The Musician-Machine Interface in Digital Sound Synthesis

Abstract

A fundamental consideration in evaluating any music synthesis system is the flexibility offered to the composer in controlling the evolution of a musical structure. In his paper Design Issues in the Foundation of a Computer-Based Tool for Music Composition, William Buxton (1978) outlines some of the problems that arise from the note equals event concept on which the existing general-purpose languages have tended to be based. Before considering the tree-structured language that has been developed by Buxton's team at the Computer Systems Research Group at The University of Toronto, it would be beneficial to discuss what limitations there are in existing systems and how they might be overcome. Of course, many of the criticisms leveled against general-purpose languages are not so valid when data-preparation systems like Leland Smith's SCORE program are available (Smith 1972). There are, however, no universally available languages for preparing scores for Music 4B, Music 360, or indeed for Music V at installations other than IRCAM. It is therefore often necessary for the composer to write his or her own score-preparation routines in a high-level programming language, and this is beyond the capability of many musicians.