Installation 1: Unfolding Time in Manifold; by Insook Choi
Unfolding Time In Manifold (1998) is described as an electro-acoustic composition accompanied by an interactive notational system. In the words of the composer Insook Choi, the work "takes an explicit stance for utilizing interactive computer graphics to assist the composition, performance, and audition of electro-acoustic music." Presented in the Virtual Reality Cave of the University of Michigan's impressive Media Union, Choi demonstrated the virtual reality environment she utilizes to translate three-dimensional gestures into sonic manipulations and ultimately musical objects. Dubbed ScoreGraph by its creators (principally Choi and Robin Bargar), this VR environment allows the composer to implement applications "that make use of complex, interactive computational modals that execute in real-time." [Choi, Betts, Bargar 1998].
Those who made the long but scenic trek over to the Media Union were treated to a thorough exploration of Choi's work powered by what looked to be an awe-inspiring battery of Silicon Graphics machines. Using a gestural wand controller, a common VR tool, the composer explained and demonstrated the user interface and then allowed guests to create their own sonic spaces using preset sound files and graphic parameters. The environment exhibited endless flexibility enabling a creator to design his or her own unique landscapes for the precise shaping and placement of sound. Later in the conference, Choi, Robin Bargar, and Alex Betts - all associates at the University of Illinois' Beckman Institute where their research is done - presented a detailed paper about ScoreGraph citing several compositional case studies illustrating its potential as a creative tool. The installation was an exciting experience for me as a participant and a unique contribution to interactive computer music creation and performance.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner, University of North Texas
Installation 2: Installation Spaces; by Burton Beerman
Burton Beerman's installation Spaces was a sophisticated combination of audio synthesis, video processing, and live interaction. Occupying a large video studio in the Media Union, Spaces appeared as an attractive and cleanly constructed environment of sound sculptures, video screens, several computers, and a stage. My impression was torn between an appreciation of the beauty of the art and a sense of overkill. It seemed to me that Spaces was caught in between being an engaging exploration site for the audience and a performance. An excellent dancer dancing in a costume equipped with wireless sensors that affected various parts of the installation made me want to watch her as I would a performance. The numerous input devices with which Mr. Beerman warmly invited the audience to play made me think of it as an exploration site.
The two perspectives were not so much complementary, however, as mutually distracting. When playing with a sensor, for example, it was fun to concentrate on the effects of one's actions on the video because of the quality of the imagery and intricacy of the transformations. It was frustrating at the same time because the image one was changing only appeared in the video queue once every 15 seconds or so. The feedback between an action and a visible effect was very slow, in other words. So I would make a change, wait for the image to appear on the screen, get interested in watching the dancer, miss my image when it went by, start playing with the sensor again, and so on. Ultimately I found I enjoyed Spaces the most when I didn't participate at all but watched the entire thing unfold, including my fellow audience members and their work. The sounds, images, performances, and transformations were very well crafted. Burton Beerman clearly knows what he is doing and how to achieve original and compelling results. I only wish the modes of interaction had been as clearly composed as the media.
Reviewed by Robert Rowe, New York University
Even though it was no more than a few yards away from the main hub of ICMC 98, I suspect that only those few souls who eschewed the elevator and took the stairs to or from the main paper sessions in the Rackham Amphitheatre (or who were organised enough to seek it out) were ever aware of the location of Intro-specks. Erroneously billed as Nmesh throughout ICMC, this installation by John Phillips and Carolyn Healy was tucked away in an inconspicuous 3rd floor gallery in the Rackham Building. I don't know if it really was because of its secluded location, or simply because ICMC's busy schedule left so little time free for visiting the installations, but whenever I visited the gallery, I found that I had the installation almost entirely to myself: a circumstance which I personally found very rewarding, though which may have been a little frustrating for its creators. I say rewarding for me, because I found Intro-specks to be something through which one simply could not hurry. And one which would not benefit from being crowded.
Carolyn Healy's visual component of the installation consisted almost entirely of found objects, mostly simple in form, with balls, rods and sheets, (each of various materials) predominating. The component items were arranged in groups, generally at floor level, although some items were suspended from the ceiling (managed with a considerable feat of ingenuity, considering the gallery did not permit the use of any fastenings!) and made full use of the available space. Overall, the gallery's lighting level was subdued, with the only source of illumination being a number of carefully positioned miniature spotlights, integrated into the sculpture itself. These were arranged to highlight certain elements of the installation, causing those objects to contribute further to the overall sculpture by casting shadows, or reflecting light, (or both) across the floor and other objects, as well as over the walls and ceiling.
