JUST TYPED ALONG WITH THE SESSION SO EVERYTHING IS STILL PRETTY MESSY, NO LINKS INCLUDED AND POSSIBLE FAULTS ARE MY OWN RATHER THAN THE SPEAKERS,…
* Erkki Kurenniemi’s Electronic Musical Instruments of the 1960’s and 1970’s
Mikko Ojanen, Jari Suominen, Titti Kallio
MISSED
* The Acoustic, the Digital and the Body: A Survey on Musical Instruments
Thor Magnusson, Enrike Hurtado Mendieta
- University of Sussex, Huddersfield University
- research of interactive modes in musical software
- free and opensource software is on the website
- propagating opensource software and the sharing of knowledge
- Research focus: dual semiotic stance of the user of the software
- designer of creative software has to be aware of this fact
- What does it mean to be a consumer of musical software
- does it make sense to talk about “software interpretation”?
- environment in supercollider: various instruments
- you have the ability to code in realtime
- interested in the software as the “neuro instrument” of the software
- people can create and modify their instruments
- what is a digital instrument? –> people have different opinions, here we did not try to define it
- focus: control interaction, instrument entropy, affordance and constraints, creativity: the epistemic tool as the prime mover
- phenomenological: based on experience
- Participants: mailing lists for audio programming languages, conservatories, universities and orchestras
- 210 replies of which 9 were female
- linux (45), osx (88), windows (105), average age 45(!)
- acoustic instruments positive: tactile feedback, limitations are inspiring, traditions and legacy, depth, instrument becomes 2nd nature, embodied experience, no latency, easy to express mood, extrovert state when playing
- acoustic instruments negative: lacking in range, no editing, no memory or intelligence, prone to cliche playing, too much tradition, no experimentation in design, inflexible, less microtonalities or tunings, no inharmonic spectra
- digital instruments positive: free from traditions, experimental, any sound and interface, freedom in mapping, designed for specific needs, automation and intelligence, good for composing, easier to get into, not as limited to tonal music
- digital instruments negative: lacking in substance no legacy, no haptic feedback, latency, disembodied experience, lacking social conventions, slave to the historic, limitation to the acoustic, introvert state when playing, no haptic feedback
- Conclusion: people work with the best of both worlds, design around the constraints of each, digital is playing and composition in once, the entropy of acoustic instruments is important, open-source: people express the importance in freedom in expression, open standards, etc etc…..
* Ten Years of Tablet Musical Interfaces
Michael Zbyszynski, Matthew Wright, Ali Momeni
- UC Berkeley Centre for new Music
- interfaces with a future, interfaces with a past: “towards a theoretical formulation of the Long New”
- What makes a good musical controller: advantages of standard controllers: low cost and availability, leading to,.. redundancy and replaceability / General characteristics: high resolution output data, fine temporal accuracy, multiple axes of control.
- Tactile reference: the player touches it (haptic feedback), spatial coordinates are absolute, leverages fine motor control and writing/drawing experience, leaves the other hand free to do something else
- Precedents: many, including: Xenakis UPIC Sstem, Boie/Mathews/Schloss Radio Drum
- opensoundcontrol.org (OSC wraper between controllers and sound maker processes. This facilitates a max patch to document this and opens up for a wrapper to change and remap things
- Matt Wright: interactive instruments, he makes performance templates from samples of recordings of real players
- Wacom objects for Max/MSP
- Ali Momeni: parameter interpolation space, multi-touch sensors (wacom and contact mic),
- temporal resolution and accuracy leaves something to be desired
* Expression and Its Discontents: Toward an Ecology of Musical Creation
Michael Gurevich, Jeffrey Treviño
- dominant model of creation –> ecological model of creation
The Dominant model of creation in the NIME discourse:
- Defining creation through expression: “deviation” and ” deformation”: implied determinate artistic content. Is there something else that needs to be expressed through music than sounds? Composer: creation, performer: expression. Where is the interpretation.
- Are there expressive interfaces? In the NIME discourse we are locating expression in the interface / quantifying expression. Is expression a unified flow of quantities.
- “Performance communicate musical expression to listeners by a process of coding. Listeners receive musical expression by decoding” (Poepel)
- Experimentalism as non-expressive creation “the shortest path between two people is not a straight line” (Earle Brown)
- The medium as active participant
- Relationships between composers, performance and listeners: any form of configuration may exist. It’s also about context and surrounding elements and influences, economics, authorship, etc. Of paramount importance is that expression is an option.
- Applications: imitation of expression by machines, interfaces/mappings to facilitate traditional expression, develop new expressive cues within the text/act model. We should question expression as the goal.
* Live Coding Practice
Nick Collins (Click Nollins?)
- makes powerpoint presentation on the fly,.. not using: he uses supercollider instead to generate a clock for how much time he has left. Then generates a random numberin order to show how many quotes he will give. What is live coding? defenition: when musicians and artists can express themselves immediately through a program. “Humans make dynamic cogs within the threads of rule systems which rewrite themselves”
- online live coding performance video: “Study in Keith”
- www.toplap.org
- In the paper he goes through pedagogical issues and suggest practice and exercises.
- What about live coding together with live musicians? Live Coding cards can inform musicians what to do.
- Is live coding a scene by now?
- skill acquisition of violin: 3 hours a day for 10 years,… how much do you have to practice to become a live coder?
- ” Teach yourself programming in 10 years” = website
- question: where do you draw the line between what you’ll prepare at home and what you do live? What is considered cheating in the scene?
* Natural Interfaces for Musical Expression: Physiphones as primordial Infra-Instruments
Steve Mann
- Hydraulophones as Physiphones
- organolog (ethnomusicology): strings, percussion, wind: strings and percussion are more similar to each other than to wind)
- Geaphones make sound from matter in its solid state, wind: make sound from matter in gas-like sound
- idiophone (3d solid), membranophone (2d solid), chordophone (1d solid), Aerophone (gas), Electrophone (informatic), note again that the first three are more similar to each other than the last two.
- there also can be a physics based organology: solid (1, 2 and 3d), liquid, gas, plasma, informatic: Greek names correspond to earth, water, wind, fire and Quintessence (idea)
- So what is the complete orchestra?
- presents the “self-cleaning keyboard” a water-based flute in a public park
- presents the “global village fountain and immersive multimedia”: physiphones, electric xylophones, hyper-hydraulophone, cyborg instruments.
- presents “splash page”: a waterfall musical instrument
- The KEY to good music is to PLAY in the water
* Wireless sensor interface and gesture-follower for music pedagogy
Frederic Bevilacqua, Fabrice Guedy, Emmanuel Flety, Nicolas Leroy, Norbert Schnell
- Wireless Interface: requirements: compact size and weight, handheld interfaces, augmented string interfaces
- Custum XBee digitizer: 6 inputs, 10bits, 5ms / Ethernet receiver/base untit / OSC compliant data / Li-Po battery
- 5 output sensor (sparkfun combo board)
- Parallel use of units is possible
- Examples: dance (it’s wearable), augmented instruments
- gesture follower: analyze data in real time and compare it to already learned gestures,.. the device learns these gestures (you’ll need a “training fase”)
- The program reacts only on gestural changes so ths means you can do a particular gesture slower or faster and possibly speeding a coupled sound up or down.,… or control any other parameter
- This device can be used for training conductors
- Preliminary studies encouraging: scenarios stimulating the interaction between theory and practice, etc.
- gesture follower: free download at http://ftm.ircam.fr
