Keynote Session 3 – Teresa Marrin Nakra: Insights on musical expression: Conductors, musicians and Audiences

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,…

- What exactly is musical expression? It really depends on your point of view. As a classical musician you’d think about great artists. What do great artists do that is directly communicative? To express emotions. It has all to do with emotion (and also personality, but more emotion).
- Depending on the conductor a piece can be difficult or easy to play: it has to do with gestures and emotional expression, even on the face. Some conductors have a particular magic that can lift up the orchestra. This idea is the core of musical expression. It is about shaping the expression.
- The other aspect about musical expression and emotion is about being able to connect with an emotion that is inside of you. You’ve got to have something to express. (example of how after 9/11 her father started singing 7 days a week instead of 2)
- Music as a form of communication. Start with Claude Shannon’s ” A mathematical theory of communication” (1948) –> information source, transmitter, signal, noise source, received signal, receiver, message, destination. Source as a carries wave and the transmitter as a modulation to think of this in a musical model.
- Theories of emotion and music: Plato and Aristotle, Leonard Meyer, Leonard Bernstein, Marvin Minsky, Manfred Clynes, David Huron, Daniel Levitin.
- Promising Quantitative Methods: used to verify our theories. Analysis f Herbert von Karajan’s pulse rate while conducting and while piloting a jet aircraft. Heartbeat seems to be connected to emotional arousal.
- Dan Machover’s Brain Opera (with Paradiso) –> the digital baton
- Then built the device called the “Conductor Jacket” (1997 – 2000) with R. Picard (het dissertation about this is available online)
- Research collaboration with Levitin and McAdams with the Boston Symphony Orchestra as a follow-up to the conductor’s jacket.
- Also analysis of vertical position of conducting gestures
- development of a conducting system for education applications (Conducting Jacket)
- Application for entertainment: Boston Children’s music exhibition: “You are the Conductor”
- Nintendo Wii Orchestra: promotional video shows the face of the players and video’s of the system in use shows only the program and a moving hand.
- The digital orchestra League: www.digitalorchestraleague.com. Turing test for the orchestra machine. David Smith: “We are 5% there… does Moore’s Law apply to digital orchestras”
- Future Goals: Research on emotional contagion and microexpression (Ekman and Condon). Also more collaborations with orchestras and classical musicians

Keynote Session 2 – Trimpin

Trimpin, a sound sculptor, composer, inventor, is one of the most stimulating one-man forces in music today. A specialist in interfacing computers with traditional acoustic instruments, he has developed a myriad of methods for playing, trombones, cymbals, pianos, and so forth with Macintosh computers. He has collaborated frequently with Conlon Nancarrow, realizing the composer’s piano roll compositions through various media. At the 1989 Composer-to-Composer conference in Telluride, Colorado, Trimpin created a Macintosh-controlled device that allowed one of Nancarrow’s short studies for player piano to be performed by mallets striking 100 Dutch wooden shoes arranged in a horseshoe from the edge of the balcony at the Sheridan Opera House. He also prepared a performance of Nancarrow’s studies at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for New Music America in 1989.

Trimpin was born in southwestern Germany, near the Black Forest. His early musical training began at the age of eight, learning woodwinds and brass instruments. In later years he developed an allergic reaction to metal which prevented him from pursuing a career in music, so he turned to electro-mechanical engineering. Afterwards, he spent several years living and studying in Berlin where he received his Master’s Degree from the University of Berlin.

Eventually he became interested in acoustical sets while working in theater productions with Samuel Beckett and Rick Cluchey, director of the San Quentin Drama Workshop. From 1985-87 he co-chaired the Electronic Music Department of the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.

Trimpin now resides in Seattle where numerous instruments that defy description adorn his amazing studio. In describing his work, Trimpin sums it up as “extending the traditional boundaries of instruments and the sounds they’re capable of producing by mechanically operating them. Although they’re computer-driven, they’re still real instruments making real sounds, but with another dimension added, that of spatial distribution. What I’m trying to do is go beyond human physical limitations to play instruments in such a way that no matter how complex the composition of the timing, it can be pushed over the limits.” source

Trimpin on Wikipedia

Keynote Session 1 – Perry Cook: Principles for Controlling Computer Music Designers

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,…

Principles for Controlling Computer Music Designers
Keynote Session 1 – Perry Cook, Princeton University, Computer Science (also Music)

Book by Perry Cook: “The beautiful Voice and the Machine”

A follow up and update on the first NIME01 conference “Principles for Designing Computer Music Controllers”

Goals:
1 Revisit the 13 principles
2 What do they mean
3 Are they true today?
4 Add some more principles based on NIMEs and other since and based on teaching

Original Principles:
1 Programmability is a curse
Still true today, easy to add complexity, features, bandwidth
We should make instr. that can be understood, can be learned, can be played, can live on (and programmability works against all these points)
We should make pieces that; are actually performed, are actually listened to (by peers and general audience)
2 “Smart” Instruments are often not
Still true today, AI (Machine Learning). Machines may learn but don’t let the users know this
3 Copying an instrument is dumb, leveraging expert technique is smart
Leveraging examples: R-Bow and BoSSA, Hyperbow, vBow, Overtone Violin, Many others
4 Some players have spare bandwidth, some do not
Less true today
trumpets have 3 valves, a clarinetist is pretty busy
New Sensors give us new means to sense and map those to musical interesting things as well
5 Make a piece, not an instrument
Still very much true, we should actually perform for audiences on our interfaces and instruments
Ideally we should observe and work with others
6 Instant music, subtlety later
Still true,.. think about the piano and ourselves as infants,.. immediate sound and slowly developing skills.
Think about complexity, learning, retention, persistence expression and fun
7 MIDI = Miracle, Industry, Designed, Inadequate
Still an easy path to a quick prototype,.. pro’s and cons,,. but,.. now there is OSC
8 Batteries, Die (command, not an observation)
Things are getting better now,.. we are still waiting for those wind, solar, and hydrogen fuel cells etc.
9 Wires are not that bad (compared to wireless)
This point has definitely changed: 802.11, Bluetooth (Wii, Sparkfun), Zigbee, Roll-your-own Radio)
Still, wires are not that bad
[Demonstrates the lettuce shaker,.. accelerometer in a lettuce that controls a shaker algorithm with different sounds]
10 New algorithms suggest new controllers (and mappings)
Still True: PHISEM,.. unprepared piano, PHOLISE/Gaitlab, Scanned Synthesis, PHYSMISM
11 New Controllers suggest new algorithms
Still True, Radio Baton, Jmug, Fglass, P-Ray’s Cafe, Interval: Pork-o-phone, Stick(s), Nukelele,..
12 Existing Instruments Suggest new Controllers
Still true, Cook/Morrill Trumpet, BoSSA, SqueezeVox, Accordiatron, DigitalDoo, COWE, VOMID, Etabla/Sitar, many others
13 Everyday objects suggest good (and amusing) musical controllers
lots of examples,… be creative ad think like a child

Some New Principles:
14 More van be better! (but hard)
PLOrk (15+ laptops)
15 Music+Engineering is a great Teaching/Marketing Tool
Public interest, student interest, motivation for Teaching
16 The Younger the student, the more fearless

Conclusions: NIME has grown, we’ve learned and build a lot,.. there is still a lot to do,… new technology and new ideas,.. keep up the work!