici
della fruizione). Ampia parte delle dichiarazioni rilasciate da Boulez in
occasione della prima esecuzione del brano (21 Ottobre
1997, IRCAM, Parigi) al filosofo e musicologo francese
Peter Szendy è stata appositamente tradotta in italiano e
inclusa in appendice.

The performances with gestural controllers and sensors today have not come to significantly diversify the standard instrumental practice with live electronics. In this paper, I discuss the history and evolution towards gestural performances while looking at the composers of the American avant-garde in the 1950s and 1960s as well as the developments in Amsterdam’s STEIM centre for electro acoustic instrumental research from 1980s to present time. I discuss the technical aspects of sensors and gestural controllers, highlight some artists who are working with similar sensor interfaces as myself, discuss my own practical research while illustrating difficulties and challenges in working with sensors and gestural control-like interfaces involving physicality and embodiment.

- by Solomiya Moroz
- •
- Interdisciplinarity, Gesture, Embodiment, Live Electronic Music

How do our embodied experiences of music shape our analysis, theorizing, and interpretation of musical texts, and our engagement with practices including composing, improvising, listening, and performing? Music, Analysis, and the Body: Experiments, Explorations, and Embodiments is a pioneering and timely essay collection uniting major and emerging scholars to consider how theory and analysis address music’s literal and figurative bodies. The essayists offer critical overviews of different theoretical approaches to music analysis and embodiment, then test and demonstrate their ideas in specific repertoires. The range of musics analysed is diverse: Western art music sits alongside non-Western repertoires, folk songs, jazz, sound art, audio-visual improvisations, soundtracks, sing-alongs, live events, popular songs, and the musical analysis of non-musical experiences. Topics examined include affect, agency, energetics, feel, gesture, metaphor, mimesis, rehearsal, subjectivity, and the objects of music analysis – as well as acoustic ecology, alterity, class, distraction, excess, political authority, sensoriality, technology, and transcendence. http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz.asp?nr=10683 review in MT Spectrum https://tinyurl.com/4dafdykc

- by Joshua B Mailman and +4
- •
- Music, Musicology, Embodiment, Embodied Mind and Cognition

The field of interactive music systems (IMSs), beginning in the 1980s, is still relatively young and fast moving. The field of music theory-analysis, during the same period (since 1980), has undergone a major transformation in terms of technological innovations, flexibility, and breadth. The two fields have not really caught up with each other. It will be interesting to see what arises as they do — especially as both fields have become more concerned with the role of the body and embodied cognition. Framed in terms of contrasting epistemological orientations, this essay considers some relevant developments in IMSs, music cognition, and music theory and analysis, leading up to the present. The most popular approaches to music cognition and to IMS design are rationalist (Ashby 2010), exploiting the ‘correct’ embodiments of music (Godøy 2004, Leman 2007, Paine 2009) based on affordances (Gibson 1977, Kelso 1998). This essay, however, advocates a pragmatist (Ashby 2010) approach inspired by music analysis and exploiting the potential of kinesthetic learning (associative learning). Prompted by a progressive approach to music analysis, theory, perception, and cognition (Dubiel 1999, Mailman 2007), interactive music technology can also be constructive, flexible, and progressive, by exploiting kinesthetic learning from immersion in new and unusual motion-to-sound mappings derived from dynamic formal processes in analysed music. In this way, immersive interactive systems offer an opportunity systematically to learn new associations based on principles theorised in response to analysis. Experience of these systems essentially ‘rewires the brain’, thereby exemplifying what Korsyn (2004) has attributed to Lewin’s (1986, 1987) approach to music perception: the ironist approach, as formulated by Rorty (1989). Thus a pragmatist ironist experimental (PIE) approach is articulated. Rather than committing to any particular ways music is already embodied, this approach acknowledges the flexible nature of embodied musical experience. It forges and uses interactive music technologies continually to redescribe and therefore reform how music is embodied, thereby disembodying to re-embody music, expanding how music is heard, contemplated and experienced.

