Instruments That Learn, Refined Controllers, and Source Model Loudspeakers

Abstract

On this occasion of the celebration of John Pierce's 80th birthday, I would like to share with you three wishes for future developments in computer music. The technologies that I propose are already in the air and experimentation is under way, but more computational horsepower, better theory and practice, and cost-effective implementations will be required before these proposed dream machine technologies can grow into real musical use. I should share my biases with you at the onset to help motivate and limit these speculations. First of all, I come from a jazz background. I am very interested in improvisation. I like to hear and participate in musical discourse; by this I mean a kind of social activity that goes on within a group of musicians who are mutually influencing each other. I love to observe this exchange. It is evident in jazz performances of a high caliber and in folk musics from all over the world. Classical Indian music provides many more examples. Another bias my jazz background provides is a desire for a very personalized musical performance style, including the phrasing, articulation, and sound itself. The highly personalized sound of a John Coltrane, a Miles Davis, or a Steve Lacy allows one to identify them with just one note. I am disappointed that players of computer-based musical instrumentation have not yet, to my ear at least, developed such compelling personal sound styles. I believe that control intimacy is one of the critical missing elements, so much of what I propose is concerned with a tight coupling between gesture and instrumental response. Computer music technology brings something new to the gestureresponse coupling problem. Acoustic instruments, with few exceptions, work on a one-gesture-onesound basis. Computer instrumentation allows us to use a single gesture to launch an entire pattern of notes. How the gesture influences the course of the pattern in a musically expressive manner is an issue of real concern.