The simplicity of many of Intro-specks' components gave, at first glance, the impression of an uncomplicated sculpture. Until one looked again! For despite the basic form of many of the individual items, the various groupings of related and unrelated objects—be they plastic or steel balls, paper rolls, glass bell jars, rods and sheets of metal, wood, fabric or paper—created little islands of fascinating complexity and intricacy, inviting the viewer to stay and study each in turn. And also constantly to return and reconsider them all from a different angle. This was all very much a physical representation of the acousmatic genre: objects placed in real and surreal contexts, emphasising the beauty of their own particular form.
Against this visual and physical element, John Phillips had provided a composition consisting of a large collection of sonic objects of greatly varying lengths. These too were presented in various related and contrasting groupings. The sounds were selected more or less at random by a computer running Opcode's Max program, which first processed the sounds and then fed them into a high speed audio switcher driving three pairs of self-powered speakers, arranged to divide the stereo image across one of the room's diagonal axes. The result was a series of drones, metallic resonances, and a miscellany of electronic chatterings, knockings and murmurings which at times filled the spaces between the physical objects, and at others ran rapidly around amongst them or were sent scurrying across the ceiling! This series of constantly changing and rarely repeating sonic elements were, in some inexplicable and indescribably manner, wholly complementary to the static and immutable nature of the installation's physical component.
With his composition, Phillips managed to avoid on one hand the triteness of an audio summary, or 'soundtrack', attempting to provide a sonic representation of the objects on display, as well as on the other, the blandness of an unobtrusive sonic 'backdrop', two techniques which I personally find blight so many installation compositions. Instead, the sonic component was in every way equal to the visual, providing both commentary and contrast to it and was every bit as interesting. Intro-specks' constantly varying sound-scape was never tiring and always offered the listener something new to discover, with as many sonic ambiguities as there were visual ambiguities in the sculpture and as many different ways to journey through its sound world as through the physical world laid out at one's feet. I also found many aspects of the sonic elements would bring to my notice certain of the visual components, whilst stopping to ponder some of the more intriguing juxtapositions of the physical items redirected my attention back to the surrounding sounds.
Even though it occupied the entire gallery, the installation was also a profoundly intimate affair. Upon entering the gallery, one truly felt that one was becoming a part of the installation in some way. Partly this was due to there being no obvious or delineated path around or through the installation: groups of objects were placed closely together and to see the whole thing, one had no option but to tread carefully amongst them. Also, in entering the spaces between the various objects, the viewer necessarily altered the fall of light from the spotlights and became an illuminated object along with those on display; one's shadow joining the display of shadows across the floor and around the walls, making this, in its own way, a truly interactive installation. There was also something in its construction which invited an immersion beyond the casual, encouraging both a general and a personal introspection. This sense of immersion felt by those within the installation was immediately obvious to newcomers: I witnessed several visitors halt just inside the door to the gallery, and stand there for some time as if unsure whether or not they should proceed further, or whether to do so would be to transgress some unnoticed rule; to trespass on forbidden ground or to disturb those already within.
Throughout ICMC, Intro-specks was a haven of peace and tranquility. Away from the hurly burly of the main conference event, although still very much a part of it—like some small, out-of-the-way city-centre park—the installation felt like an oasis of calm amidst a world gone mad. I, for one, found myself drawn back time and again throughout the duration of the conference, to explore afresh its myriad pathways. Definitely one of ICMC 98's highlights.
[Incidentally, a 22-second sound clip, together with a couple of photos of Intro-specks in situ (which don't really do the installation justice) can be found on John Phillips' web pages.]
Reviewed by Steve Benner
ICMC Concert 1: Thursday, October 1, 8:00 pm
Program 1 As with his earlier output, Allan Schindler's Breath of Life was a very carefully crafted and composed work, making its way over hills of rising and falling kinetic energies. The harmonic language and timbral language was very beautiful, though occasionally, I wished the harmonies could have been more audible through the thick processing that was a constant in this work. Despite the latter, however, the originary sound sources often shone onto the musical surface, providing sparks and splatters of clarity that were missing in many other processing-obssessed works I heard this week. The piece was by turns dramatic and meditative, and although it often partook of the familiar "whizz-bang" computer-music aesthetic, those gestures were always interesting and detailed. I also sometimes wished that the gestures consisting of "strings-of- rapid-16ths," often rendered with FM bells or the like, could be perhaps occasionally broken up or "spasticized" in some way, to make the rhythms more individuated. But this was at most a minor blemish on a major work presented at the ICMC.
Speaking of rhythmic issues, the middle section of Rock Music, (Mike Frengel) had a particularly attractive groove to it. The piece as a whole was a brief, but cute and effective contrast in the program. Dan Trueman's Waltz, with it's sensuous female voice urging us to listen, extended this cuteness into a realm of greater warmth, reminding us of the joy and love of sound manipulation which we all (I hope) share.
