Aaron Einbond

Real-Time Analysis of Sensory Dissonance

We describe a tool for real-time musical analysis based on a measure of roughness, the principal element of sensory dissonance. While most historical musical analysis is based on the notated score, our tool permits analysis of a recorded or live audio signal in its full complexity. We proceed from the work of Richard Parncutt and Ernst Terhardt, extending their algorithms for the psychoacoustic analysis of harmony to be used for the live analysis of spectral data. This allows for the study of a wider variety of timbrally-rich acoustic or electronic sounds which was not possible with previous algorithms. Further, the direct treatment of audio signal facilitates a wide range of analytical applications, from the comparison of multiple recordings of the same musical work to the real-time analysis of a live performance. Our algorithm is programmed in C as an external object for the program Max/MSP. Taking musical examples by Arnold Schoenberg, Gerard Grisey and Iannis Xenakis, our algorithm yields varying roughness estimates depending on instrumental orchestration or electronic texture, confirming our intuitive understanding that timbre affects sensory dissonance. This is one of the many possibilities this tool presents for analysis and composition of music that is timbrally-dynamic and microtonally-complex.

Noise in and as music

Noise In and As Music Cassidy, Aaron and Einbond, Aaron (2013) Noise in and as music. University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield. ISBN 978-1-86218-118-2 The book’s focus is the practice of noise and its relationship to music, and in particular the role of noise as musical material—as form, as sound, as notation or interface, as a medium for listening, as provocation, as data

Mapping the Klangdom Live: Cartographies for Piano with Two Performers and Electronics

The use of high-density loudspeaker arrays (HDLAs) has recently experienced rapid growth in a wide variety of technical and aesthetic approaches. Still less explored, however, are applications to interactive music with live acoustic instruments. How can immersive spatialization accompany an instrument already with its own rich spatial diffusion pattern, like the grand piano, in the context of a score-based concert work? Potential models include treating the spatialized electronic sound in analogy to the diffusion pattern of the instrument, with spatial dimensions parametrized as functions of timbral features. Another approach is to map the concert hall as a three-dimensional projection of the instruments internal physical layout, a kind of virtual sonic microscope. Or, the diffusion of electronic spatial sound can be treated as an independent polyphonic element, complementary to but not dependent upon the instruments own spatial characteristics. Cartographies (2014), for piano with two performers and electronics, explores each of these models individually and in combination, as well as their technical implementation with the Meyer Sound Matrix3 system of the Südwestrundfunk Experimentalstudio in Freiburg, Germany, and the 43.4-channel Klangdom of the Institut für Musik und Akustik at the Zentrum für Kunst und Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. The process of composing, producing, and performing the work raises intriguing questions, and invaluable hints, for the composition and performance of live interactive works with HDLAs in the future.