Evaluation of Drum Rhythmspace in a Music Production Environment

In modern computer-based music production, vast musical data libraries are essential. However, their presentation via subpar interfaces can hinder creativity, complicating the selection of ideal sequences. While low-dimensional space solutions have been suggested, their evaluations in real-world music production remain limited. In this study, we focus on Rhythmspace, a two-dimensional platform tailored for the exploration and generation of drum patterns in symbolic MIDI format. Our primary objectives encompass two main aspects: first, the evolution of Rhythmspace into a VST tool specifically designed for music production settings, and second, a thorough evaluation of this tool to ascertain its performance and applicability within the music production scenario. The tool’s development necessitated transitioning the existing Rhythmspace, which operates in Puredata and Python, into a VST compatible with Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) using the JUCE(C++) framework. Our evaluation encompassed a series of experiments, starting with a composition test where participants crafted drum sequences followed by a listening test, wherein participants ranked the sequences from the initial experiment. The results show that Rhythmspace and similar tools are beneficial, facilitating the exploration and creation of drum patterns in a user-friendly and intuitive manner, and enhancing the creative process for music producers. These tools not only streamline the drum sequence generation but also offer a fresh perspective, often serving as a source of inspiration in the dynamic realm of electronic music production

When I count to four…: James Brown, Kraftwerk, and the practice of musical time-keeping before Techno

Of all creative artists, wrote Hector Berlioz in his famous orchestration treatise, the composer is almost the only one to depend on a host of intermediaries between him and his audience (Berlioz, 2002 [1856]: 336). These intermediaries – the orchestra and its leader and time keeper, the conductor – may be intelligent or stupid, devoted or hostile, energetic or lazy; from first to last they can contribute to the glory of [the] work, or they can spoil it, insult it, or even wreck it completely (Ibid.). From written score to performance, realizing a composer\u27s work of music becomes an acute problem of both collective action and aesthetic interpretation. The chief mediator between the composer\u27s artistic intention and its social realization is the conductor, who through his or her authority not only asserts and determines the tempo of a performance, but also establishes its nuance, feeling, and overall interpretation

Triple Synthesis

This thesis investigates the result of merging three musical approaches (jazz fusion, breakbeat/IDM and Electronic Dance Music) and their respective methodologies as applied to music composition. It is presented in a progressive manner. Chapters two to four identify and discuss each of the three styles separately in terms of the research undertaken in the preparation of this thesis. Chapter 2 discusses, through a close examination of selected compositions and recordings, both Weather Report and Herbie Hancock as representing source material for research and compositional study in terms of melody, harmony and orchestration from the 1970s jazz-fusion genre. Chapter 3 examines breakbeat and Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) drum rhythm programming through both technique and musical application. Chapter 4 presents an examination of selected contemporary Electronic Dance Music (EDM) techniques and discusses their importance in current electronic music styles. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 each present an original composition based on the application and synthesis of the styles and techniques explored in the previous three chapters, with each composition defined by proportions of influence from each of the three styles as in the Venn diagram shown in the introduction. Since the musical context of the original compositions is software oriented, diagrams and computer screenshots are used in addition to conventional score notation in order to highlight details of musical examples and techniques. The final chapter discusses the conclusions made through the thesis research and result of this “synthesis” style of composition

Techno, Frankenstein and copyright

Copyright 2007 by Cambridge University Press. Popular Music online edition: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PMUThis essay argues that the widespread but not widely recognised adaptation of Frankenstein in contemporary dance music problematises the ‘technological’ constitution of modern copyright law as an instrument wielded by corporations to exert increasing control over cultural production. The argument first surveys recent accounts of intellectual property law’s responses to sound recording technologies, then historicises the modern discourse of technology, which subtends such responses, as a fetish of industrial capitalism conditioned by Frankenstein. The increasing ubiquity of cinematic Frankenstein adaptations in the latter two decades of the twentieth century outlines the popular cultural milieu in which Detroit techno developed its futuristic aesthetic, and which provided subsequent dance music producers with samples that contributed to techno’s popularisation. These cultural and economic contexts intersect in an exemplary case study: the copyright infringement dispute in 1999 and 2000 between Detroit’s Underground Resistance (UR) techno label and the transnational majors Sony and BMG.SSHR

