Electroacoustic Music Research Articles

The Granularity Paradigm in the Electroacoustic Music of Iannis Xenakis

"The cultural legacy left to us by composer Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) is impressive and undoubtedly had a massive impact on some generations of musicians. His artistic ideal stands as proof. Fueled by science and engineering, his inheritance has been eagerly discussed in numerous books, studies, and doctoral theses. Our study underlines the viability of I. Xenakis’s compositional model. Xenakis painstakingly circumscribes scientific theories and laws in his method of composition in the instrumental and electroacoustic genres. We will emphasize the hypothesis that the granularity paradigm traverses his musical works Concret PH, Analogique B, and GENDY3. Keywords: Granularity paradigm, stochastic synthesis, random walk, architecture, mathematics, music "

Part of Computer Music History… (Trust Me, Latin America Has Always Been There!)

Abstract The political and economic instability in most Latin American countries has been profoundly affecting the lives of its inhabitants for decades. Support for artistic activities has usually been postponed to solve urgent social problems. Despite that, the development in these countries of the electronic arts, in general, and electroacoustic and computer music, in particular, is astounding. Mauricio Kagel, Reginaldo Carvalho, Hilda Dianda, Juan Amenabar, Horacio Vaggione, Jorge Antunes, Jocy de Oliveira, José Vicente Asuar, and Juan Blanco are only some of the many names in the ocean of electroacoustic music creativity that has always been Latin America. Archiving and disseminating electronic art—and working on a revised version of its history—is crucial to comprehend the present and build our future. The Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection, hosted by the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology in Montreal, has over 1,700 digital recordings of compositions created between 1957 and 2007 by almost 400 composers. The Collection has recovered and made visible (and listenable) the creative work of many composers otherwise almost forgotten. It has defied the hegemony of the computer and electroacoustic music history narrative, helping to break barriers and widening the way their history is understood.

The Studio PANaroma and Electroacoustic Music in Brazil

Abstract This article discusses the foundation of Studio PANaroma de Música Eletroacústica in São Paulo in 1994, an institution of the São Paulo State University and one of the most active research and production centers in the area in the world, contextualizing its conception with the internationalist tendencies present since the beginning of modernism in Brazil. To this end, the text discusses the notion of cultural anthropophagy, as formulated by Oswald de Andrade; discusses a brief history of the first initiatives in the field of electroacoustic music in Brazil; and focuses on the historical importance and the particularity of the Studio PANaroma, which substantially changed the development of electroacoustic music in the country. The studio's activities are described, including the founding of the studio's loudspeaker orchestra, as well as the studio's main research activities.

