7 research outputs found
Sekvence a objekty, pĹ™ĂspÄ›vek k poznánĂ formálnĂch vĂ˝chodisek spektrálnĂ hudby
This text focuses on the formal foundations of spectral music. It is concerned with the elementary concept for the creation of a composition which consists of the generation of sequences of processed objects determined primarily by pitch. This concept has become paradigmatic in the field known as computer assisted composition, and whose formalisation represents a prototype of an instrument for the computer-assisted composition Esquisse (1987) created at the Institut de recherche et coordination acoustique/musique (IRCAM) for the needs of composers sharing the ideological foundations of spectral music. A similarity is brought to light between this concept and the compositional thinking of Iannis Xenakis as applied to the creation of Stochastic Music Program (1962). The Esquisse insrument is analysed with the aid of an as yet unpublished manual provided by IRCAM, where it was used as an internal document
Les logiciels d'aide Ă la composition musicale
Le XXème siècle aura vu le champ d'action du domaine musical prodigieusement élargi, à la fois par l'apparition de nouveaux moyens techniques de production du son, que par l'apparition de nouveaux modes d'investigation de la pensée musicale. Celle-ci s'affranchit des procédés classiques de composition pour explorer une grande variété et une grande richesse de modèles de pensée qui naissent notamment de la confrontation et de l'échange avec des domaines scientifiques eux aussi en pleine mutation. C'est à la fin des années 50 que naîtra l'informatique musicale. Cette discipline créera progressivement des outils qui vont s'inscrire en prolongement de ces évolutions, mais vont surtout leur ouvrir des perspectives beaucoup plus vastes tout en modifiant radicalement les moyens d'action de la pensée musicale. Ce sont ces nouveaux outils, le contexte de leur apparition ainsi que leur lien avec la pensée musicale qui sont présentés avec un point de vue particulier sur les langages formels pour l'écriture musicale
EnTrance. Spettralismo e composizione assistita all'elaboratore in Fausto Romitelli
Negli anni Ottanta e Novanta, la ricerca musicale all\u2019IRCAM ha riservato un posto particolare alla composizione assistita all\u2019elaboratore, in particolare allo sviluppo sistemi informatici di rappresentazione e di elaborazione di dati in grado di assorbire, rileggere e potenziare l\u2019esperienza dello spettralismo. Una moltitudine di linguaggi di programmazione, sistemi di controllo e di sintesi del suono vennero sviluppati dal centro di ricerca parigino, per offrire ai compositori mezzi e ambienti software in grado di di favorire la sperimentazione con la nuova organologia e ampliare i confini della scrittura musicale. Si apriva cos\uec l\u2019importante stagione della musica composta con l\u2019ausilio del personal computer, sostenuta dalla convinzione generale che gli sviluppi in ambito ingegneristico e la miniaturizzazione dei processori, con il passaggio dai grandi sistemi di elaborazione (basti pensare al computer PDP-11) a software di programmazione visuale sviluppati per piattaforme Macintosh, avrebbero prodotto un cambiamento di paradigma nel pensiero compositivo. In quegli anni che Fausto Romitelli, giovane compositore goriziano gi\ue0 allievo di Franco Donatoni, approda all\u2019IRCAM, prima come studente ai Cursus international de composition et d'informatique musicale (1990-1991) e poi con una borsa di studio in qualit\ue0 di compositeur en recherche (1993-1995). Nel centro parigino, Romitelli si confronta direttamente con il mondo della sintesi digitale del suono e del suo controllo informatico. La composizione di Natura morta con fiamme (1991) e EnTrance (1995) sono gli esiti pi\uf9 significativi di questo periodo. Si tratta di opere dove \ue8 innegabile l\u2019influenza del pensiero spettrale, in particolare dello spettralismo di Tristan Murail, che si configurava come possibile ponte tra lo spettralismo processuale di G\ue9rard Grisey e lo spettralismo funzionale. Nelle nuove forme di scrittura e di rappresentazione del suono, cos\uec come nella possibilit\ue0 offerta dal dominio numerico di estrarre parametri dall\u2019analisi del fenomeno acustico, il compositore trova la possibilit\ue0 di trattare altezze, spettri, non solo nella loro dimensione qualitativa ma nel dato discreto, parametrico. Romitelli coniuga cos\uec regole combinatorie, in un chiaro debito verso l\u2019insegnamento di Donatoni, con la ricerca sulle tecniche di distorsione dello spettro e, pi\uf9 in generale, con le tecniche spettrali sdoganate dai compositori del gruppo dell\u2019Itineraire. Il mio lavoro prende in esame questa fase della produzione romitelliana e in particolare EnTrance, opera della prima maturit\ue0, in cui Romitelli raggiunge una sintesi tra i modelli compositivi a bagaglio della sua formazione e un\u2019approfondita ricerca sul timbro condotta nell\u2019alveo teorico-ideologico che in quegli anni caratterizzava l\u2019IRCAM. La tesi mostra come in EnTrance chiaro sia l\u2019orientamento compositivo di Romitelli negli anni a venire: il compositore trova nell\u2019idea della trance, nella ricerca su una sorta di regressione dello stato di coscienza, una sintesi del campo di tensione tra la processualit\ue0 del suono inteso in senso griseyano e l\u2019utensile informatico: trattare parametri discreti e categorizzare cos\uec il timbro in seno al discorso musicale
Recommended from our members
Algorithm and Decision in Musical Composition
Through a series of creative projects this doctorate set out to research how computer-assisted composition (CAC) of music affects decision-making in my compositional practice. By reporting on the creative research journey, this doctorate is a contribution towards a better understanding of the implications of CAC by offering new insights into the composing process. It is also a contribution to the composition discipline as new techniques were devised, together with new applications of existing techniques.
