Physically inspired interactive music machines: making contemporary composition accessible?

Much of what we might call "high-art music" occupies the difficult end of listening for contemporary audiences. Concepts such as pitch, meter and even musical instruments often have little to do with such music, where all sound is typically considered as possessing musical potential. As a result, such music can be challenging to educationalists, for students have few familiar pointers in discovering and understanding the gestures, relationships and structures in these works. This paper describes on-going projects at the University of Hertfordshire that adopt an approach of mapping interactions within visual spaces onto musical sound. These provide a causal explanation for the patterns and sequences heard, whilst incorporating web interoperability thus enabling potential for distance learning applications. While so far these have mainly driven pitch-based events using MIDI or audio files, it is hoped to extend the ideas using appropriate technology into fully developed composition tools, aiding the teaching of both appreciation/analysis and composition of contemporary music

Musical Representation of Sound in Computer-Aided Composition: A Visual Programming Framework

International audienceThis article addresses the problem of the representation and creation of sound by synthesis in the context of music composition, as seen from the computer-aided composition (CAC) perspective. An important theoretical basis of this work is the concept of computer modelling, discussed in relation to the notions of sound representation and music composition. Modelling sound as a signal is extended to the musical domain by considering as an alternative modelling composition as an activity that aims to produce sounds. The visual programming paradigm is adopted for the representation and conception of the composition models, and therefore for the musical representation of sounds. A composition framework dedicated to electro-acoustic music and sound synthesis integrated in the OpenMusic CAC environment is presented. Temporal issues are also discussed and are the object of specific developments

OMChroma: Compositional Control of Sound Synthesis

International audienc

Negotiating the frontier between computer-assisted composition and traditional writing : the utility of each and their effective cross-integration

Subventionné en partie par la FRQSCAlors que les ordinateurs ont eu une influence majeure sur la composition musicale, par le biais de la musique électroacoustique et la composition assistée par ordinateur (CAO), il peut exister une division entre ceux qui utilisent surtout des techniques d’écriture traditionnelles (composition intuitive faite à la main) et ceux qui incorporent des éléments algorithmiques dans leur musique. Ce qui suit est une exploration de quelques-unes des façons de créer des points de rencontre plus fluides entre les mondes d’écriture intuitive et la composition assistée par ordinateur, en utilisant certains logiciels et pratiques spécifiques à la composition assistée par ordinateur. Ceux-ci s’étendent des situations où l’ordinateur nous pousse légèrement dans une direction ou fournit un réservoir d’information dans laquelle on peut puiser, jusqu’à des situations où, en se servant des indices de l’usager, l’ordinateur exerce un grand degré de contrôle sur l’information musicale finale. Des œuvres de l'auteur serviront à démontrer l’usage d’un nombre de ces technologies, en conjonction avec des explications plus détaillées de leur incorporation. Une première section ciblera la composition et les techniques de programmation pour l’intégration légère de CAO, reflétant une approche plus intuitive. Les pièces Mutations II, « Waves » et « Run » de Short Pieces on Falling, Never a Moment Lost, et (Let Me Hear) What Maria Hears, parmi d’autres, serviront à démontrer l’efficacité de ces techniques. La deuxième section observera l’intégration moyenne de CAO, démontrée par le système modulaire de progressions de l’auteur. Cette structure, développée en OpenMusic, aide à la génération de progressions musicales, et est facilement adaptable et modifiable pour différentes pièces. Ce système sera examiné principalement par une analyse des œuvres Melodious Viscosity et Like a Square Peg. La troisième et dernière section concerne un niveau élevé d’intégration de CAO par l’intermédiaire des gestes, utilisant le logiciel ScoreScrub de l’auteur. En se servant de ce logiciel, l’usager peut effectivement faire du scrubbing à travers des segments de partitions existants afin de produire de nouveaux passages musicaux. Les œuvres centrales analysées seront Gift efter Carl Herman Erlandsson et la pièce orchestrale, Världen och Jag.While computers have had a major influence on music composition, both through electroacoustic music and computer-assisted composition (CAC), there can remain a divide between those pursuing more traditional writing techniques (intuitive composition done by hand) and those incorporating algorithmic elements in their music. The following is an exploration of some of the ways to produce smoother intersections between the worlds of intuitive writing and computer-assisted composition, through the use of a number of different computer-assisted composition software and practises. These range from situations where the computer provides little more than a gentle nudge or a pool of information from which to draw, to situations where, through the user’s input, the computer exerts a high degree of control on the final musical information. Works by Matthew Lane will demonstrate the use of some of these technologies, alongside detailed explanations of how they were incorporated. A first section will look at composition and programming techniques for low integration of CAC, reflecting a more intuitive approach. The works Mutations II, “Waves” and “Run” from Short Pieces on Falling, Never a Moment Lost, and (Let Me Hear) What Maria Hears, amongst others, will serve to demonstrate the efficiency of these techniques. A second section focuses on medium integration of CAC, as demonstrated by the author’s modular progression management system. This framework, developed in OpenMusic, helps in the generation of progression passages, and is adaptable and easily modified for different works. This framework will be examined primarily through the works Melodious Viscosity and Like a Square Peg. The third and final section looks at high CAC integration through gesture, using the author’s software ScoreScrub. Using this software, the user can effectively “scrub” across existing score samples to produce new musical passages. The primary works analysed will be Gift efter Carl Herman Erlandsson and the orchestral work Världen och jag

Programming in style with bach

ISBN 979-10-97-498-01-6. A post-proceeding version is planed at LNCS Springer. The proceedings are available at URL: https://cmmr2019.prism.cnrs.fr/Docs/Proceedings_CMMR2019.pdfInternational audienceDifferent programming systems for computer music are based upon seemingly similar, but profoundly different, programming paradigms. In this paper, we shall discuss some of them, with particular reference to computer-aided composition systems and Max. We shall subsequently show how the bach library can support different programming styles within Max, improving the expression, the readability and the maintainance of complex algorithms. In particular, the forthcoming version of bach introduces bell, a small textual programming language embedded in Max and specifically designed to facilite programming tasks related to manipulation of symbolic musical material

LSound: An L-System Framework for Score Generation

Visual language or visual representation has been used in the past few years in order to express the knowledge in graphics. One of the important graphical elements is fractal and L-Systems is a mathematics-based grammatical model for modelling cell development and plant topology. From the plant model, L-Systems can be interpreted as music sound and score. In this paper, LSound which is a Visual Language Programming (VLP) framework has been developed as a tool that can model plant to music sound and generate music score and vice versa. The objectives of this research have three folds: (i) To expand the grammar dictionary of L-Systems music based on visual programming, (ii) To design and produce a user-friendly and icon-based visual language framework typically for L-Systems musical score generation which helps the basic learners in musical field and (iii) To generate music score from plant models and vice versa using L-Systems method. This research undergoes four phases methodology where the plant is first modeled, then the music is interpreted, followed by the output of music sound through MIDI and a score is generated. Technically, LSound was compared to other existing applications in the aspects of the capability of modelling the plant, rendering the music and generating the sound. LSound is a flexible framework in which the plant can be easily altered through arrow-based programming and the music score can be altered through the music symbols and notes which encourages non-experts to work with L-Systems and music