Sonic utopia and social dystopia in the music of Hendrix, Reznor and Deadmau5

Twentieth-century popular music is fundamentally associated with electronics in its creation and recording, consumption, modes of dissemination, and playback. Traditional musical analysis, placing primacy on notated music, generally focuses on harmony, melody, and form, with issues of timbre and postproduction effects remaining largely unstudied. Interdisciplinary methodological practices address these limitations and can help broaden the analytical scope of popular idioms. Grounded in Jacques Attali's critical theories about the political economy of music, this dissertation investigates how the subversive noise of electronic sound challenges a controlling order and predicts broad cultural realignment. This study demonstrates how electronic noise, as an extra-musical element, creates modern soundscapes that require a new mapping of musical form and social intent. I further argue that the use of electronics in popular music signifies a technologically-obsessed postwar American culture moving rapidly towards an online digital revolution. I examine how electronic music technology introduces new sounds concurrent with generational shifts, projects imagined utopian and dystopian futures, and engages the tension between automated modern life and emotionally validating musical communities in real and virtual spaces. Chapter One synthesizes this interdisciplinary American studies project with the growing scholarship of sound studies in order to construct theoretical models for popular music analysis drawn from the fields of musicology, history, and science and technology studies. Chapter Two traces the emergence of the electronic synthesizer as a new sound that facilitated the transition of a technological postwar American culture into the politicized counterculture of the 1960s. The following three chapters provide case studies of individual popular artists' use of electronic music technology to express societal and political discontent: 1) Jimi Hendrix's application of distortion and stereo effects to narrate an Afrofuturist consciousness in the 1960s; 2) Trent Reznor's aggressive industrial rejection of Conservatism in the 1980s; and 3) Deadmau5's mediation of online life through computer-based production and performance in the 2000s. Lastly, this study extends existing discussions within sound studies to consider the cultural implications of music technology, noise politics, electronic timbre, multitrack audio, digital analytical techniques and online communities built through social media

Scary Monsters and Pervasive Slights: Genre Construction, Mainstreaming, and Processes of Authentication and Gendered Discourse in Dubstep

This thesis examines discourses on dubstep, a currently popular form of electronic dance music (EDM). The thesis identifies discursive patterns in the received historical narrative of EDM and explores how those patterns may or may not manifest themselves in the current discourses on dubstep. The analysis explores how the value of electronic dance music has historically been judged according to frameworks of authenticity rooted in jazz and folk traditions that were later adopted and adapted by rock. Consumers and critics of EDM in general, and dubstep in particular, are found to deploy key elements of rock’s framework of authenticity in the making of judgments about dubstep’s value. Furthermore, the gender politics of these judgments tend to reproduce a masculinist disposition seemingly at odds with the ideals of EDM culture. Thus, this thesis investigates the problematic relationship between traditional notions of authenticity and the shifting values of the EDM community

Redefining electro-acoustic: Applying techniques from electronic music to the composition of Pivot, an acoustic work for percussion quartet

There are a number of characteristics that distinguish acoustic and electronic music. The most apparent difference is the nature of their sound sources, but there is also substantial variation in the compositional process and in the techniques available to composers of each medium. The history electronic music extends from two traditions: Western Ali Music and popular music. During the 20th Century, composers and popular musicians alike took advantage of the many advances in electronic equipment technology to create new styles of music. The development of electronic instruments and recording equipment offered new sounds and provided new methods for the creation and distribution of music. Working strictly within the framework of a single medium potentially restricts the possibilities available to a composer. By analysing techniques found in electronic music and incorporating them into acoustic composition, one can expand the creative tools at their disposal. The goal of this dissertation is to contextualise the field of study, examine a range of techniques from electronic music, and to suggest ways they can be applied to acoustic music composition, with reference to existing works and my original composition, Pivot