- by Joshua B Mailman
- •
- Music, Musical Composition, Music Theory, Musicology

La création musicale contemporaine réclamant sans cesse de nouvelles sonorités, le musicien-compositeur a été amené dans la seconde moitié du XXème siècle à imaginer ou construire lui-même l'instrument qui incarnera son projet esthétique : quelques rares inventions ont pu ainsi passer à la postérité. Plutôt que de développer de nouveaux instruments, utiliser l'électronique pour élargir la palette de sons des instruments traditionnels s'est rapidement imposé comme une voie alternative et prometteuse. Elle permettait notamment de capitaliser sur le patrimoine gestuel des interprètes d'instruments traditionnels, aussi bien pour insuffler leur expressivité dans la musique que pour faciliter la diffusion des oeuvres. La première partie de ce mémoire est consacrée à une typologie des pratiques d'hybridation des instruments traditionnels par l'électronique, qui, de l'instrument virtuel à toutes les pratiques possibles de musique «mixte», constituent en réalité un continuum de réalités musicales aux frontières assez poreuses. La seconde partie est une présentation de l'instrument, un tam chinois, dont on se propose de réfléchir à l'hybridation : on prendra dans un premier temps le point de vue de l'acousticien avant de réfléchir dans la troisième partie, en tant que compositeur, sur l'opportunité et les finalités d'une telle hybridation. Une fois le cahier des charges fonctionnel de l'hybridation établi, commence la partie expérimentale de la recherche.
La quatrième et la cinquième partie explorent deux approches différentes d'hybridation (au sens de la typologie développée en première partie). Deux dispositifs matériels et logiciels sont définis et testés en studio; les résultats de ces tests sont comparés au cahier des charges. Seule la première approche aboutira à une création artistique sous la forme d'une pièce (Re/flexions I). La dernière partie pose la problématique et les enjeux d'une continuation de ce travail sous deux formes alternatives : un véritable instrument hybride où les traitements électroniques seraient commandés par la gestuelle du percussionniste, ou bien au contraire: une installation sonore interactive dont la conception serait guidée par une approche éco-systémique. Ils pourront donner lieu à une nouvelle itération du processus d'expérimentation.

- by Jean-Francois Ducher
- •
- Musical Composition, Musicology, Computer Music, Musical acoustics

O presente trabalho propõe uma análise e discussão a respeito do papel desempenhado pelas ferramentas digitais de produção, recepção e mediação sonora na produção musical contemporânea a partir de observações e análise de um repertório produzido no período entre 2010 e 2013 como parte da produção artística do grupo de pesquisas MOBILE: Processos Musicais Interativos, sediado na Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Esse repertório se insere na produção experimental contemporânea e se relaciona com a produção experimental não institucionalizada dentro do cenário de música experimental brasileira, por meio das relações de seus participantes com outros contextos produtivos, como festivais, núcleos e espaços dedicados ao fomento e à difusão dessa produção. Para fins de embasamento, é proposta uma discussão acerca da definição de música experimental, o esboço de uma perspectiva histórica das principais tendências que articulam a produção experimental contemporânea, assim como um levantamento sobre as principais questões que pautam a discussão atual a respeito do uso de ferramentas digitais na produção musical.

- by Jose Guilherme A Lima
- •
- Musicology, Computer Music, Interactive and Digital Media, Vilem Flusser

Martin Parker’s gruntCount is a multi-version, configurable composition for improvising musician (or musicians) and computer. Performers embark on a journey through sound processing modules that are specifically customised to individual playing styles. It exists in no fixed state, yet allows for a growing set of rehearsable, replicable and configurable pieces, in which all musical material, timing, overall duration and levels of effort are managed by the live musician. In order to optimise elements of flow and of liveness in each performance, gruntCount challenges traditional definitions of 'piece', ‘system’ and ‘instrument’, instead establishing an environment for human-machine improvisation that serves the musical result and not the system itself. This paper refers to a selection of sound examples from the bass clarinet version (2012-14) and examines formal time-shaping possibilities within a structured performance, while exploring the environment’s qualities of coaction and configurability in an era of new score types.

- by Pete Furniss
- •
- Music, Musical Composition, Improvisation, Music Technology

Este trabalho é fruto da pesquisa durante o mestrado em música da UFG, na linha Composição e Novas tecnologias e compreende um conjunto de composições acompanhado de um texto e exercícios em desenvolvimento de aplicativos computacionais voltados pra composição. O texto se divide em duas partes: a primeira é uma coleção de idéias, úteis ao compositor, organizadas sob a forma de estratégias composicionais. Onde o compositor interessado em compor música com ênfase na interação homem-máquina vai encontrar uma visão geral do desenvolvimento desse ramo e algumas estratégias e exercícios desenvolvidos no ambiente MAX/MSP que podem auxiliar ou conduzir um processo composicional. Na segunda parte são relatados os processos de composição de quatro peças, onde são detalhadas técnicas de programação em Csound, desenvolvimento de material composicional, idiomatismo e escrita instrumental.