Opening the second half of the program, Aquiles Pantaleao's Concreta seemed to be made out of a limited number of original sound sources. At times this seemed to limit the harmonic/spectral palette of the work, but insofar as this limited palette was regarded as a challenge to be overcome by achieving variety in other ways, the work was quite successful. Somewhat contrastingly Seunghyun Yun's The Halo, for guitar and electronics, managed to contain many interesting and varied textures, and some of those wonderful "harmonic instants"---where you are given barely a split-second to think "aaah, nice chord" and immediately the music moves forward (yet the memory of that special sonority lingers on . . . . ) The ending, with swinging guitar, decaying, was especially poignant.
Also featuring a variety of pleasant "soundscapes" and other "events" were the two other works on the program: Kilian Schwoon's Orpheus und Demokrit; a lot of this piece seemed to harken back to sounds one might hear in Stockhausen or Berio's early electronic work. The ending was especially effective. Daniel Worley's Words featured similarly noise-rich, yet (paradoxically?) clear blasts of sound, coupled with a subtle and spooky sense of harmony. Occasionally, the entitling material of his piece bubbled up to the surface in the form of vowel- torn consonants, or complete speech fragments.
Reviewed by Christopher Bailey, Columbia University
ICMC Concert 2: Friday, October 2, 3:00 pm
The first afternoon concert, like most of the ICMC concerts in Rackham Auditorium, presented a mixture of pieces of recorded audio, some with, some without a live solo instrumentalist.
The concert commenced with Ripples by Douglas Geers, a "computer tape piece." The composer writes that in this work he was exploring the boundaries between listeners' perception of line versus texture. In my recollection of the music the latter clearly dominates, although this may be partly dependent upon how one defines one's idea of "line." Many of the gestures used by Geers (trills, tremolos, repeated notes) may have been intended to be part of a line or can be heard as textures in their own right. The piece had a clear sense of a constant increase of activity, climaxing shortly before the end. It was also interesting that the piece succeeded in giving a clear sense of spatialization of the sonic material-the acoustics in Rackham Auditorium seemed to be quite challenging from the point of view of sound diffusion; this performance was nevertheless successful.
Barry Moon's Interact I is an open form composition for flute and live (computer controlled) electronics. Some of the technical aspects of the piece are discussed in a paper co-authored by the composer in the conference proceedings. The acoustic impression was of a music very much in the tradition of open form composition, with much of the flute writing making use of a variety of post-Bartollozian techniques. In some passages the interaction (indicated in the title) between flute and computer was audibly apparent, with the digitally generated sounds varying and extending gestures played by the instrumentalist (in this performance, Elizabeth McNutt, who commissioned the piece). This immediately perceivable interaction was rather the exception than the rule. As is often the case with open form compositions, one would wish to hear it again just to get a feeling for what aspects of the piece are open and which are constant across multiple performances.
The first half of the concert closed with two more pieces for recorded audio: Richard Karpen's Mass and Experiment 6 by Kenji Yasaka. Whereas Karpen made use of (presumably) sampled sound sources, Yasaka's sonic material was apparently entirely synthetic. Mass made use of guitar-like sounds and vocals reminiscent of Holst's off-stage choir in The Planets - an association that may have been intended by the composer, who underscores the semantic ambiguity of the title in his program notes. In any case, the development of the sonic material was quite striking, with transitions between sounds derived from guitar resonances and choral echoes leaving this auditor unsure as to where the one sound source began and the other ended. Following this, the sonic material of Experiment 6 seemed quite deliberately static. The pitch and harmonic material were also relatively straight-forward, leaving an impression of a vague tonality throughout the composition, and supported by a feeling of a steady beat.
The second half of the concert began with Cort Lippe's Music for Piano and Computer, performed by Robert Conway and an uncredited computer running Max. Like Moon, Lippe emphasizes in his program notes the aspect of live interaction between performer and machine. Also like Moon, Lippe's music is audibly informed by historical 20th century styles-in this case, I found moments reminiscent of Webern and Boulez, contrasted with Bernsteinesque gestures. Atypically for the genre "live instrument with computer," the sonic material coming from the loudspeakers did not seem to be processed samples of the live instrument; but I would hesitate to try to identify just what the original sound source was.
Jon Appleton's electro-acoustic composition Yamanotesen To Ko is named after a commuter train line in Tokyo. Appleton writes of conjuring up aural landscapes; the primary impression I had was of a sort of Plunderphonics on "Teach Yourself" tapes, replete with spoken fragments beginning "Please repeat after me..." and continuing in Japanese. In the course of the piece the sonic sources increased in variety, including some lovely shakuhachi playing, interspersed with Broadway-style jazz and other musical associations.
