Re: [tuning] Dark ages, composers or tech-ies?

> Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2001 14:32:09 -0000
> From: "Joseph Pehrson" <pehrson@pubmedia.com>
> Subject: the dark ages of computer music
>

As long as nostaglia is on call:

I caught the tail end of the dark ages. At Santa Cruz (ca '81) we had a
Buchla hybrid system, an analog synth with a touch sensitive keyboard hooked
up to a rudimentary computer with a hexadecimal keypad for entry and a
cassette recorder for memory. Entering a minute-long sequence in machine
code meant perhaps 8 hours (and small hours they were, in the middle of the
night), and error correction was done by listening to the cassette and
re-recording.

(To keep this on topic, the Buchla's oscillators were 2.4v/octave, in steps
of .1v, thus quartertones were possible; I made a piece in 8tet).

While there was an emerging scene at places like Santa Cruz, Mills, or
Wesleyan which involved small computers, almost all the big money was going
into the mainframes (Stanford, IRCAM etc.). The time-sharing arrangements on
the (then-)big machines seemed predestined to lead to conflicts, with the
power-plays over computer time now legendary and precious little in the way
of composition was actually finished.

Fortunately, for musical applications, the differences between small and
large platforms are basically gone. Music-politics-wise, though, I have my
doubts...

I do stand by my statement that:

"Indeed, I would not be surprised if the csound users' community was largely
made up of people who started out to compose and then became progressively
more engaged with technical issues."

Again and again, I have come into contact with people in the computer music
world who identify themselves as composers, and I take them at their word
(however they may be trained or employed). But -- when asked what they are
up to at the moment, it is usually the case that some technical problem had
once again got in the way of actually composing and their energies and
attentions were reserved for the technical issue.

But maybe I'm being to hard on this particular community. I would wager
that if one were to take a "where are they now?" survey of graduates from
composition seminars at major music schools or universities in the States,
one would find that the vast majority were not active as composers ten years
later. (And recalling those seminar days, there were always a good number
then who already had trouble producing finished works, meeting deadlines, or
simply got terminally blocked).

Daniel Wolf
Zeneszerz�"
Budapest/Magyarors�g

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Daniel Wolf" <djwolf1@m...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/17334

> But maybe I'm being to hard on this particular community. I would
wager that if one were to take a "where are they now?" survey of
graduates from composition seminars at major music schools or
universities in the States, one would find that the vast majority
were not active as composers ten years later. (And recalling those
seminar days, there were always a good number then who already had
trouble producing finished works, meeting deadlines, or simply got
terminally blocked).
>
> Daniel Wolf
> Zeneszerzö"
> Budapest/Magyarorság

Thank you very much, Daniel Wolf, for your commentary... Another
"upside" for the music-science types could be the fact that, unlike
some of the composition graduates, the musicians with the technical
and mathematical expertise to do advanced computer music could
probably readily find some other decent paying jobs of one kind or
another, regardless of whether they managed, as some undoubtedly did,
to continue their compositional pursuits....

______ _____ ____ _
Joseph Pehrson

Sometimes one reads ones own obituary, and sometimes one overhears the
world's view of oneself. I suppose I wish that this did not happen so
i could coninue to feel there are things of value in this worls. As a
Csound user for about 10 years, and a contributer of a microtonal
piece to the Csound Book CD, I realise that my personal aesthetic is
way out of line with most of this list. As Daniel Wolf said:
"Indeed, I would not be surprised if the csound users' community was
largely made up of people who started out to compose and then became
progressively more engaged with technical issues."

Many of my Csound friends do not fit that pattern (and I guess some
do). I started life as a mathematician (well I was by 3, and I was the
youngest of a family in which only my mother lacks a mathematics
degree). I was 9 or 13 before I started writing down compositions,
and 16 before I spent significant amounts of time on it. Meeting
musicians and composers at College (we had a near-professional choir
and the like) I was disheartened and concentrated on mathematics and
later computing and astronomy. Csound has changed all that for me, as
I can now hear what I write, and I have been able to free myself from
the major-minor prison I so dislike.