This paper briefly summarizes a framework for optimizing real-time responsive musical agents to the playing preferences of an individual improvising musician. This optimization is achieved by employing an interactive evolutionary algorithm in which the tness of an agents behavior is evaluated by a performer in the creative moment, through the use of an unobtrusive physical interface.

The first part of this essay describes some of Hugh Davies’s self-built instruments, focusing on their material characteristics and playing techniques. The context in which Davies’s instrument-building practice developed is outlined, and four themes that characterise his work are proposed: economy, materiality, community, and environment. The second part of the essay focuses on present-day electronic and digital instrument-building practices. A number of practitioners whose work has been directly influenced by Davies are discussed. Finally, some more speculative suggestions are made concerning how Davies’s practice might indirectly be connected—in terms of three of the themes mentioned previously—to the present-day practice of live-coding. This essay describes research in progress, and as such does not present any concrete conclusions. The research is being carried out as part of an AHRC-funded project in partnership with The Science Museum. For further information see http://hughdaviesproject.wordpress.com.

This work looks at improvisations produced by the OMax, ImproteK, and Djazz ML generators, through the lens of the elements of music and suggests a musically-oriented evaluation methodology. This idiomatic music analysis is presented from a jazz performer's point of view, reflecting upon cognitive foundations of emotion and meaning. The analysis, based mainly on the evaluation of already published material and on the authors' own experiments, shows musical drawbacks in terms of tension and release of the resulting melodic lines, voice leading of chords, rhythm, groove, dynamic control, and structure.

- by Dimitri Smailis
- •
- Artificial Intelligence, Jazz Studies And New Media, Education, Machine Learning

The four media Ages developed during the history of mankind, currently synchronic, are clarifying aesthetic positions that often oppose themselves between deferred time and the real time in the production of a musical work. In reality, these approaches complement each other: there is real time (the performance-sequence) in the studio composition, and deferred time in the preparation of "live" improvisations. The same spatial figures are developed within the multichannel composition. they are also structuring interpretation in concert.

- by Bjorn Charles Dreyer
- •
- Soundscape Studies, Electronic Music, Guitar, Soundscape (Music)

Text for the first Round Table at the conference: UTOPIAN LISTENING - the Late Electroacoustic Music of Luigi Nono Technologies, Aesthetics, Histories, Futures International Conference/Workshop/Concerts March 23-26, 2016 Tufts University,... more

Text for the first Round Table at the conference: UTOPIAN LISTENING - the Late Electroacoustic Music of Luigi Nono
Technologies, Aesthetics, Histories, Futures
International Conference/Workshop/Concerts
March 23-26, 2016
Tufts University, Medford, MA

Mixed pieces combining instruments and electronics call for extending the conventional concepts of pitch, duration, dynamics and timbre. A preoccupation with pitch in the instrumental domain is opposed to a predominance of timbral thinking in the acousmatic domain. Composers need to find links between these prevailing notions. Smalley's continua between note and noise/gesture and texture embrace a wide range of possible transformations. Applying these continua to the instrumental and the electronic domain dissolves the fixation of lattice-based with instrumental, and sound-object with electronic music. In mixed pieces, the play with expectations of what each medium should be doing leads to intricate relationships. This paper will explain aesthetic ideas and compositional techniques evolving from pieces that equally draw on acousmatic and instrumental idioms. For my piece Atmungsaktiv I developed a set of generative tools on the basis of spectral transformations. The paper will describe their technical implications and the way they enable a structurally cohesive approach – which is equally applicable to electronic and instrumental writing. A less stringent separation of instrumental and electronic music combines a variety of characteristics; it also demands compositional solutions which penetrate both domains. Introduction From the perspective of the composer, acousmatic art and instrumental music can seem like two entirely different media. In the acousmatic domain the composer directly crafts sound as it will be performed in the concert hall. In instrumental music the composer relies on performers to interpret the written score. While in acousmatic art recordings taken from the environment may be employed to evoke associations with real situations, the sounds produced by musical instruments are rendered solely for the purpose of music making. The physical foundations of the two media exhibit distinct features. Sound projected over loudspeakers is marked by directionality and clear definition – both in terms of its spatial field and its covered frequency range. Instrumental sound features a spatial and timbral complexity which can vary dramatically between individual instruments and players. Acousmatic art is advantaged by the fact that sound events can be fixed at any point on a continuous time-line. Rhythmic complexity is achieved by exploiting complex inner rhythm structures of sounds. In instrumental music the tempo differs from one performance to the next. Written tempo markings result in sometimes drastically different interpretations. In acousmatic art, the continuum of the frequency spectrum, with upper and lower bounds determined only by the human hearing, serves as starting point for pitch organisation – but pitch is only one parameter, without priority, sometimes even absent, within organisational strategies. Instrumental music deals with tuning systems, and composers are given the choice to accept, avoid or modify the existing possibilities. A more in depth consideration of the tools used for realising instrumental music and acousmatic art will illuminate further differences. However, the comparison also reveals contact points between the two domains.