Leslie Stone's Short Answers is a highly amusing piece based on a collection of articulate answers to an unstated question, including "Umm?" "Huh!" and my all-time favorite "Hmmm" The piece was short enough to keep the audience's attention throughout, eliciting a positive wave of chuckles with each new semantic inflection of the sonic material. What was the question? Probably the one Deep Thought spent so much time trying to answer.
The concert closed with DNA for a monophonic instrument and pedalphone, by Alexander Mihalic. The instrumental part was performed by Elizabeth McNutt, who had to divide her attention between flute and pedalphone, an instrument consisting of many pedals. The title indicates the composer's interest in transcribing properties of the molecules in amino acids to determine the harmonic, dynamic, and durational material of the piece. It sounded, again, vaguely reminiscent of jazz, and this impression was enhanced by numerous passages featuring parallel thirds and sixths, and much looping of melodic material. Given the genetic reference in the title, one is left wondering if this is meant as another "proof" that humans are inherently inclined to prefer diatonic music?
Reviewed by Peter Castine
ICMC Concert 3: Fri. Oct. 2, 8:00 pm
The high level of performance on the part of the instrumentalists was a pleasure at this concert. Kim Cole, clarinet; Alison Shaw, percussion; and Midori Koga, piano; gave polished and musical performances of Rue de la Cage Verte (John Mallia), nightfalling III: BURNT OUT (ends) (Joseph Hyde) andSphaera (William Albright).
A few other reactions still lingering in my mind since October:
Rodney Waschka's Xuan Men , written "for one good violinist playing one good violin" was played by a very fine violinist. In addition to producing outstanding violin tone, Bruce Berg delivered his intermittent self-referential soliloquies--spoken outbursts which at times addressed the audience--dramatically and with understated humor. The theatrical subtext seemed both a human and political commentary. (This work was written for a premiere in China, and--perhaps prophetically--subsequently banned.) The music was subordinate to the overall theatrical concept. The solo violin segments were cohesive and involved an organic evolution of pitch and interval processes. In the context of the ICMC, I wondered whether it might have been worthwhile to have heard Mr. Waschka speak outside of the concert setting about his algorithmic compositional techniques.
Environs, by Robert Mackey, utilized sampled sounds including a door-creak motif, but remained one of the more abstract compositions on the program. Mackey creates a rich sonic environment and a musically tight formal development. The composer's spatial distribution of the sound was well done and seemed effective in the uniquely configured acoustics of the very wide, shell-shaped auditorium. I did not experience the sounds, however, becoming freed from their "perimeters" as Mr. Mackey's notes suggest. Rather there seemed to be increasing (and sometimes arbitrary) textural and morphological disjunctions including the lack of integration between sampled and synthesized sounds.
Not so in Walkabout by Paul Koonce. Koonce's virtuousity exuded in all directions: the spectral clarity, depth, and definition of sound in this work was like a breath of fresh air. Koonce creates a consistently polished and clean palette. The piece's eloquent ending came to terms with its schizophrenic "alchemical [memory] trip," finding a mooring finally internally rather than externally. Alas, at this point the piece was over. The transformations of one sound into a another by Koonce provided a wonderful (and perhaps too rare) example at ICMC'98 of already practiced techniques being implemented with a freshness of conception and superb craftsmanship. Nonetheless, Koonce has the tools to say even more than this piece said, I felt; and I look forwardto hearing future pieces.
nightfalling III: BURNT OUT (ends) , is evocative of the darkness and intoxification of large cities (according to the composer, Joseph Hyde). The piece creatively sought to capture this atmospheric dichotomy by pulling the listener into a surreal world. This world was a collage of music quotations in a dramatic sense (i.e. music within the music), musique concrte, and live instrumental sounds and improvisations which were free of stylistic connotation. The resulting mix had overtones of impending disaster and chaos, and dionysian exuberance as well. The strong affect surrounding the work was due in part to an effective marriage between the tape part and the percussion/piano parts. The dense layering of elements, intermingling the live and the not-so-live parts, achieved that end.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Hoffman
ICMC Concert 4: Sat. Oct. 3, 3:00 pm
Many of the pieces on this program were obssessively monotextural, exploring a particular kind of texture or gesture. Kinetically, many fell into a genre of music that visual artists might term "flat": no big sweeping climaxes, build-ups or the like; just lots of (at their best) exquisite details, leaping from one to the next. This kind of music could be seen as a challenge, demanding a more focussed, attentive listening mode, lacking the climaxes that make life easier for a listener by "carrying them along;" or, as an excuse for laziness or ineptitutde on the part of the composer: "The piece didn't GO anywhere"; "There weren't any musical GOALS"; etc. In fact this question was raised by many ICMC works, (not just those on this concert). I overheard, or took part in, many arguments about these "problems" with my fellow concert- goers.
