Curtis Roads

Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music—notes and their intervals—into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into other sounds. Composers have used theories of microsound in computer music since the 1950s. Distinguished practitioners include Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. Today, with the increased interest in computer and electronic music, many young composers and software synthesis developers are exploring its advantages. Covering all aspects of composition with sound particles, Microsound offers composition theory, historical accounts, technical overviews, acoustical experiments, descriptions of musical works, and aesthetic reflections. The book is accompanied by an audio CD of examples.

Microsound

Electronic music evokes new sensations, feelings, and thoughts in both composers and listeners. Opening the door to an unlimited universe of sound, it engages spatialization as an integral aspect of composition and focuses on sound transformation as a core structural strategy. In this new domain, pitch occurs as a flowing and ephemeral substance that can be bent, modulated, or dissolved into noise. Similarly, time occurs not merely as a fixed duration subdivided by ratios, but as a plastic medium that can be generated, modulated, reversed, warped, scrambled, and granulated. Envelope and waveform undulations on all time scales interweave to generate form. The power of algorithmic methods amplify the capabilities of music technology. Taken together, these constitute game-changing possibilities. This convergence of technical and aesthetic trends prompts the need for a new text focused on the opportunities of a sound oriented, multiscale approach to composition of electronic music. Sound oriented means a practice that takes place in the presence of sound. Multiscale means an approach that takes into account the perceptual and physical reality of multiple, interacting time scales-each of which can be composed. After more than a century of research and development, now is an appropriate moment to step back and reevaluate all that has changed under the ground of artistic practice. Composing Electronic Music outlines a new theory of composition based on the toolkit of electronic music techniques. The theory consists of a framework of concepts and a vocabulary of terms describing musical materials, their transformation, and their organization. Central to this discourse is the notion of narrative structure in composition-how sounds are born, interact, transform, and die. It presents a guidebook: a tour of facts, history, commentary, opinions, and pointers to interesting ideas and new possibilities to consider and explore.

A New Aesthetic

Composing Electronic Music

John Strawn

Professor of Media Arts and Technology Curtis Roads

A guide to using computers to create music that includes information on digital audio, synthesis techniques, signal processing, musical input devices, editing systems, and performance software.

The Computer Music Tutorial

Expanded, updated, and fully revised—the definitive introduction to electronic music is ready for new generations of students. Essential and state-of-the-art, The Computer Music Tutorial, second edition is a singular text that introduces computer and electronic music, explains its motivations, and puts topics into context. Curtis Roads’s step-by-step presentation orients musicians, engineers, scientists, and anyone else new to computer and electronic music. The new edition continues to be the definitive tutorial on all aspects of computer music, including digital audio, signal processing, musical input devices, performance software, editing systems, algorithmic composition, MIDI, and psychoacoustics, but the second edition also reflects the enormous growth of the field since the book’s original publication in 1996. New chapters cover up-to-date topics like virtual analog, pulsar synthesis, concatenative synthesis, spectrum analysis by atomic decomposition, Open Sound Control, spectrum editors, and instrument and patch editors. Exhaustively referenced and cross-referenced, the second edition adds hundreds of new figures and references to the original charts, diagrams, screen images, and photographs in order to explain basic concepts and terms. Features New chapters: virtual analog, pulsar synthesis, concatenative synthesis, spectrum analysis by atomic decomposition, Open Sound Control, spectrum editors, instrument and patch editors, and an appendix on machine learning Two thousand references support the book’s descriptions and point readers to further study Mathematical notation and program code examples used only when necessary Twenty-five years of classroom, seminar, and workshop use inform the pace and level of the material

The Computer Music Tutorial, second edition

In The Music Machine, Curtis Roads brings together 53 classic articles published in Computer Music Journal between 1980 and 1985.

Selected Readings from Computer Music Journal

The Music Machine

Aldo Piccialli

Stephen Travis Pope

Giovanni De Poli

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Curtis Roads

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