Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning No so impressed

Well
i must agree a bunch of the pieces sound like sound experiments..
but some gems are Kim Cascones "Blue Cube"
I have a few pieces that were realised entirely in Csound )no external
mixing
and they are on the tuning punks "Upgrade" and "Presbyterian Surgery
Dervishes II"
Both are in 7 limit Just Intonation on a 64hz Base @ 1/1
cheers

Pat Pagano, Director
South East Just Intonation Society
http://indians.australians.com/meherbaba/
http://www.screwmusicforever.com/SHREESWIFT/
----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Pehrson <josephpehrson@compuserve.com>
To: <tuning@egroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 10:14 PM
Subject: [tuning] No so impressed

> Well, I listened carefully to the music that is on the CSOUND CD-ROM
> and I must say, I am only moderately impressed.
>
> The two composers with the most to say, we already know, Jeff
> Harrington and Bill Alves. The other pieces sounded more like "sound
> experiments" to me.
>
> I'm beginning to think that the difficulty in constructing sounds in
> CSOUND lends people more toward certain kinds of experimental effects
> than real pieces of music. I know a little about this from my early
> work with "Music 4," its predecessor. It was hard to get that to do
> anything... but that was back in the "dark ages..."
>
> So, besides Prent Rogers, Jeff Harrington and Bill Alves, where is
> the music??
>
> Seems that MIDI is a lot easier to use to me... maybe mixing that
> with a few of the terrific glissando effects and reverb effects that
> could be recorded more as "sample length" from CSOUND. Just my
> thought at the moment. Composer Kitty Brazelton, I believe, uses it
> that way...
>
> CSOUNDERS, would you mind gently contradicting me??
>
> ________ ______ ______ _
> Joseph Pehrson
>
>
>
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🔗M. Edward Borasky <znmeb@borasky-research.com>

Some of the pieces are from composition students, studying with, IIRC,
Richard Boulanger at Berklee. I would not expect those to be long, finished
pieces by mature composers :-). But you're certainly right about the
non-student works; they are indeed sound experiments. Only a few of them are
of significant length, for example, and they don't sound all that much
different from pure electronic music composed using older studio
processes -- musique concrete and analog synthesis.

> I'm beginning to think that the difficulty in constructing sounds in
> CSOUND lends people more toward certain kinds of experimental effects
> than real pieces of music. I know a little about this from my early
> work with "Music 4," its predecessor. It was hard to get that to do
> anything... but that was back in the "dark ages..."

I don't think it's so much the difficulty of using CSound -- one can always
find a computer geek to handle that part of it for you. There are a number
of factors at work here:

1. There are few role models for "art music" electronic composers. As I said
before, "name" composers prefer conventional instruments and live
performance. If I were looking for a composition teacher, I would be
hard-pressed to find one who specialized in computer music.

2. There are few audiences for electronic "art music." Even the hard-core
new music ensemble here in Portland, Fear No Music, plays at most one
electronic or partially electronic concert a year. Their Composer In
Residence, Joseph Waters, does compose electronic pieces, but they are also
heavily influenced by rock and very loud :-(.

3. It is *extremely* difficult to hold an audience's attention with pure
electronic music. A composer from the early days told me that he had never
heard a piece of computer music that he didn't give up on after four
minutes! And *he* was a computer composer!

The biggest problem is the *sterility* of electronic music. Despite the rich
timbres one can obtain, it just doesn't sound like it was made by living,
breathing, emoting, musical people. There are *some* exceptional computer /
electronic pieces. Wendy Carlos' "Sonic Seasonings", Charles Dodge's
"Earth's Magnetic Field" and Henri Pousseur's "Trois Visages Liege" are
three of my personal favorites. And there are a *few* current composers who
have taken on the challenge of electronic composition. If you're interested,
browse http://www.cdemusic.org.

> Seems that MIDI is a lot easier to use to me... maybe mixing that
> with a few of the terrific glissando effects and reverb effects that
> could be recorded more as "sample length" from CSOUND. Just my
> thought at the moment. Composer Kitty Brazelton, I believe, uses it
> that way...

I have not heard any of Kitty Brazelton's music. CSound controlled by MIDI
is a reality, as is MPEG-4 Structured Audio controlled by MIDI. It's still
not real-time, though, except on a fast PC. It is, unfortunately, still for
the most part a studio medium.

> CSOUNDERS, would you mind gently contradicting me??

Well, actually, I'm gently agreeing with you :-).
--
M. Edward Borasky, Borasky Research
znmeb@borasky-research.com
http://www.borasky-research.com/

If there's nothing to astrology, how come so many famous men were born on
holidays?