Personally, I feel that such judgements are difficult to make on a first hearing, so for the rest of this review, I will try to focus on other aspects of the works at hand. Nonetheless, my ability to maintain a continuous focus was often pulled to its limits, and beyond.
In fact, the first work, Benjamin Broening's Microludes, was an exception. None of the movements were long enough to become "tiring." It was filled with interesting and bizzarre textures ranging from the rhythmically aperiodic and ametered, to delightfully funky strings of sixteenths (or 32nds). Sometimes I had the feeling that the pedal was used a bit excessively/haphazardly; I don't know whether this was the fault of composer or performer, but this made some otherwise effective gestures seem crude, not achieving the degree of delicacy and subtlety that they (the gestures) seemed to require. The over-pedaling also interfered with the beauty of individual harmonies (which were otherwise an appealing aspect of the piece).
Subtlety was definitely an operative characteristic of Luke DuBois' Things That Go Beep In The Night. For once, a piece was proud of its own quietude. The gentle obsessiveness of various buchla ostinati added only more emphasis to sudden events, which weren't, dB-wise, loud, but *seemed* "loud" or "wild" in context.
Thankfully, I'm one of the few people remaining on the planet who still enjoy the sound of FM, hence Linguistics of Change by Robert Newcomb was not unenjoyable. Again, this work was quite obsessive in it's bell-like sonorities that poked at the brain, physically (an aspect I liked) ---chords, chords, lots of them. Nonetheless, it would take a high degree of concentration to truly learn to love every gesture as an individual in the microcosm of this piece, and in the context of a long concert, the piece was a bit tiring.
Closing the first half of this program were two contrasting works: Regions (Ryan Ramirez), a modest, tranquil, and successfully concise textural work with a nice sense of harmony. Following that was Alma Latina (Rajmil Fischman), a work with strong gestures, where, again, monotexturality ruled, in the context of the "wizz-bang" school of computer -music rhythm. The sounds were rough and highly processed, but occasionally a hint was given of their origins--an occasional drum-lick or shouting performer. It was a dramatic work, but again, tiring in terms of length in the context of this concert.
The second half of the program opened with the early-electronic-music (Stockhausen, etc.)-reminiscent Rundungen, weissgesiebt" by Hartmut Wohlleber; I recall delighting in several of it's rumbly bass sounds.
This was followed by Dinergy, one of the most attractive pieces on the concert. It succeeeded in having audible 1st-hearing-friendly variety, while still maintaing the "textural" quality of its neighbors on this concert. It tasted rich, like a piece of lemon-cake. Especially soothing was the middle section, with its quasi-modal harmonies. This was contrasted with much rougher stuff elsewhere in the work.
Continuing in the quasi-ambient line was Matthew Burtner's Fern, a pleasant-sounding work which utilized granular synthesis and spectral transformations thereof.
Finally, as a contrast to the preceding somewhat dreamy works, was the rather active Left To His Own Devices, by Eric Chasalow. This was a work about and for Milton Babbitt, synthesizer-composer and speaker, and as such was filled with quotations of Babbitt speaking, often warped in a way that obliquely reflected the quote's content. Also in the mix were the sounds of the RCA synthesizer (or a digital emulator thereof), spun into melodic licks, that, if not directly stolen from the old guy's music, definitely partook of his "style" of rhythm & melody.
Reviewed by Christopher Bailey, Columbia University
ICMC Concert 5: Saturday, October 3, 8:00 pm.
The Saturday evening concert was the first in the Power Center (Note to those not familiar with the Ann Arbor campus: this is not the central electricity generator, rather a building named after a Mr. Power). The concert featured several pieces choreographed by University of Michigan Dance Faculty, interspersed with works for music and video.
It was the latter combination that commenced the concert: "Collateral Damage" by William Alves, a piece described by the composer as "video concrte." The piece is a compositional examination of the Gulf War, featuring video clips of George Bush and other players involved in this conflict. The treatment of the material was minimalist, in many ways transferring Terry Riley's early work to the medium of video, although the treatment of Bush's speech was more like some techno-rap, inducing artificial stuttering and repetition. Very amusing, although there were moments where I found myself wondering if the Bush videos were perhaps uncut after all.
