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NOTES ON
ELECTRONIC
MUSIC
COMPOSITION
UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD
Contents
Electronic Music
Composition
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Experimentations
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Electronic Music
The following text describes in a non exhaustive way the artistic context of my current research. The resulting
situation and questions come from my personal experiences and inspirations. I set them in relation with
some of my visual work because discussed subjects are identical. This gives a rough idea of the chosen
aesthetics.
Interpretation
The necessity of writing has no doubt for some instrumental musics,
but the question stays real when it is about electronic music. The
notion of interpretation from a written to piece is as shaken as it is for
improvised music. Tripartite semiology adds a filter element between
the interpreter and the listener in the diffusion chain. This element is
interpreted differently for each of them. Only the listener has a sort
of musical freedom in the case of music emerging from a machine.
There is no other active human perturbation in between. Only other
people, space and diffusion gear can possibly have a passive influence.
Figure 1: r136b2 - 2014 (ongoing) - white laser, wire installation. Laser mapping onto a
metallic structure, thousands of
reflexions create a dotted spatial composition points which
the lighting is sometimes so
weak one has to come closer
from the structure.
listen the piece again to hear another version. On the other side, dynamic pieces include some kind of plasticity during their performance;
they are liberated from the unidimensional arrow of time. They do not
need a beginning or an ending; their entropy is freely variable.
The listener is transported by something else than only physical time.
This time is then explored in a physical space or a more abstract representation space. For instance, it is possible to interact in a space of
possibles. Concert music sees then an evolution of its time in a fixed
space. Spatial computing, computation and iterations then become important generative tools. They allow the construction of a piece of music
rather than only a piece of unique music. Also, presented pieces are
even more meaningful. Does such a generativity, apprehended by its
concepts, leads toward an novel industrialization of music ? If it is the
case, it is taking several decades and new questions about intellectual
property will then rise and be comparable from software design.
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Architecture
When listening to electronic music, there is no parasite human factor
when there are no interpreters. The physical and social environments
are nevertheless present in the resulting art piece. Diffusion space indeed generates another time and space which interfere with the uniqueness of the piece. Time and space conceived inside the piece are dissociated. The interpretation of the listener is necessary influenced by
his own personality. The diffusion space, possible neighborhood, light
also effect the perception of the piece. There are also stimuli from the
social context and behavior from others. A painting offers a physical
and social frame, an art piece inside a context which is outside.
It is a pretty different situation with sound, which is still hard to contain it in a defined frame. In acoustics it is nevertheless possible to
get closer to a neutral or controlled space by adding a consequent
amount of speakers. Their positions would be equally so paced in
order to get homogenous synthesized spaces and spaces. This rudimentary method is used with visual immersive systems. For instance,
organ music is played in a church which is both a hall and the body of
the instrument. emphArchitecture defines spatial and time variations
inside a diffusion space.
Acousticians and sound engineers often simulate space in order to optimize speakers position and settings. Those methods are only used
when rendering the best fitted diffusion at the service of music. It
would be interesting to do the opposite: use architectural characteristics as a true part of composition. Speakers are indeed placed at
specific positions in order to use the hall and generate particular reverberations. But it is always considered as one sound source in a space;
a temporal variation inside a fixed space. The idea is far to be new but
there is still a lot to explore in the composition of space in its entirety,
at any time, any listening position in the hall and any scale. Sound
diffusion, analysis, and rendering tools exists and are just waiting to
be used for that.
Architecture with the time and space it generates is fully part of composition. Such materialization of music really becomes plastic, invisible but also readable inside space. Artistic consequences are important
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Composition
I have been working, testing and using, the generative system I have been working on for a while. It consists
on building structures, mostly rhythmic, that spread over scales, from microscopic timbre to a macroscopic
whole composition: a nano-composition. Time is only considered as another factor. The inspiration source is
the astro-physicians structural simulation of the universe which I would consider as the ultimate composition. I
definitely know the naivety and the trap of willing to generalize a piece of art, and moreover doing so only by
the way it is composed. I nevertheless think it is a beautiful graal if it aims towards the artistic construction,
the inner artistic universe of the artist. This research is not purely formal because I implement it in the
musics I have composed this season. This also means I have not yet totally archived my wish to build music
and electronic musical scores only with the current research and make the expected esthetical turn. This
rises the question of necessity and importance of a new formalization in an artistic process which already
exists and which is very empirical.