🔗Pat Pagano <ppagano@bellsouth.net>

🔗Rosati <dante.interport@rcn.com>

I think the issue JP is raising is not about CSound per se, but computer
music in general, as Ed Borasky mentioned. It must be realized that CSound
is a completely blank sonic slate that could, theoretically, be filled with
any sound(s) imaginable. CSound could be made to emulate any natural sound
or construct any other "artifical" sound, if you knew how to do it. I would
say CSound (or any comparable DSP software) has >no< limitations of its own,
only the limitations of the programmer. But some of these "limitations" are,
in a practical sense, enormous.

Hopefully without sounding too general, I would say that some of the depth
of art comes from detail. The amount of detail in a performance of even the
simplest music on an acoustic instrument is staggering. This includes all
that may be termed inconsistency or variety in all the parameters of sound
production and execution. This gives it a "human" feel which of course can
also be emulated to a certain extent, but only with vast amounts of
information in the programming.

I often marvel at the richness of harmonic detail and flexibility available
with an overdriven electric guitar. Hendrix was the first to explore this,
and to my mind he and someone like Stockhausen are kindred spirits. To
achieve this kind of richness and detail with CSound over any extended
amount of material would be daunting, to say the least. As someone who has
dabbled with CSound over the years, I always end up feeling that its just
easier to pick up the guitar, electric or acoustic, and begin immediately to
have all that flexibility at one's fingertips (so to speak).

Most MIDI music suffers from the same drawbacks. Although alot easier to use
and very handy for experimentation, ultimately it too suffers from lack of
detail, unless you are willing to go into the controllers and play with
>all< the parameters of each and every note. Even then, it will never sound
as rich as acoustic or some analog sound.

Most of the best, or most interesting (to my ears) computer music has
elements of music concrete, because in this way the depth of detail in live
sound is brought into the computer as raw material and can be manipulated
without losing the richness. As someone who suffers from periodic bouts of
Pythagoreanitis, my forays into computer music were always based on additive
synthesis, with the sinewave as the prima materia out of which a sonic
universe could be constructed ex nihilo. I know deep down this could work,
but in the end I don't have the patience to build a universe atom by atom.
Varying the spot that one plucks a guitar string gives me more control than
I could get with hundreds of lines of code, and life is just too short.

I've never heard a computer piece that moved me to tears. I'm not saying its
not possible, and I'd love to hear one that could, but I'm still waiting.

Its like programming a virtual reality environment: of course its amazing
that it can be done at all, but we are already immersed every day in a
"virtual reality" of mind-boggling richness, and nothing that even the most
sophisticated hardware and software can do can hold even the puniest candle
to it. Hearty souls will forge ahead and maybe someday computer music will
rival live sound in depth of detail, but not for a very, very long time. I'm
just glad somone invented guitars a long time ago.

Dante

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "M. Edward Borasky" <znmeb@b...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/17263

Hi Ed! Thanks for much for your valuable comments, which I greatly
appreciate. Before I thoroughly take the "plunge" which looks to me
like a serious time investment, I want to know what I'm getting
into!!!

>But you're certainly right about the
> non-student works; they are indeed sound experiments. Only a few of
them are of significant length, for example, and they don't sound all
that much different from pure electronic music composed using older
studio processes -- musique concrete and analog synthesis.
>

Absolutely... and except for the Alves and Harrington and maybe a
couple of others, they sound quite "dated" in that way. I'm not
saying that some weren't enjoyable, but after about an hour and a
half I had been thoroughly "sated."

> 2. There are few audiences for electronic "art music."

I guess the Web could possibly mitigate this to a limited degree...
but, indeed, it is limited. I do know some composers who have
managed to release their electronic music as "commercial releases"
and
some have sold a little. After all, it is much less expensive than
paying the studio musicians.

Generally speaking, of course, unless one is EXTREMELY lucky with
either a patron or a grant -- and believe me, I know what ALL of
where those are and they are extrememly difficult to get -- the
composer, as usual, ends up paying for all this stuff himself...

>Henri Pousseur's "Trois Visages Liege"

Yes... this is one of the grand masterworks of all time... of course,
"pre-CSOUND." And, also Pousseur's interest in Just Intonation, is
legendary.

Thanks so much, Ed... for your valuable comments...
______ ____ ___ _
Joseph Pehrson

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

🔗graham@microtonal.co.uk

In-Reply-To: <LOBBIMFOJBGJHOFLIDCEIEIACCAA.dante@pop.interport.net>
Dante Rosati wrote:

> I often marvel at the richness of harmonic detail and flexibility
> available
> with an overdriven electric guitar. Hendrix was the first to explore
> this,
> and to my mind he and someone like Stockhausen are kindred spirits. To
> achieve this kind of richness and detail with CSound over any extended
> amount of material would be daunting, to say the least. As someone who
> has
> dabbled with CSound over the years, I always end up feeling that its
> just
> easier to pick up the guitar, electric or acoustic, and begin
> immediately to
> have all that flexibility at one's fingertips (so to speak).