My current aim with Csound is twofold: first to realise the pieces in
my head, finish my 1990 piece (oh that I could!), start the opera, etc
etc (and I know that the chances are that none of my output will every
be performed); and secondly to provide a computer system for free to
any composer who wants it so they will not have to become (bad)
techies. I deal with a number of composers in my e-mail, from many
different gendres, and I seek as far as I can and as far as I have time
to provide them with the facilities they request; I do not require a
quality test, as anyway I am no judge of jazz, and even less of pop,
dancem or whatever it is caled. There are of course technically
competent composers who can and do look after themselves, but I think
you underestimate quite how much is happening out there. Much is not
in the USA for example.
I did write support for nET tuning, and Pierce scale, and irregular
tuning (Lydia said there was no need for JI support). I am amazed
that some of you seem to use MIDI, and I could make comments about
MIDI composers, but perhaps I wont.

==John ffitch
(now looking for sources of Partch recordings)

--- In tuning@egroups.com, J.P.FFITCH@M... wrote:

> I am amazed
> that some of you seem to use MIDI, and I could make comments about
> MIDI composers, but perhaps I wont.
>
> ==John ffitch

John,

Please - please do state your reservations about midi. I use it, but
I would really like to hear what you have to say, and promise not to
be offended.

Thanks,

Jacky Ligon

--- In tuning@egroups.com, J.P.FFITCH@M... wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/17435

> Sometimes one reads ones own obituary, and sometimes one overhears
the world's view of oneself. I suppose I wish that this did not
happen so i could coninue to feel there are things of value in this
worls. As a Csound user for about 10 years, and a contributer of a
microtonal piece to the Csound Book CD, I realise that my personal
aesthetic is way out of line with most of this list.

Ummm. Hello Mr. ffitch! May I politely say that I don't see how you
could infer an assessment of your esthetic from anything that has
appeared on this list, at least within this last year! I also
enjoyed your CSOUND piece "Drums and Different Canons," but you have
to admit it is not a lengthy piece... let's say like Bill Alves
masterwork, and that was the only reason your name didn't come up.

Strictly speaking, from a composer point of view, if I may be so
narcissistic as to offer one, a composer needs a tool that can be
pretty easily operable, thereby offering maximum compositional time
proportional to learning and operational effort. Time is composition
time and my feeling, at present, is that CSOUND is not truly a
"finished" product in this sense.

For example, even our own Robert Walker spends hours and hours
debugging code on his Fractal Tune Smithy in order to make the
operation smooth. However, on CSOUND, I find that half of the time
things will not "render" without some kind of error messages. It's
very "flakey" in this respect.

Of course, the resultant sounds are very beautiful and, naturally,
the glissandos and echos and all the rest can certainly not be done
in MIDI.

The fact is, MIDI is a lot easier to operate and time can be spent
actually COMPOSING rather than programming. Sure, there has been a
lot of bad music written in the genre, but that applies to
practically everything.... I don't believe an overall "categorical"
assessment of the composers due to the medium is applicable. You
certainly would be appalled if one were ever to try any such thing
concerning CSOUND composers!

I continue to work at learning CSOUND. HOWEVER, I still feel that
the time investment may not be the best use of my own particular
abilities and interests. I want to "get going" on the creation end,
not necessarily the technical end... although, admittedly that can be
fun at times.

Pat Pagano was mentioning that there was a certain "freedom" in
having a "do it yourself" product. There is some truth to this.
However, a more "commercial" product, i.e. one that has been
engineered better so that it is "friendlier" for composers in the
time-management sense, could be just as beneficial if not moreso...
since time, for the composing set, may not be money, but time is
still
t i m e.

________ ________ ______ _
Joseph Pehrson