Using OpenMusic as the sole programming environment, the manual/machine interface was explored through different balances between manual and algorithmic composition and through aesthetic reflection guiding the composing process. This helped clarify the purpose, adequacy and nature of each method as decisions were constantly being taken towards completing the artistic projects. The most suitable use of algorithms was as an environment for developing, testing, refining and assessing compositional techniques and the music materials they generate: a kind of musical laboratory. As far as a technique can be described by a set of rules, algorithms can help formulate and refine it. Also capable of incorporating indeterminism, they can act as powerful devices in discovering unforeseen musical implications and results.
Algorithms alone were found to be insufficient to simulate human creative thought because aspects such as (but not limited to) imagination, judgement and personal bias could only, and hypothetically, be properly simulated by the most sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, important aspects of composition such as instrumentation, articulation and orchestration were not subjected to algorithmic treatment because, not being sufficiently integrated in OpenMusic currently, they would involve a great deal of knowledge to be specified and adapted to computer language. These shortcomings of algorithms, therefore, implied varying degrees of manual interventions to be carried out on raw materials coming out of their evaluations. A combination of manual and algorithmic composition was frequently employed so as to properly handle musical aspects such as cadence, discourse, monotony, mechanicalness, surprise, and layering, among others. The following commentary illustrates this varying dialogue between automation and intervention, placing it in the wider context of other explorations at automating aspects of musical composition
On the synthesis and processing of high quality audio signals by parallel computers
This work concerns the application of new computer architectures to the creation and manipulation of high-quality audio bandwidth signals. The configuration of both the hardware and software in such systems falls under consideration in the three major sections which present increasing levels of algorithmic concurrency. In the first section, the programs which are described are distributed in identical copies across an array of processing elements; these programs run autonomously, generating data independently, but with control parameters peculiar to each copy: this type of concurrency is referred to as isonomic}The central section presents a structure which distributes tasks across an arbitrary network of processors; the flow of control in such a program is quasi- indeterminate, and controlled on a demand basis by the rate of completion of the slave tasks and their irregular interaction with the master. Whilst that interaction is, in principle, deterministic, it is also data-dependent; the dynamic nature of task allocation demands that no a priori knowledge of the rate of task completion be required. This type of concurrency is called dianomic? Finally, an architecture is described which will support a very high level of algorithmic concurrency. The programs which make efficient use of such a machine are designed not by considering flow of control, but by considering flow of data. Each atomic algorithmic unit is made as simple as possible, which results in the extensive distribution of a program over very many processing elements. Programs designed by considering only the optimum data exchange routes are said to exhibit systolic^ concurrency. Often neglected in the study of system design are those provisions necessary for practical implementations. It was intended to provide users with useful application programs in fulfilment of this study; the target group is electroacoustic composers, who use digital signal processing techniques in the context of musical composition. Some of the algorithms in use in this field are highly complex, often requiring a quantity of processing for each sample which exceeds that currently available even from very powerful computers. Consequently, applications tend to operate not in 'real-time' (where the output of a system responds to its input apparently instantaneously), but by the manipulation of sounds recorded digitally on a mass storage device. The first two sections adopt existing, public-domain software, and seek to increase its speed of execution significantly by parallel techniques, with the minimum compromise of functionality and ease of use. Those chosen are the general- purpose direct synthesis program CSOUND, from M.I.T., and a stand-alone phase vocoder system from the C.D.P..(^4) In each case, the desired aim is achieved: to increase speed of execution by two orders of magnitude over the systems currently in use by composers. This requires substantial restructuring of the programs, and careful consideration of the best computer architectures on which they are to run concurrently. The third section examines the rationale behind the use of computers in music, and begins with the implementation of a sophisticated electronic musical instrument capable of a degree of expression at least equal to its acoustic counterparts. It seems that the flexible control of such an instrument demands a greater computing resource than the sound synthesis part. A machine has been constructed with the intention of enabling the 'gestural capture' of performance information in real-time; the structure of this computer, which has one hundred and sixty high-performance microprocessors running in parallel, is expounded; and the systolic programming techniques required to take advantage of such an array are illustrated in the Occam programming language
Contacts of languages and peoples in the Hittite and Post-Hittite world
Ever since the early 2nd millennium BCE, Pre-Classical Anatolia has been a crossroads of languages and peoples. Indo-European peoples – Hittites, Luwians, Palaeans – and non-Indo-European ones – Hattians, but also Assyrians and Hurrians – coexisted with each other for extended periods of time during the Bronze Age, a cohabitation that left important traces in the languages they spoke and in the texts they wrote. By combining, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the complementary approaches of linguistics, history, and philology, this book offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art study of linguistic and cultural contacts in a region that is often described as the bridge between the East and the West