Paul Lansky on the current state

Paul Lansky speaks March 14,1983 in the book The Music Machine(MIT Press):

C.Roads:What,in your view,is the most unhealthy aspect of computer music?

Lansky:It is the extent to which there is an obsession with the machine rather than with what it produces.I have heard too many discussions among computer music people who were only concerned with software and hardware without even considering what kinds of pieces they were producing.For my money you can write wonderful pieces on primitive machines with terrible software,and you can write execrable pieces with super machines and brilliant software.

Good machines and better software certainly make life easier,but there is not a one-to-one correlation between the quality of pieces and the tools used to make them.Often,systems which are too easy to use encourage thoughtlessness.

Roads:Do you see any danger in hardware systems for digital sound synthesis?

Lansky:What i do see as a danger is that the design of the machine creates preconceptions about the way in which the instrument is to be used.

Roads:Isn't that also true about software synthesis,though?

Lansky:Yes,it is absolutely true.From my point of view,the best approach to designing software is to make it as low level as possible,without forcing the composer to write too much code(particularly operating system software),but giving him the responsibility for imagining and designing things with the greates degree of generality.

One of the things that often happens in music software is that programmers first design a language for the specification of pitch in terms of a 12-part division of the octave,for example.Immediately,the first thing someone learns in computer music is to specify pitch in terms of equal temperament.This is certainly an obvious thing to implement,but right away the structure of the language is encouragin conceptions which channel ones thinking along a certain line.

18 and a half years ago.Isn't it amazing how far ahead of that we've gotten since?

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MATS �LJARE
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