Jean-Claude Risset

Exploration of timbre by analysis and synthesis

Publisher Summary This chapter explains the exploration of timbre by analysis and synthesis. Timber is referred as the quality of sound. It is the perceptual attribute that helps in distinguishing among orchestral instruments that are playing the same pitch and are equally loud. But, unlike loudness and pitch, timbre is not a well-defined perceptual attribute. The chapter explains that timber is that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which a listener can judge that two sounds similarly presented and having the same loudness and pitch are dissimilar. It seems that a form of timbral constancy is implied by the common observation that a sound source can be reliably identified over a wide variety of circumstances. For periodic tones, timbre depends upon spectrum. It has long been thought that musical tones are periodic, at least for most of their duration. Musical tones are often thought of as comprising three sections: attack, steady state, and decay. Helmholtz and his followers considered timbre to be determined by the spectrum of the steady state. However, this conception suffers from serious difficulties. Thus, the chapter briefly discusses the shortcomings of the classical conception.

Composing in real-time?

The author briefly describes his Duet for one pianist, which is probably the earliest instance of live interaction between performer and computer entirely within the realm of acoustic sounds. However the main point of the article is to draw attention upon problems related to real-time. Not only does the use of real-time systems bring limitations and difficulties for the durability of the music, but one may even argue that the concept of real-time concerns primarily performance and may be of little relevance to musical composition.

Real-World Sounds and Simulacra in my Computer Music

Abstract The author first emphasizes the fact that hearing mechanisms are adapted to performing investigations on the origin of sounds generated in an acoustic environment. He states his interest in staging encounters between the visible world of real sounds and the invisible world of digitized sounds: the former are constrained by their acoustic generation, while the latter can be termed illusory and devoid of material constraints. The author then comments on the use of metaphors, real world sounds and simulacra in his computer music, with special emphasis on the pieces Little Boy, Passages, Sud, Invisibles. He proposes that even though art involves artifice, the anchoring of inner perceptual mechanisms in the external, real world can justify the attraction of musicians to nature.

Horacio Vaggione: Towards a syntax of sound

This article stresses the important contribution of Horacio Vaggione to inserting the computer within a musical project. The theoretical contributions of Vaggione shed light upon the way he takes advantage of the computer in his musical activity—not merely for problem solving, but rather as a component of a complex system which intervenes in a genuine polyphony of processes involving a multiplicity of time scales. His musical works evidences concern and imagination concerning morphology: he builds sturdy structures from minute grains. His music reveals novel figures: while bringing to the ear a world made up of atoms, it manifests the arrow of time.

Symposium on Computer Music Composition

Author(s): Curtis Roads, Marc Battier, Clarence Barlow, John Bischoff, Herbert Brün, Joel Chadabe, Conrad Cummings, Giuseppe Englert, David Jaffe, Stephan Kaske, Otto Laske, JeanClaude Risset, David Rosenboom, Kaija Saariaho, Horacio Vaggione Reviewed work(s): Source: Computer Music Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 40-63 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3680297 . Accessed: 19/02/2012 20:36

Music: Ars Bene Movandi

I thank Richard Kronland-Martinet for inviting me to this exciting Symposium, which gathered participants from around the world in the Laboratoire de Mecanique et d’Acoustique of Marseille (LMA), where I have been working for more than thirty years.