I am finding that I prefer picking up my guitar to sitting at a keyboard
these days. This despite having much more experience with a guitar. So
why is this? Some ideas:

1) The guitar sounds better. I'm still not sure why this is. I use Kyma
both for synthesis and guitar effects. That means the two end up much the
same. It's not immediately apparent why the sawtooth-like waveforms
coming out of the guitar should work so much better than the
filtered-sawtooths being artificially generated. This will have to be
looked into more. I could try taking raw samples from the guitar, and see
what they sound like played through the keyboard with guitar effects.

2) The guitar gives me 19 notes to the octave. (Plus a bonus fret that
I'm thinking of pulling out.) Keyboards can work with anything, but they
work best with 12 notes to the octave. 29 note octaves are logical, but
too stretched out to be convenient.

3) Basic things about the layout of a guitar. Like having the rhythm on
one hand and pitch on the other. And having a two-dimensional structure
to allow both melody and two-octave chords.

4) It's easy to get different sounds from a guitar, by hitting the strings
differently (I don't use a pick) or in different places.

(1) I'm assuming can be fixed with a bit of experimenation. It should be
a case of getting the right timbres and envelopes, maybe emulating
strumming. Not that daunting.

(2) Would need a new keyboard layout to work properly. There are plenty
of ideas of course, but they all cost money. Still, 12 notes at any one
time isn't much of a restriction, and most musicians don't care. You also
get more freedom and precision in tuning the notes you have on a
synthesizer compared to a guitar.

(3) I really am thinking is important. A ZTar looks like the best
work-around but, again, costs money.

(4) I should be able to copy with key velocity affecting something like
FM.

Get those things done and, with something like CSound or Kyma that works
in real time, you'll have very close to the same richness and detail that
normal guitarists have (Hendrix may be an exception). It shouldn't be
that daunting. Getting equally good results may be, but it's also
non-trivial with a guitar.

> Most MIDI music suffers from the same drawbacks. Although alot easier
> to use
> and very handy for experimentation, ultimately it too suffers from lack
> of
> detail, unless you are willing to go into the controllers and play with
> >all< the parameters of each and every note. Even then, it will never
> sound
> as rich as acoustic or some analog sound.

I don't think this "lack of detail" is really so important. Some of the
best synthesized music, like Kraftwerk, is remarkably undetailed. The
trick is to get it sounding right. Key velocity and a filter pedal get
you a long way for richness, if the sound works well with it.

A lot of the technique for an acoustic instrument is precisely to suppress
its inconsistency, and hence variety, so you get the sound you want.
Synthesizers make that a lot easier, and it can be a good thing. I'm
still reeling from the Four Brothers' performance on my local "classical"
radio station last night. They get an amazing guitar sound, but I'm sure
it would work well sampled, if I could only produce it without background
noise once!

That "or some analog" doesn't make sense to me. Maybe because I've never
used real analog synths:) But they use the same interfaces as digital
ones, usually simpler in not having key velocity. So you get your sound,
and then keep getting the same sound no matter how you hit the key. Until
it drifts out of tune. I've never heard samples of analog synthesis that
I can't do as well (not the same) with Kyma. Transistors aren't noted for
their warm, human sound. If they can be wired together to overcome this
problem, you can do the same with digital programming.

> Most of the best, or most interesting (to my ears) computer music has
> elements of music concrete, because in this way the depth of detail in
> live
> sound is brought into the computer as raw material and can be
> manipulated
> without losing the richness.

You mean it uses samples? That can give good results, but synthesizers
based on samples sound lifeless. At least when they're restriced by
memory -- I haven't tried Gigasampler. So taking whole phrases rather
than individual notes seems to work better.

> As someone who suffers from periodic bouts
> of
> Pythagoreanitis, my forays into computer music were always based on
> additive
> synthesis, with the sinewave as the prima materia out of which a sonic
> universe could be constructed ex nihilo. I know deep down this could
> work,
> but in the end I don't have the patience to build a universe atom by
> atom.
> Varying the spot that one plucks a guitar string gives me more control
> than
> I could get with hundreds of lines of code, and life is just too short.

I've never done much with additive, partly because I expected to find what
you found. FM, on the other hand, is simpler but still gives you a lot of
flexibility, as Darren McDougall said eloquently last week. Changing the
level of a modulator gives the same kind of effect as picking a string in
different places. Usually that gets tied in with key velocity (and
hardware synths don't give you much choice). In theory, you could get
three dimensions of expression plus volume from four operator FM. That
would roughly correspond to:

1) how hard you pick the string
2) where you pick it
3) where you're stopping the string
4) using finger/nail/pick

The trick is then to get a MIDI controller that can give you the same
dimensions. Unfortunately, I don't know of any. Obviously, (1) would be
the key velocity. Then there's aftertouch, but that's really an extension
of the same. You could use a pedal, but you could with a guitar as well.
I suppose (4) could be the second manual.