About This Issue

In this issue’s first article, Mark Zaki interviews Hubert Howe, who has been an active composer of computer music for over half a century. As a graduate student at Princeton University in the 1960s, Howe co-developed the Music 4B program, an antecedent of Csound. The interview progresses from his early years in the field through to his current directorship of the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. Howe details some of his compositional techniques, including the use of pitch arrays in his electronic and acoustic pieces, as well as his approach to timbre in computer music.Curtis Roads, a former editor of this journal, is well known for his long career in microsound composition, including his creation of the first computer implementation of granular sound synthesis. In this issue, he and his co-authors describe their recent software for real-time interactive granular synthesis. As is typical in granular synthesis, the program operates on sound files rather than real-time audio input; but the user has real-time control of many synthesis parameters. Unlike much granular synthesis software, the system offers per-grain processing, which means that each grain can have a unique set of values—specifically, for envelope, waveform, amplitude, frequency, spatial position, and filtering. The authors also emphasize their design of the graphical user interface. By mapping synthesis parameters to MIDI controllers, the software can serve as a digital musical instrument (DMI).The article by Giacomo Lepri and Andrew McPherson presents their conclusions from a study in which beginning-to-expert users of the Pure Data graphical programming language created simple DMIs that incorporated basic sensors. Two expert users of the SuperCollider language also used SuperCollider for the task. Among other insights, the authors observed how the programming environment influenced the DMI designs. They suggest that rather than strive for an ideal neutrality in computer music technologies, one might “embrace the weirdness” of a tool’s idiosyncrasies, including the values and aesthetic implications that the tool passes on to it users (in this case, the instrument designers).Front cover. Two musicians play instruments that they designed or helped to design. Top photo: Doga Cavdir works with her Armtop DMI, which includes a tether controller that senses the position of the left arm with three degrees of freedom. Bottom photo: Rodney DuPlessis moves faders on a MIDI device to vary parameters of the granular synthesis software EmissionControl2.Continuing the theme of DMI design, the article by Doga Cavdir and Ge Wang considers ways in which DMIs can augment the usual vocabulary of musicians’ performance gestures by borrowing bodily movements from domains such as dance and sign language. The authors present three case studies of their DMIs, which respectively incorporate dance movements, conducting gestures, and sign language. The third case study, which uses sign language gestures in a metaphorical rather than literal manner, also incorporates loud, low-frequency sounds to offer a corporeal experience of the music to deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.In this issue’s Reviews section, our frequent contributor Seth Rozanoff discusses an album by French composer Leo Magnien, and DJ Malinowski covers a festival of immersive music having a special focus on Afrofuturism. The Products of Interest section presents an array of recent hardware and software offerings, among them mixers, recorders, converters, synthesizers, and microphones, as well as an inexpensive theremin-like controller that uses a laser sensor instead of antenna capacitance.Starting with this issue, Jeff Morris of Texas A&M University edits the Announcements and News sections. We also welcome to our staff Brian Bemman of Aalborg University and Chuck-jee Chau of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who have jointly begun to oversee the peer review process. Ross Feller and Margaret Cahill continue to present the Reviews section and the Products of Interest, respectively; and Peter Castine continues to edit the articles (prior to copyediting) and to serve as managing editor. Brett Terry handles the editors’ website, computermusicjournal.org, which complements the publisher’s site for the Journal, direct.mit.edu/comj.Back cover. Top: A flowchart from the article by Roads, Kilgore, and DuPlessis, summarizing the granular synthesis engine of their EmissionControl2 software. Bottom: The software’s graphical user interface.

The aesthetics of animated sound: François Bayle, Bernard Parmegiani and the Service de la recherche de l’ORTF

Founded by Pierre Schaeffer in 1960, the Service de la recherche at Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française sought to incubate technical and aesthetic research in television and radio, supporting the development of novel animation techniques, pedagogical films for television and experimental short films. As such, the Service served as a fertile meeting point for composers and filmmakers, playing a significant role in the early careers of a number of well-known French composers of electroacoustic music. The early work of both François Bayle and Bernard Parmegiani principally consisted of music and sound for the moving image – and in particular for experimental animated shorts by filmmakers including Robert Lapoujade and Piotr Kamler – created with the support of the Service de la recherche. In attending to the particular configurations of sound and image worked out in these collaborations, the idea of ‘animation’ emerges as a recurring concern in the electroacoustic music of the period, underwriting both a general approach to recorded sound and, I argue, particular formal and technical developments in the aesthetics of French electroacoustic music in the 1960s and beyond.

Composition as Commentary: Voice and Poetry in Electroacoustic Music

What is the role of a spoken or sung text in an electroacoustic composition? Does it represent anachronism, assigning the role of communication to the voice and thereby depriving more abstract electroacoustic material of its rhetorical force? Does the disembodied, electroacoustic voice distance the audience from the communicative power of the words that are heard? Although Simon Emmerson argued that the disembodied human voice in acousmatic music can often seem frustrating, this sense of disembodiment might be turned to the composer’s advantage, as the basis of a methodology for creative practice. In the process of developing a methodology to address questions of text, language, voice, and electroacoustic technology, I created two musical compositions. Both works used the untranslated words of an enigmatic Old English poem, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’. At first glance, the idea of using a text in an obscure or ancient language that carries little or no semantic meaning for the listeners might raise further questions. Is this a deliberate attempt at obfuscation, hiding the paucity of the composer’s ideas behind a veneer of archaism or even naive exoticism? As my investigation progressed, I began to envisage the process of electroacoustic composition as a type of non-linguistic commentary on a text. Rather than hindering the listener’s understanding of a composition inspired by literature, the electroacoustic voice might help to reveal different interpretations of a text, allowing multiple ideas and identities to be heard.

