The Digital Musician-Creating Music with Digital Technology_2007

Andrew Hugill

1. New technologies, new musicians

POSUN
„The new technologies have transformed the way music is created and heard, composed and
performed, produced and distributed. The world that surrounds the musician, the cultural context,
has changed in many ways. These changes have created a new musician, who may come from a
variety of backgrounds, possess all sorts of musical training and technical skills, have many
different kinds of knowledge and opinions, but feels empowered by the new technologies and
drawn to making music.“ 1

What are digital musicians?

- různé typy kategorizace hudebníků – jak oni sami sebe vidí, akademici, kritici

1. USTÁLENÉ TRADICE - PITCH

- většinou se začíná s VÝŠKOU tónu jako prvním krokem v jejich kariéře
– ustálené tradice napr. Indická rága, javánsky gamelan, čínská lidová hudba, západní klasická
hudba, někteér formy jazzu
- „What these systems have in common is an established setof skills and standard practice.“

2. RHYTHM – BEAT
- rock, pop

3. TIMBRE
- electronic and electroacustic music, sonic art, sound-art, sound design, radiophonic
„By dealing with sounds rather than notes, these musicians have changed the nature of music itself,
raising questions about what is „musical“.
AUDIO instead of MUSIC

Digital musician
- not defined by their use of technology alone. A classical pianist giving a recital on a digital piano
is not really a digital musician, nor is a composer using a notation software package to write a string
quartet.“

A digital musician is one who has embraced the possibilities opened up by new technologies, in
particular the potential of the computer for exploring, storing, manipulating and processing sound,
and the development of numerous other digital tools and devices which enable musical invention
and discovery. This is a starting point for creativity of a kind that is unlike previously established
musical practice in certain respects. It also requires a different attitude of mind. These musicians
will be concerned not only with how to do what they do, nor what to do, but also with why to make
music. A digital musician, therefore, has a certain curiosity, a questioning and critical engagement
that goes with the territory.“

To be a digital musician requires:

• aural awareness (an ability to hear and listen both widely and accurately, linked to an
understanding of how sound behaves in space and time)
• cultural knowledge (an understanding of one’s place within a local and global culture coupled
with an ability to make critical judgements and a knowledge of recent cultural developments)
• musical abilities (the ability to make music in various ways – performance, improvisation,
composition, etc. – using the new technologies)
• technical skills (skill in recording, producing, processing, manipulating and
disseminating music and sound using digital technologies).
. creativity

Where do they come from?

„No form of musical knowledge, understanding or ability will be handicap to these musicians,
provided they are willing to embrace the possibilities offered by new technologies.“

Walter Benjamin – The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

„The ritual to which he refers is the performance, a unique set of circumstances under which an
individual or a group experiences a work of art: „for the first time in world history, mechanical
reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever
greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.“

1877 – Emile Berliner – první skutečný mikrofon

1877 – Thomas Edison – karbonový mikrofon, komerčně dostupný
1877 – Thomas Edison – fonograf
1887 – Emile Berliner - gramophone
1877 – Ernst Werner von Siemens – první reproduktor
1898 – Sir Oliver Lodge – design for modern moving coil loudspeaker
1928 – Fritz Fleumer – magnetické pásky

- až do 50s technologie pouze pro reprodukci živých zvuků nebo hudebních vystoupení
- od 50s – umělecké užití magnetické pásky - Pierre Schaeffer

„Some artists seem to have embodied the spirit of the digital musician but in pre-digital times.“

1909 - Arnold Schoenberg – Funf Orchesterstuck

- music that had neither melodic contour nor harmonic direction but rather featured fairly static
sound mass built from a single chord which changed timbre, or colouration.

1913 – Igor Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring

Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)

- 1907 – Skwtch of a New Aesthetic of Music
„His frustration with the limits of the twelve notes to an octave tuning systém struck at the heart of
the concept of harmony that underpinned classical music.“

Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)

- 1913 – The Art of Noises
– „first serious ttempt to categorise thouse sounds (nonmusical) and treat them as potential music
1: rumbles
2. whistles
3. whispers
4. Screeches
5. Noises
6. voices of animal and men

„He duly built a Futurist orchestra consisting of intonarumori and gave several performances during
1914 in Milan and London.
Edgard Varése (1883-1965)
- 1936 – The Liberation of Sound
- organized sound

- 1950-54 – Déserts
- 1958 – Poéme Electronique for the Philips Pavilion at World´s Fair (400 loudspeakers)

John Cage (1912-1992)

- 1937 – The Future of Music - Credo

- 1957 – First significant use of computers for music – Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Yesey
program MUSIC4

Where are they going?