- by Matthias Strassmüller
- •
- Musical Composition, Composition (Music), Spectral Music, Acousmatic

Diese Arbeit versucht einen Überblick über die Entwicklung der Elektronischen Musik zu geben, die in Verbindung mit Instrumenten und Interpreten in kammermusikalischen Konfigurationen wie Solo- und Ensemble-Kompositionen steht, und als Live-Elektronik bekannt ist.
Das vorliegende Werk soll dazu beitragen, ein besseres Verständnis über die Elektroakustische Musik in der Realzeit zu vermitteln. Sie entsteht mit Hilfe von Interpreten auf der Bühne, wobei das klangliche „Basismaterial“ während einer Aufführung umgewandelt wird.
Anhand der unterschiedlichen Definitionen wird im Kapitel 1 der Begriff Live-Elektronik näher beleuchtet.
Hilfreich ist dabei die Darstellung des geschichtlichen Abrisses der Entwicklung der Elektronischen Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, die zur Entstehung der L.-E. führte. Mit Hilfe des historischen Überblicks ist auch eine Einteilung in einzelne Stadien möglich. Als Vorschritte zählen die Versuche des Komponisten John Cage, die er schon seit Ende der 1930er Jahre unternahm, setzte sich fort mit dem Komponisten Karlheinz Stockhausen, der seit den späten 1950er Jahren sich immer mehr der L.-E. annäherte, bis hin zu den Werken der 1980er und 1990er Jahren, die zum Teil im Studio der Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung des Südwestfunks (heute SWR) und des IRCAMs (Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique) entstanden sind.

This paper presents the Expressionist, a three-dimensional human interface designed to enhance human vocal expression through interactive electronic voice filtering. The system is composed of a two-handed magnetic motion sensing controller and a computer program that processes the recorded voice of the operator based on the performer’s body motion. This system is designed for electroacoustic vocal performers who are interested in multimedia live performances and wish to explore the possibilities of using body movement to enrich musical expression.

- by Xiaoci Wu
- •
- Improvisation, Performing Arts, Computer Music, Virtual Reality (Computer Graphics)

Au cours des dernieres annees, l'apprentissage profond s'est etabli comme la nouvelle methode de reference pour les problemes de classification audio et notamment la reconnaissance d'instruments. Cependant, ces modeles ne traitent generalement pas la classification de modes de jeux avances, question pourtant centrale dans la composition contemporaine. Les quelques etudes realisees se cantonnent a une evaluation sur une seule banque de sons, dont rien n'assure la generalisation sur des donnees reelles. Dans cet article, nous etendons les methodes de l'etat de l'art a la classification de modes de jeu instrumentaux en temps reel a partir d'enregistrements de solistes. Nous montrons qu'une combinaison de reseaux convolutionnels (CNN) et recurrents (RNN) permet d'obtenir d'excellents resultats sur un corpus homogene provenant de 5 banques de sons. Toutefois, leur performance s'affaiblit sensiblement sur un corpus heterogene, ce qui pourrait in...

Against the backdrop of what I would like to call ‘radical vocality’ as a notion to reconsider vocal art history, I will focus on the social and aesthetic implications of extended techniques – including body movements – in vocal performance art. Starting from the disposition of the human singing voice – if we can conceive such a thing – and its extensions as well as its distortions by means of technology, I will discuss a conceptual framework that re-attaches the aesthetic implications of the phonographic practice, such as it developed through ‘schizophonia’ and interactivity, to the social realm of experience in terms of vocal space, vocalic body, activism of voice, the listener’s attention, acoustic community and finally, aurality. My contribution will bring together some of my latest research on interactive music, locative media and other new forms of connectivity in an attempt to conceptualize and analyze a rehabilitated sense of ‘community’ through the experience of voice in the digital age.