New Periodicals

New Periodicals Edited by Lindsay Hansen Brown This semiannual column selectively lists new periodicals; describes their objectives, formats, and contents; and provides information special issues; title and format changes, mergers, and cessations. The following resources were frequently consulted when assembling this column: Music Periodicals Database (MPD; http://www.proquest.com/products-services/iimp_ft.html), Music Index (MI; https://www.ebscohost.com/academic/music-index), RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, (RILM; http://www.rilm.org), OCLC Worldcat and Ulrich's Periodical Directory (www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/), and the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org). All Web sites were accessed on 17 September 2019 unless otherwise indicated. electronica Reviews, new titles, and publisher and title changes announced elsewhere in this column include additional comments about electronic access. Backstage Pass (https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/backstage-pass/about.html; no ISSN) is a peer-reviewed, annual, open-access title focused on music industry studies. It is published by the University of the Pacific's Music Industry Studies Program and edited by Keith Hatschek from the Conservatory of Music. Submissions are limited to University of the Pacific students though they need not be studying music or business. special journal issues Contemporary Music Review. Vol. 37, Nos. 5–6 (December 2018): Music, Mediation Theories and Actor-Network Theory. This double issue, edited by Georgina Born and Andrew Barry, was inspired by a British research program, 'Music, Digitization, Mediation: Towards Interdisciplinary Music Studies' and considers comparative ethnographic studies of music being transformed worldwide by digitization and digital media. This issue features nine research articles and no reviews or other content. Journal of Sonic Studies. Vol. 18. (2019): Materials of Sound II. Continuing the work started in the 16th issue, this volume was edited by Caleb Kelly. The first issue "focused on creative sonic production that en gaged materials" and this companion volume notes "material sounds are found within cultures, cities, religions, movement, environmental catastrophe, and the murmurs of the crowd." Included are four articles and embedded audio. The Musical Quarterly. Vol. 101, No. 4 (Winter 2018): Music and Jews. Introduced by Leon Botstein and edited by Halina Goldberg, this issue addresses the "musical practices that emerged in the late eighteenth century [that] became a factor in the evolution of Jewish ethnic, religious, and political identity … within Jewish families throughout Central Europe." The issue includes six research articles and no reviews or other content. [End Page 484] Nineteen-Century Music Review. Vol. 16, No. 1 (April 2019): Percy Grainger: Cosmopolitan Imagination. Guest edited by Ryan Weber, this issue explores the idea of Grainger as a "cosmopolitan" composer amidst the "contradictions and peculiarities that plagued Grainger's career." Included are four research articles and several book and CD reviews. The Opera Quarterly. Vol. 34, No. 4 (Autumn 2018): Opera at the Multiplex. Guest edited by Christopher Morris and Joseph Attard, this issue discusses The Met: Live in HD and was spurred by a symposium held at King's College London, 'Opera Cinema: A New Cultural Experience'. Featured are four research articles, the transcript from a panel discussion (from the symposium), and a performance review. Organised Sound. Vol. 24, No. 1 (April 2019): Perceptual Issues Surrounding the Electroacoustic Music Experience. Guest edited by Sven-Amin Lembke, this issue "aimed to contextualize issues pertinent to electroacoustic practice and identify not only the perceptual constraints but also opportunities." The issue features eight research articles, plus book and DVD reviews. Rock Music Studies. Vol. 6, No. 1 (February 2019): Chuck Berry. This issue features five research articles about Berry. Included are several book and sound recording reviews, along with a call for papers. Sound Studies. Vol. 5, No. 1. (March 2019): Sound, Law and Governance. Edited by Leonardo Cardoso, this issue addresses sound, law, and governance with the "close analysis of specific urban spaces, legal documents, auditory communities, and technologies." Featured are five research articles and two book reviews. Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 485] Copyright © 2020 Music Library Association, Inc.