The title of Nicholas Brooke's piece for tape, dancer, and gender, "Pemangku," can be translated (depending upon context) as seat lap, or cradle. It is also a reference to part of the instrumentation in the Gamelan orchestra, which provides the main acoustic inspiration for the composition. The solo dancer, Peggy Myo-Young Choy, made use of her experience with Javanese dance in her choreography to good effect. The instrumental part, played by the composer on a Javanese instrument, the gender, merged thoroughly with the recorded material.
"Youlan: Long Winding Valley" is described as an "environment of vision and sound," created by Kui Dong (sound) and Ruth Eckland (visuals). My notes describe the images as "slides," some of which were more abstract, some less, some including Chinese ideograms. The sonic environment also hovered between "abstract" (i.e., synthetic materials) and "not quite abstract" (I wasn't quite sure whether the plucked string sounds were sampled instruments or produced synthetically, although the program notes would tend to indicate the former).
The first half of the concert closed with the world premiere of Diane Thome's "UnfoldEntwine," an ICMC '98 commission, for recorded sound and performed with an ensemble of nine women dancers. The choreography (Jessica Fogel) was obviously inspired by the title, with variations on enfolding and entwining of the dancers, sometimes reduced to an exclusive focus on hands or hands and arms or the braiding of hair. To be sure the audience wouldn't miss the connection, a banner was hung with the words "Here are the gestures of my hands, wear them in your hair." The ideas of unfolding and entwining of musical material were also musically apparent, though perhaps not quite so obviously as in the dance. Musically it was the most interesting piece of the evening, although the closing sonority seemed disappointingly reminiscent of the sort of analog vibrato associated with '50s B-movie science fiction scores (as emulated so unerringly by Danny Elfman in Mars Attacks).
Karl F. Gerber was determined to begin his "Improvisation with Integers" (choreography: Gay Delanghe) at the appointed time after the intermission, whether or not the audience was ready. We rushed to our seats. Drums drummed. Dancers danced. Vibraphones vibrated. Later in the piece, piano sounds (reminding me of nothing so much as Essl's "Lexikon-Sonate") were heard. As the evening progressed, the dancers scolded, strutted, sometimes told stories. According to the program, the improvisation ended after fifteen minutes. I don't know it might have been a bit longer.
Roger Dannenberg is well known to ICMC attendees as a prolific researcher. He has also demonstrated his abilities with the trumpet on numerous occasions. To the best of my knowledge, this ICMC saw Dannenberg in the rle of composer for the first time (although improviser is, I think, closer to the mark). The musical structure had a clear ABA form, the A sections characterized by con sordino performance. This was accompanied by visuals created by Scott Draves and his Bomb program. Draves describes some of his early work in graphics programming as "eye candy," and I am inclined to use this description for the work we saw in this performance, which wandered between cellular automata and a reincarnation of the FlowFazer screen saver. The technology behind the coordination of audio and visual aspects is quite interesting. Read about it in the ICMC Proceedings.
The concert closed with a performance of Gerhard Ginander's "nonstop" for recorded sound. It is a piece "intended for dance ensemble" and accompanied by a dance ensemble of seven women it was (does University of Michigan not have any male dancers?), choreographed by Robin Wilson. The music was fast and rhythmic, converging to diatonic tonality.
Reviewed by Peter Castine
ICMC Concert 6: Saturday, October 4, 3:00 pm.
Concert six began with Horacio Vaggione's Nodal, an acousmatic tape music piece which focused upon creating contrasts of interesting textures by extensively processing sampled percussive sounds. This piece showed Vaggione's clear mastery of his medium and expressed a maturity of expression. All the sound objects possessed well defined characters and gestural shapes, ranging in expression from brash to brittle and at times even delicate. To this, Vaggione added clear formal and structural processes, so that while the music was not at all predictable each successive event seemed to belong exactly where it appeared, as part of a twisting but quite organ whole.
The second work on this concert was Dan's Toys, by Brad Garton. The performance of this piece was quite hilarious, as were its program notes (I won't discuss the notes here). All of the sounds in the piece were derived from noises made by toys of Garton's son Daniel, processed into striking surreal gestures. Probably 99% of the musical sound of the composition was fixed as a tape piece, but Garton also performed live onstage, holding up each toy as material derived from its sounds played. (This became trickier as musical activity intensified!) But the funniest bit of his performance actually happened before the piece was underway: Imitating the diva-like behavior of many performers, Garton refused to perform until his items onstage were set up correctly for him. He pointed and made a sour face until a technical expert (Terry Pender) ran from the audience to fix Garton's music stand and the arrangement of toys on it, using measuring tape and a straightedge to line them up! The music itself of Dan's Toys was like an adults psychedelic dream of toys sprung to life--a funhouse foray into a buzzing, brightly colored landscape of pulsing and bending sounds that seemed both delightful and at times somewhat ominous.
