Marc Battier

Musical Software: Descriptions and Abstractions of Sound Generation and Mixing

We feel that the IC itself represents a process which encounters, interacts with, and controls other processes. These processes can be other ICs, or system processes defined in the software. This type of approach to musical software is related to other current research, especially that dealing with data flow languages (Dennis 1974), communication among parallel processes (Atkinson and Hewitt 1976; Hewitt and Baker 1977), and the description and formalization of coroutine networks (Kahn and McQueen 1977). We will describe new kinds of operators and configurations of pipeline stages that have been implemented at GAIV as a result of the musical and interactive character of the processes we have studied. Our implementations have been based on the Vincennes version of LISP, VLISP (Chailloux 1975) and the low-level language INTELGREU. The set of process descriptions we will present has not been based on theoretical presuppositions. Rather, it has been formulated on the basis of experi nce gathered from the use of our systems in a performance setting, which has allowed us to gradually correct and perfect these systems, as well as from analysis of musical works from the past in terms of data flow and data base (Greussay 1973). Performance experience seems indispensable to us for the verification of software tools, abstract or real. Indeed, contrary to the studio situation, we are faced immediately with-the consequences of our decisions: from the outset, unrealistic or unfeasible viewpoints must be eliminated. Furthermore, we can experiment with the actual representation of musical processes employed by professional musicians, following the lead of experiments on the representation of musical processes in children carried out in the LOGO laboratory at M.I.T. (Bamberger 1976). Analysis by computer of musical works from the past allows us to verify our concepts in compositions. One of the theories supported by GAIV is that a successful composition is, in a certa n sense, an improvisation (Dalmasso 1980). In this way we are trying to think, in computer science terms, of the processes of (score) reading, f reshadowing of later events in a piece (or the lack of it), improvisation, planning, and composition. Finally, we should add that we are not trying to establish a theory of musical/instrumental processes. To be sure, we shall, without exception, use a schematic representation to describe data and proComputer Music Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3, Fall 1980, 0148-9267/80/020040-08

To Listen and To See: Making and Using Electronic Instruments

04.00/0 @ 1980 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Symposium on Computer Music Composition

ABSTRACT: This article addresses problems in the relationship between performer and musical instrument. The author presents “synchronicity,” a concept introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and proposes that sound and gesture should be events in synchronicity relative to the performer. This is an alternative to the traditional Western view that the world is ruled by causality. Electronic instruments have a noncausal character, and synchronicity defines an attitude that takes this factor into account. Two simple and inexpensive gesture instruments are presented as practical applications: the Dada Glove and the Sonar System.

Hyperprism-PPC Version 1.2.1 (review)

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