Computer Music: An Interactive Documentary, Interactive CD-ROM for Macintosh and Windows

Abstract

Music: An Interactive Documentary contains a wealth of information useful to anyone interested in using computers in conjunction with musical composition, performance, or recording. Instructional sound and video clips cover many important concepts, ranging from the nature of binary systems to various types of synthesis, from digital sampling, editing, and processing to composing with instruments. Informal presentations by manufacturers' representatives serve to introduce viewers to various commercial sequencing, notation, and digital editing software. The use of CD-ROM to disseminate such information is a natural choice, since this medium can utilize the very technology discussed in order to present video, sound, text, and animated graphics. Many relevant issues are difficult to explain quickly without such instructional aids. Music takes full advantage of the means available to elucidate many complex concepts, resulting in segments that could benefit beginning electronic-music classes or technophobe musicians. One of the primary advantages of the CD-ROM medium is the random access it offers to all the information on a disk, resulting in the much vaunted liberation from the tyranny of linearity. This new freedom can be either revelatory and exhilarating or confusing and discouraging, and Music has its share of both extremes. Although most of the individual clips are quite coherent, it is not always easy to find a lucid and satisfying path from one topic to another. The content itself ranges from vitally important and clearly presented material to unedited informal conversation, but the juxtaposition of the two can be either refreshing or disappointing, as clearly both the tone and the density of the information vacillate much too widely. One moment the viewer is in a college classroom, and the next in a guitar shop, talking with a salesperson. This approach could be seen as an attempt to provide something for everyone, but the transitions are disconcerting. The user interface with Music includes several useful and fairly standard features. Always visible along the bottom of the window are buttons offering access to such features as a glossary of sixty-five terms, an index of all forty-eight video clips and their transcripts, and a notebook for writing and saving notes. But the primary means of interacting with the program is through the image of a video jukebox, the face of which offers a choice of four basic categories. Each features four compact-disc icons, which can be dragged to a slot and played. The categories themselves are somewhat enigmatic: Tech Tunes, MIDI, and Composition. The largest section, Tech Tunes, contains modules (represented by CD icons) entitled Innovation, How Computers Make Music, Digital Signals, and Digital Recording, and includes theoretical background, product-specific instructions, and visionary remarks by artists. In the Synthesis section (Sounds, Basic Instruments, Sound Synthesis, and Acoustic Modeling), most of the modules are narrated animations, and they cover in some detail such topics as hearing, basic parameters of sound, digital representation and manipulation of sound, various types of synthesis, and a brief history of computer music. The section (featuring Galaxy of Sounds, MIDI Basics, Sampling Sounds, and MIDI Instruments) includes narrated animations and conversations with engineers to present basic concepts, sampling, a demonstration of how a composer/performer might use a setup, and a guided tour inside a synthesizer, with an engineer pointing out various hardware components and their functions. In the Composition section (which includes Sequencing, Composing, Computer Music, and Making Music), composers and engineers present segments concerned with sequencing, notation software, and composing with computers. …