Experimentations
I ended up using several tools that would eventually merge together
and make a series of pieces. Each one would be conceptual and represented by two similar sound pieces; one rather minimalistic playing
only the skeleton and one also playing what could be attached to its
structure: timbres, articulations etc. The software Rhino is not only a
tool for architecture, it is very convenient for generating forms over
space. It is pretty interesting to map spatial dimensions to compositional ones. The simplest but the most effective and understandable
for the ear consists on creating sonograms. One dimension is dedicated
to time and two chosen others are used for pitch and amplitude. That
means the resulting music is often pitched but with no particular temperament or vertical segmentation of the spectrum. For convenience in
the work, I also used the JTOL.bach library (in Max) and a completely
re-adapted version of AthenaCL in Python. They can both be additional
apparatus to the Rhino construction machine. They also can later be
used in Ableton Live, which has all the needed tools for production and
post-production.
Many experiments showed they are very powerful and they exactly
fit the needs for nano-composition. Unfortunately I could until now
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never really reach the expected musical level I wanted. Making visually beautiful or geometric sonograms do not lead anywhere else than
pure concept if they are not properly connected to true auditory factors. I have used two main experimental methods: one constructive
using cellular automata and one using phases and interferences. They are
both beautiful and instinctually musical because they both make heavy
use of inference. This would be one way music is thought and listened.
Procedural processes such as multilayered cellular automata or multiagent systems generate expending patterns sometimes from a random
initial state or element. This is the initial spark defining the rest of the
compositions universe. Like all traditional composition techniques
(permutations etc), such grammar-based techniques find a true reason
to be used when we are dealing with isolated elements or symbols. It
does not work so well with continuous or short musical events; when
building sonograms. In the case of short and very fast iterations, these
evolutions do not generate anything more interesting than "controlled"
randomness (sieves). It becomes either too simple or too complex. The
chances it works are very thin. The same questions rises when using
interferences; I could not yet get anything that would justify its use. A
"controlled" random shifting and folding (origami) gives better results.
It is possible to distinguish a white noise melody, or even signal, from
a pink one. But it is much harder to assimilate their composition. You
would then eventually always get roughly the same musical result.
Am I thinking the same way as some neo-tonal composers ? Some
believe not remembering the melody of atonal music is a problem. It
would be reductive to define music only by some necessary tonality or
harmony. Nothing is necessary and there are many other dimensions,
apprehended together, that would make music the music.
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Noises
Yannis Xenakis used sieves and probability distributions both for symbolic composition and synthesis (Gendy). He also did some experiments with cellular automata. The fact I am using several dimensions
and scales lead me toward gradient and fractal noise in order to create procedural textures that would become sonograms. Perlin Noise
(Simplex) and Worley noise are good candidates because they provide
a notion of harmonics and are easy to manipulate.
List of Figures
r136b2 - 2014 (ongoing) - white laser, wire installation. Laser mapping onto a metallic structure, thousands of reflexions create a
dotted spatial composition points which the lighting is sometimes
so weak one has to come closer from the structure.
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2 zoom of Kaspar V - 2011 - high definition screen One can here
see the specific scale of a larger picture; different rules are applies
to each scale. Virtual stones with specific forms and angles are
traversed by a strong light ray. This builds this deconstructed
caustic projection.
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3 Kaspar I - 2010 - ink, paper global view of a high resolution spatial
composition. The audience can either read spatial permutations
thanks to a lens or have a wide view from far. Levels of grey
are given by the density of points. Kaspar is Kaspar from Peter
Henke.
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4 hr 8798 - 2014 - ink, paper (zoom please) unique and recurrent
melodic line. Time is the one the reader takes to read that score.
The form is defined by the eye of the reader.
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5 zoom of hr 8795 - 2014 - ink, paper multiple and recurrent lines.
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6 hr 8795 - 2014 - ink, paper this structure is composed of many lines
which rhythm of translations and rotations are making levels of
grey.
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- 2011 - laser print on plexiglas (please zoom) this piece represents
a map of Japan after the March 11 2011 Tohoku.
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8 Kaspar VI - 2013 - ink, paper Genetic series are created at both
macroscopic and microscopic scale. They can be considered as
cellular automata. A visible moir effect build up rhythms.
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9 r136b1 - 2014 - screen or ink, paper video film from a slow rotating
structure radiated by a strong light.
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10 hr 8799 - 2014-2015 - screen film video.
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