The third piece of the concert was Elizabeth Anderson's Leveil. Neil Rolnick's Screen Scenes was performed next. It is a semi-improvisational work for amplified ensemble. In the piece, each player watches a video screen that shows him/her brief musical fragments to base improvisation upon. Each fragment appears for only 10-30 seconds, and then it is replaced by a new one. Rolnick calls the combination of the performers screens at each point in time a scene. To me, this kind of musical design seems quite interesting; however, this particular performance did not seem as impressive as its premise. As happens with many improvisational pieces, the players individual ideas didnt seem to gell into a coherent and interesting whole. As a jazz fan, I understand how some performances work and others dont, and I appreciate the chances taken by players such as these, possibly greater in this case because of the experimental technology. Im looking forward to hearing this group again, eager to discover if they can conjure a thrilling vibe from their interactive playing.
Colby Leider's Veni Creator Spiritus is a concise tape music composition which progressively transforms a brief sample of chant. The piece is elegantly constructed, mixing several continuous processes occurring simultaneously at differing rates. Leider separates material by rate, general timbre, and frequency area, achieving the effect of a constantly dynamic surface that slowly evolves, much like some of Steve Reich's classic compositions from the 1970s; also like Reich, Leider retains a consistent audible pulse through the piece. He also makes good use of the timbral variances within his sample, employing "t" and "s" sounds as virtual cymbals, contrasting differing vowel colors, and placing transposed, time-stretched material in the bass register.
The final work on concert six was Jeffery Hass' Keyed Up, for two pianos and tape., performed by Paul Barnes and Ann Chang-Barnes. The piece is essentially a double concerto for the pianos, consisting of three movements and featuring virtuosic piano material. The first movement, entitled "Gadget", flows forward in surges and ebbs of texture and rhythmic activity, briefly settling into metrical, machine-like ostinatos. The second movement, "Early Reflections", written for the pianos only, uses significant amounts of inversions and invertible counterpoint to create a contrasting, yearning impression. The final movement, "Loose Canons", pays homage to other great two-piano composers, such as Bartok and Lizst, in its use of intricate passagework and thickly scored harmonies. The piece finishes with a fiery interplay of rapid lines and gestures passing among the tape and players, eliciting a chorus of cheers from the audience after the final note.
Reviewed by Doug Geers, Columbia University
The seventh concert of ICMC was an evening concert, held in the large Power Auditorium. I arranged to arrive early and so was able to take a seat centrally just below the sound desk. The concert had seven works, all but one for percussion and tape or computer.
The opening work was Wayne Siegel's Match for solo percussion and computer. Despite the program notes I heard it as being in three main sections. It started with wash sounds, triggered by a drunKAT; pleasant and well played. The second section moved to more conventional percussion instruments, and was rhythmic in style. I am one who enjoys the theatricality and physical impact of percussion, and for the greater part I was entertained. There was just one problem to me with this section, and that was a synthetic cymbal sound which was triggered, which jarred as lacking bite. As this note seemed to finish phrases after a while I was noticing it more than the other qualities of the section. The last section moved back to the Kat, and slowed the tempo, giving a clear structural form to the work and allowing the player, Thomas Sandberg, to show his ability. As the work ended I was left wondering about the problems of the audience understanding the causality of triggered sounds, when delays are introduced, and the physicality of the actions are not always translated into increased volume. Such wonderings should not detract from this work which was well crafted, and would bear a further hearing.
The second work was the only pure tape work. The program notes did not seem to help to put ones mind into the correct frame, but Michael Gogin's Cloud Strata was an algorithmic piece, which after the drumming seemed rather one dimensional; I think it was timbral evolution which I missed. However the sounds used were good, and the piece, which lasted 5m13s, did not go beyond its inspiration. I appreciated the quality of the work and the compositional skill in its creation. Maybe it was the placing of the work in this concert, or tiredness was setting in, but the audience seemed a little lukewarm to the work, which I thought was rather harsh of them. This was more of a chamber work, ill-served by the large hall.
Back to percussion, we next heard Background Count by James Brody. The program notes for this were very explicit. The source material was a section of background cosmic radiation, which is one of the most random sequences we know. The performer, Dan DeSena, was equipped with headphones, presumably to give him some sense of the timing. The instruments included a range of conventional things to hit, but added a wine bottle, balloons and other objects. The work proceeded with percussive sounds from the tape and Dan hitting things. While there were structural components, I found it hard to follow any particular pattern, and I drifted into a Cagean state of just enjoying sounds. A friend had suggested to me that this ICMC was the one for broken glass sounds, and at one stage I was in fear that the wine bottle would be swept from the table and add a new glass sound. Some parts of the work were played to entertain directly. I think everyone noticed the sound aliasing, where the performer hit a cymbal on his extreme left, but we heard a whoooosh sound, presumably from the tape. Perhaps this was a little overdone, but to me this collection of sounds worked.