While the relationship between music making and technology has been, for some, a controversial topic, all musical instruments are actually inherently technological. This essay traces the evolving history of musical instrument builders harnessing electronic technologies, from the Theremin to David Tudor, the Sonic Arts Union, and more recent interactive developments, including the early work of the author. From Tav+ (Haifa), 2007.

- by Bob Gluck
- •
- Electroacoustic Music, Jazz Studies, Jazz Improvisation, Live Electronic Music

This article shows how the theremin as a new musical medium enacted a double logic throughout its century-old techno-cultural life. On the one hand, in an attempt to be a ‘better’ instrument, the theremin imitated or remediated traditional musical instruments and in this way affirmed the musical values these instruments materialised; simultaneously, by being a new and different medium, with unprecedented flexibility for designing sound and human–machine interaction, it eroded and challenged these same values and gradually enacted change. On the other hand, the theremin inadvertently inaugurated a practice of musical instrument circulation using electronics schematics that allowed for the instrument’s reproduction, starting with the publication of schematics and tutorials in amateur electronics magazines and which can be seen as a predecessor to today’s circulation of open source code. This circulation practice, which I call instrument-code transduction, emerged from and was amplifie...

Achim Szepanski è stato uno degli eroi degli anni ‘90 grazie all’invenzione e alla promozione visionaria di Mille Plateaux (1994-2004), la celebre etichetta musicale con base a Francoforte. In virtù della sua peculiare teoria filosofica... more

- by Paolo Davoli and +3
- •
- Music, Music Theory, Musicology, Philosophy

The design of and performance with sensor-based musical instruments poses specific opportunities and challenges in the translation of the performer's physical gestures into sound. The use of muscle biosignals allows directly integrating aspects of a performer's physical gesture into the human-machine interaction and compositional strategies which characterise a digital musical instrument (DMI). The highly personal musical techniques of a few instrument-builders and performers has the potential to evolve into more general musical performance practice, used by a range of artists, composers and students. In order to meet this challenge, there is a need to address the issue of usability of those musical techniques and to clearly specify the advantages that physiological computing offers. This paper describes the principles and challenges of physiological computing for musical performance with DMIs, focusing on muscle-based interaction. This approach is presented through the discussion of two musical interaction modalilties, biocontrol and biophysical. We report on three recent studies looking at multimodal muscle sensing and feature extraction to explain the potential of those methods to inform DMI design and performance. Opportunities for future research are delineated, including the implementation of gesture recognition and gesture variation following for the creation of adaptive DMIs.

Earle Brown’s “25 pages for 1 to 25 pianos” is a typical “open form” composition, which let a range of variables up to the performer’s decision. We explain why it represents a good case study for a web interactive implementation, on a musical as well as on a computing point of view. Then we describe how this implementation is being done in Java, discuss problems, solutions and on-going developments.

In this chapter, grounded in my music production practice, I investigate the various affordances of iOS apps in the field of electronic music production. Drawing on affordance theory and notions of portability and performativity, I consider how contemporary technologies have generated renewed approaches to electronic music production and performance. My analysis shows that portable, touchscreen technologies offer new ways of interaction and musical expression, and facilitate experimentation, which empower producers to redefine their methods of music creation in the contemporary digital space.

El artículo analiza una práctica cultural específica que responde a las formas de uso de dispositivos móviles interconectados en espacios de ocio y entretenimiento. El autor toma esta práctica como un objeto de conocimiento específico. Para ello, recurre a aportes de la psicología cognitiva instrumentada por el modelo genético-cultural de Vygotski (1978), desarrollada a su vez por Rolando García (2006) y Pablo del Río (2006), para vincularla con algunos postulados del concepto de servomecanismo de Marshall McLuhan (1964), así como con el concepto de técnicas culturales de Frederich Kittler (1998) y Sybille Krämer (2006).

- by Esau Bravo
- •
- Music, Cognition, Leisure, Music + Electronics + Live + Interactive

Como forma de estruturar uma investigação sobre o uso do computador como instrumento musical, o presente artigo relata um levantamento sobre o desenvolvimento de sistemas de computação com finalidades musicais buscando uma aproximação com os estudos sobre gesto musical, tendo como marco teórico a produção de Bernadete Zagonel e Fernando Iazzetta sobre o tema. Esta investigação sugere que o potencial do gesto musical físico ainda é pouco explorado no desenvolvimento destes sistemas, em que prevalece a noção do gesto mental.

- by Jose Guilherme A Lima
- •
- Computer Music, Interactive Arts, Max/MSP/Jitter, Interactive Music