The Power of Arterial Language in Constructing a Musical Vocabulary of One’s Own: Inheriting the Inspiration and Gene of Innovation in Electroacoustic Music from Chinese Culture

Modern music in the twenty-first century is confronted by challenges from all historical directions; as an important member in the pantheon of contemporary music, electroacoustic music is not an exception. While it benefits from the opportunities that time provides, such as the unprecedented advancement in technology, it also suffers through the puzzles inherent in the process of its development. The historical challenge in China is unique. The generous historical heritage of Chinese culture accumulated for us a wealth of data in acoustical resources, an exceptional advantage of Chinese electroacoustic music, which is hitherto little known to the outside world. The author presents in this essay how he has explored and practiced, in the past 20 years, giving full play to advantages of acoustical sources, transforming these into the impetus of composition and innovation in Chinese electroacoustic music. Based on the thoughts and reflections throughout two decades of teaching, learning, and composing, the author has discovered that Chinese culture is an inexhaustible source for the development of one’s arterial musical language, the inspiration of style and artistic image, the self-consciousness and refinement of the role of the individual in the musical context, and insight into innovative thinking.

A Perceptual Investigation into Spatialization Techniques Used in Multichannel Electroacoustic Music for Envelopment and Engulfment

Composers of electroacoustic music have developed and creatively implemented various spatialization techniques for multichannel loudspeaker setups. What is not known is which of these spatialization techniques is most effective for exploiting the extended creative possibilities available in multidimensional sound. This article discusses an experiment investigating the perception of the spatial attributes of “envelopment” and “engulfment” within a high-density loudspeaker array. The spatialization techniques used in the experiment were timbre spatialization, spectral splitting, amplitude point-source panning, and dynamic spectral subband decorrelation. Three loudspeaker setups, or spatial dimensions, were investigated: horizontal-only; elevated-only; and three-dimensional, which consisted of both horizontal and elevated loudspeaker setups. Results suggest that dynamic spectral subband decorrelation was perceived as both the most enveloping and the most engulfing technique when compared to other techniques in these experimental loudspeaker configurations. We propose that the experimental results can be successfully implemented when composing electroacoustic music to exploit the creative possibilities in a high-density loudspeaker array or in other multichannel loudspeaker configurations.

Movement as Perception: Bergson, Deleuze, and Hybridity Between Electroacoustic and Intelligent Dance Music

This paper examines hybridity between intelligent dance music and electroacoustic music. It uses the notion of movement explicated in Henri Bergson’s theory of perception, in his work Matter and memory, and its uptake by Gilles Deleuze in his work on cinema. The three levels of perception in Bergson’s account, namely affectivity, pure perception, and action image, are dealt with in some detail. The discovery of places where similar motivations have led to hybridity leads to a discussion of several works by Aphex Twin and Autechre, and connections being made to the works of Trevor Wishart. Extended treatment is given to the piece Gantz Graf by Autechre as a classic example of hybridity.

Examining the Effects of Experimental/Academic Electroacoustic and Popular Electronic Musics on the Evolution and Development of Human–Computer Interaction in Music

This article focuses on how the development of human–computer interaction in music has been aided and influenced by both experimental/academic electroacoustic art music and popular electronic music. These two genres have impacted upon this ever-changing process of evolution in different ways, but have together been paramount to the establishment of interactivity in music as we understand it today; which is itself having wide-ranging implications upon the modern-day musical landscape as a whole—both in the way that we, as listeners and audience members, purchase and consume music as well as conceptualise and think about it.

The OREMA Project: A call for the liberation of sound analysis

Following Edgard Varèse’s influential lectures – translated and documented in ‘The Liberation of Sound’ – electroacoustic music has spawned many different styles and genres. His argument was for composers to follow their imagination and not be bound to the constraints of musical notation. This, arguably, was one of the catalysts for the emergence of electroacoustic musical works. With past and recent technological advancement, the varieties of genres and styles within electroacoustic music have only expanded, challenging the notion of how one could analyse such works. It is therefore unsurprising that there is no general consensus on analytical methodologies. But for an art form that celebrates all musical possibilities should the analysis of such musics be constraint to a set number of formalised analytical methodologies?Rather than propose a new all-encompassing methodology, this article will argue for a universal approach to electroacoustic music analysis and the liberation of sound analysis. The concept of an analytical community (a community that accepts multiple analyses whilst encouraging practitioners to find new and innovative ways to analyse such works) will be raised as a means to address the issues facing electroacoustic music analysis, using the OREMA (Online Repository for Electroacoustic Music Analysis) project as an example of such an initiative.