I haven't tried a ZTar, but I think it can handle (1) and (3). (2) should
be possible, but I don't think anybody's done it. (4) will probably turn
out to be a special case of (1). Listening to the full envelope might do
the trick. It should also be possible to get a second timbre envelope.
You'd need 6 MIDI channels to emulate a guitar this way.

If you're using a normal keyboard, and you want an extra parameter, you
could play monophonically and put your other hand on a knob. Or use a
sequencer and record the controller changes later. You only need 3 of
them. Working them out as "programming" would be daunting, which is why
real-time feedback is so important.

I also find that too many parameters in real time gets confusing, so 4 may
be the magic number. In which case, playing one handed with key velocity,
twidding a knob and a couple of pedals is all you need. Although it's not
an easy way to play.

Say, how about a 2-D pedal, that controls an extra parameter by tilting
left-right? Now there's an idea ...

If you don't like FM, well, a filter gives you cutoff, resonance and Q.
Analog-style tone generation gives you a choice between square and
sawtooth waveforms. Sampling means you can crossfade between whatever you
want. Overdrive can give you clipping and "fatness" (asymemtry between
the positive and negative parts of the signal). You could also crossfade
between EQs. And there's always vibrato, reverb, all that stuff. I find
overdrive to be the richest of these, because it's simple to implement but
gives complex results. It also gives different results depending on the
loudness of the input, so it effectively gets controlled by key velocity.

I'm sure all the above can be done with CSound, but maybe not in real
time. It can all be done in real time on a basic Kyma system, but you
won't get much polyphony. A lot of it can be done in real time with VAZ+.

Beyond all that, you can get a lot of depth by choosing the right tunings
and chords. From a traditional approach like that, and with good CSound
instruments, you might be surprised at how little "programming" you have
to do.

> I've never heard a computer piece that moved me to tears. I'm not
> saying its
> not possible, and I'd love to hear one that could, but I'm still
> waiting.

If you were only to consider past achievements, you would obviously stay
with a guitar.

Graham

🔗Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>

🔗graham@microtonal.co.uk

In-Reply-To: <CE80F17667E4D211AE53009027466272012A33F9@acadian-asset.com>
Paul Erlich wrote:

> Graham wrote,
>
> >I am finding that I prefer picking up my guitar to sitting at a
> keyboard >these days. This despite having much more experience with a
> guitar.
>
> You mean much more experience with a keyboard?

That's right, the exact opposite of what I said.

> >It's not immediately apparent why the sawtooth-like waveforms
> >coming out of the guitar
>
> Sawtooth-like waveforms? Is that based on actually looking at the
> waveforms?

Based on dividing the world into sawtooths and squares :) I also found a
rounded-sawtooth generated on my TX81Z worked fairly well with distortion.

> Anyway, the guitar could sound better because
>
> a) the amplitude envelope of the guitar is "guitar-like", it's slightly
> different for each partial, and varies with the strength and material
> used
> to pluck the string.

Could be. That sounds like it'd work better with FM than filtered
sawtooths.

> b) the relative amplitudes of the partials depend on where you pick the
> string, which is something you can vary while playing. Basically, you
> cancel
> out all the harmonics with a node at the point of plucking.

This is a way of making it more expressive, but doesn't cover the basic
sound. Pick at the same place each time, and it still sounds better with
overdrive than a synthesizer.

> c) the pitch of an open string varies slightly with time, and a fretted
> string more so, due to bending, which of course can be in the form of a
> delayed vibrato or just about anything you want.

That should be easy enough to model. Hopefully it's not too important,
because it'd be evil in a microtonal context.

> d) if another part of your right hand intentionally or unintentionally
> brushes the string while plucking, you will accentuate various
> overtones,
> depending on the point of contact.

See (b) above.

> e) feedback

Oh no, not with headphones.

> >4) It's easy to get different sounds from a guitar, by hitting the
> strings >differently (I don't use a pick) or in different places.
>
> Try using your fingernails in various ways for more sounds.

Yes, all of that. The problem with nails is stopping the squeaking.

Graham

No so impressed

🔗Joseph Pehrson <josephpehrson@compuserve.com>

🔗shreeswifty <ppagano@bellsouth.net>

🔗M. Edward Borasky <znmeb@borasky-research.com>

🔗Pat Pagano <ppagano@bellsouth.net>

🔗Rosati <dante.interport@rcn.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

🔗Joseph Pehrson <pehrson@pubmedia.com>

🔗graham@microtonal.co.uk

🔗Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>

🔗graham@microtonal.co.uk

🔗Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>

🔗MONZ@JUNO.COM

🔗MONZ@JUNO.COM