Marco Stroppa

Live electronics or…live music? Towards a critique of interaction

Interactive systems are throughly scrutinized in the lengthy article. Of particular interest to the author are the question of space and sound projection, interpretation of electronic sounds and the relationship between performer and technology.

Omchroma: Compositional control of sound synthesis

Control of Sound Synthesis Carlos Agon,∗ Jean Bresson,∗ and Marco Stroppa† ∗Sciences et technologies de la musique et du son (STMS) Lab: Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/ Musique (IRCAM)/ centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS)/ Universite Pierre et Marie Curie–Paris 6 (UPMC) 1, Place I. Stravinsky 75004 Paris, France {carlos.agon, jean.bresson}@ircam.fr †University of Music and the Performing Arts Urbanstr. 25, 70182 Stuttgart, Germany stroppa@mh-stuttgart.de

Musical information organisms: An approach to composition

This text is the beginning of a formalized reflection on some poetic aspects of my present compositional world. After a brief survey of our historical background, a general conceptual framework, inspired by research in knowledge representation and categorization, is established. Using two complementary representational systems, I develop a microworld paradigm, the paradigm which first sparks my imagination. Higher-level musical structures, considered as evolving societies in morphological spaces, are then examined, including the overall form of a piece. Excerpts from my own work are analyzed in terms of the writing techniques which are adopted. Finally, a few extensions to this compositional approach are succinctly discussed, together with some of the consequences that challenge traditional perception, analysis, performance, and interpretation.

Reduction as a transition controller for sound synthesis events

We present an application of reduction and higher-order functions in a recent computer-aided composition project. Our objective is the generation of control data for the Chant sound synthesizer using OpenMusic (OM), a domain-specific visual programming environment based on Common Lisp. The system we present allows to compose sounds by combining synthesis events in sequences. After the definition of the compositional primitives determining these events, we handle their sequencing, transitions and possible overlapping/fusion using a special fold operator. The artistic context of this project is the production of the opera Re Orso, premiered in 2012 at the Opera Comique, Paris.