Developing Telematic Electroacoustic Music: Complex networks, machine intelligence and affective data stream sonification

This paper proposes expanding telematic electroacoustic music practice through the consideration of affective computing and integration with complex data streams. Current telematic electroacoustic music practice, despite the distances involved, is largely embedded in older music/sonic arts paradigms. For example, it is dominated by using concert halls, by concerns about the relationship between people and machines, and by concerns about geographically distributed cultures and natural environments. A more suitable environment for telematic sonic works is found in the inter-relationship between ‘players’ and broader contemporary networked life – one embedded in multiple real-time informational data streams. These streams will increase rapidly with the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT), and with the increasing deployment of algorithmic decision-making and machine learning software. While collated data streams, such as news feeds, are often rendered visually, they are also partly interpreted through embodied cognition that is similar to music and sonic art interpretation. A meeting point for telematic electroacoustic music and real-time data sonification is in affective composition/performance models and data sonification. These allow for the sonic exploration of participants’ place in a matrix of increasingly networked relationships.

For a Didactical Approach to Electroacoustic Musics: The example of Metallics by Yan Maresz

This paper observes the conditions of reception and understanding of music using the theoretical concepts of learning (Chevallard 1985; Brousseau 1998) adapted to the teaching of these various musics (Terrien 2006). We verify, in the light of an epistemological questioning, the nature of electroacoustic music, and if the didactic transposition (Verret 1975; Chevallard 1985) applied to Yan Maresz's Metallics allows us to understand the phenomena of music (listening, intention-reception: issues of perception and interpretation), and identify issues of language. Our contribution is a tool for reflection on a teaching approach that relies on new teaching methods in the teaching of this music.

CICLO ELETROACÚSTICO COMO SONORIDADE DO MARABAIXO

This research dialogues to a tradition of long experience in Brazil. Musicians like Tom Ze, Hermeto Pascoal, Smetak (Vienna) and others contributed to the music creating a regional dialogue with the classical sound — the Brazilian avant-garde and experimental sound. The intention of unite the Marabaixo to the electroacoustic experimental music is to bring an investigation which impact was undoubtedly one of the greatest contributions to the twentieth century experimental music, and this work points to this exercise. The folk Marabaixo is a manifestation of the State of Amapa through centuries of tradition that permeates the universal and the religious, recreational, dance, music and cuisine. It happens within a calendar called “The cycle of Marabaixo”. Its music presents a unique Marabaixo rhythm that distinguish it from all other events featuring Brazilian music and rhythm as a genuine musical culture of Amapa. Index Terms - Marabaixo, Electroacoustic music, Ritual.

On Performing Electroacoustic Musics: a non-idiomatic case study for Adorno's theory of musical reproduction

Adorno's theory of musical reproduction is unfinished, inconsistent and attuned only to score-based acoustic music – but it has relevance for electroacoustic performance as well. His theory prompts contemplation about what ‘good’ interpretation, and interpretation itself, means for fixed electroacoustic music. A digital sound file is frequently, if not typically, viewed as more rigid and precise than a score. This article uses Adorno's theory to compare ontologies of score and digital file realizations respectively, thus questioning the above assumption. Do electroacoustic works truly exist apart from their performed features, or is a given work only its performances? Different answers imply different work concepts and interpretive strategies. Toward the essay's goals, we examine three features often viewed as nonontological to an electroacoustic work, namely performed spatialisation, equalisation, and amplitude balance. We consider the impacts of these features when they are manipulated in real time, or performance to performance. As Adorno asks how choices of timing or dynamics dictate a notated work's aesthetic ‘clarity’, this paper asks how performed choices contribute to an electroacoustic work's clarity, and to the unique interpretive potential of electroacoustic music. Tape music and acousmatic music, with its diffusion tradition, are central to this paper's thesis; but multi-channel works are circumscribed by it as well.

Preserving the Electroacoustic Music Legacy: A Case Study of the Sal-Mar Construction at the University of Illinois

In the summer of 2008 the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign acquired the papers of Salvatore Martirano (1927–1995), avant-garde composer, faculty member, and performer. This case study examines how the new electroacoustic compositional techniques present in Martirano’s papers and his ground-breaking electronic music instrument, the Sal-Mar Construction, dramatically challenged the archivists to explore access and preservation practices for this unique cultural record. Context plays a key role in the preservation of electroacoustic compositions and instruments, considering that these tend to become ephemeral works of art once the composer ceases to maintain them in working order.

Spatial Perception and Cognition in Multichannel Audio for Electroacoustic Music

Listeners experience electroacoustic music as full of significance and meaning, and they experience spatiality as one of the factors contributing to its meaningfulness. If we want to understand spatiality in electroacoustic music, we must understand how the listener’s mental processes give rise to the experience of meaning. In electroacoustic music as in everyday life, these mental processes unite the peripheral auditory system with human spatial cognition. In the discussion that follows we consider a range of the listener’s mental processes relating space and meaning from the perceptual attributes of spatial imagery to the spatial reference frames for places and navigation. When considering multichannel loudspeaker systems in particular, an important part of the discussion is focused on the distinctive and idiomatic ways in which this particular mode of sound production contributes to and situates meaning. These include the phenomenon of image dispersion, the important consequences of the precedence effect and the influence of source characteristics on spatial imagery. These are discussed in close relation to the practicalities of artistic practice and to the potential for artistic meaning experienced by the listener.

Rethinking the BEAST: Recent developments in multichannel composition at Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre

This paper outlines some recent developments in multichannel composition at the Electroacoustic Music Studios, University of Birmingham and its performance wing, BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre). In doing so it attempts to codify and define some emerging aspects of spatialisation practice which are found both within the BEAST community and beyond. The discussion covers software and techniques developed and adapted for use with BEAST, new and pragmatic approaches to composing for large-scale multichannel systems, such as n-channel composition and composing in ‘stems’, and issues arising from a resulting blurring between composition and performance practices.

Decompartmental: Conversing with Clarence Barlow

Clarence Barlow (see Figure 1) is a prominent com poser of electroacoustic and instrumental music. He studied composition under Bernd Alois Zim mermann (1968-1970) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (1971-1973) and became a pioneer in the field of computer music. He has made advancements in in terdisciplinary composition that unite mathematics, computer science, visual arts, and literature. Nev ertheless, his music is firmly grounded in tradition and incorporates much from the past. Between 1961 and 2009, Mr. Barlow produced over 60 works of various types, including electroacoustic (see Table 1 and Table 4), orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, piano, and organ works. The many performances of his music include 28 concerts in Germany and else where from 1976-2009 that were devoted entirely to his compositions. Mr. Barlow has also attained dis tinction as an interdisciplinary researcher, author, and software developer. One of his many publica tions (see Table 2) is an extensive study on tonality and metricism, Bus Journey to Parametron (1980, 1984). His software (see Table 3) notably includes Autobusk, a modal and metric pitch and rhythm gen erator (2001), and the notation program }KSC (1984). Clarence Barlow currently serves as the endowed Corwin Chair of Composition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His past teaching posts include twelve years as professor of composition and computer music at the biennial summer courses of the International Music Institute at Darmstadt (1982-1994); over twenty years as lecturer in com puter music at the Cologne Musikhochschule (1984-2005); four years as artistic director of the Institute of Sonology at The Hague's Royal Conser vatory (1990-1994); and twelve years as professor of composition and sonology at the Royal Conserva tory (1994-2006). Since 1994, he has been associated with the International Academy of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France. This interview was conducted in May 2008 at Clarence Barlow's home in Noleta, located