The last work before the interval was a piece for vibraphone and tape by Edmund Campion. Losing Touch used vibraphone samples in the creation of the tape, with the express intent of developing timbral unity. For me he succeeded too well, and I found the work rather bland, and probably as a consequence long and formless. Lest these comments are taken too seriously, I should say that the vibraphone is one of my least favourite instruments. The piece was well played by Eli Shapiro, and from the applause at the end it was clear that I was alone in my reaction.
The second half of the concert continues the percussion theme with a collection of movements for tape and percussion, called Percussion Miniatures, written by Peter McIlwain. There were about half a dozen sections, each dealing with a different aspect of the relationship between the two sources. The first section was demarked by an initial and final gong, and inbetween the performer, David Tolen, and the tape shared the interest. The next miniature had the performer playing a long timpani roll, while the focus moved to the tape sounds. A section for bowed cymbal on a drum head followed, with the tape line having similar sounds. To my mind the section for various drums with sound washes from the tape seemed less focussed, and I missed the structure. The work ended with a dramatic use of a suspended Japanese drum, struck with style in an accelerando, while the tape provided alternative drum sounds, and then a longish coda for tape, where the performer seemed somewhat redundant. This 14-minute work had many moments of inspiration, and I would certainly like to hear, and see, it again.
The longest work in the concert was the ICMA Commission from Natasha Barrett. Scored for percussion, double bass, flute and tape, Microclimate I: Snow and Instability was a major contrast to the other works. The instrumentalists were busy playing short notes and phrases, and I personally never got involved with the sound-world. My notes summarised my feelings by saying that it seemed confused and busy, and I remember longed for the flute to play a long clear note. On the other hand, talking afterwards to a number of concert-goers I found that it was clearly seen as one of the highlights of the whole concert program, and certainly the audience greeted the performance with enthusiasm. I am ready to conceed that there is more wrong with me than with Ms Barrett! The players were excellent, and the conductor held the ensemble under tight control.
The concert ended with Jon Christopher Nelson's Other Terrains for percussion ensemble and tape. The work had power and drive, and was an excellent choice for a closing work. I was slightly disappointed with the tape part which seemed not to add as much as I had expected, and the terrain synthesis did not stand out as I had imagined from the program notes.
A concert is more than a collection of pieces, and I would like to finish this review by commenting on the concert in total. It was one of my favourites at the Ann Arbor conference. Talking afterwards it was clear that while the works which were my favourites were not those of the majority (indeed almost the opposite!), everyone came away with the feeling that they had heard some good works.
Reviewed by John Fitch
Concert 8 was made up entirely of tape music, originating from Europe and the North American continent. It opened with the slowly developed, long, organ-like drones of Dennis Miller's Granulations gradually growing and swelling from small beginnings, until they filled the hall. Originally written for live performer and Kurzweil sampler, the tape version played at ICMC may have lacked the immediate interest of the original, but as a concert opener it worked well, making full use of the vast space of the Auditorium and settling the audience down into the concert spirit. It was followed by Pete Stollery's Onset/Offset, which came across as rather too intimate a work for the venue. Although Jo Hyde did a valiant job at the diffusion desk, and gave of his utmost, the intricately dissected sounds of this fine acousmatic piece required a far more precise play-back instrument than the 8-speaker sound confusion system (® Larry Austin) in use in the Rackham Auditorium throughout ICMC 98. The louder passages worked well enough, but the more delicate movements of the sound were decidedly woolied, with the ending, in particular, suffering at the hands of the hall's acoustic, seeming to wander off and get lost in the furthest dark corners of the Auditorium, rather than providing any sense of conclusion.
Canadian composer Martin Gotfrit's piece On The Air, which followed, is a sonic collage of snippets taken from various radio station broadcasts arranged into a large scale four-movement form. Some 15 minutes in duration, this work struck me as overly long and, once its initial impact had worn off (something that happened quite quickly), boringly repetitive.
Before it began, the title and programme notes for the next work, 5 Kleine Stücke über Kleine Laute eines Kleinen Menschen by Thomas Neuhaus had me thinking "Oh no! Not another proud-parent crying-baby work!" As it turned out, my misgivings were entirely unfounded. For while this undoubtedly is a proud-parent crying-baby work, it is crafted with such care and sensitivity to the sounds themselves and those sounds are chosen for their sonic appeal as much as for any personal implications for the composer, that the piece won me over completely. With the exact nature of the source sounds themselves at times barely discernible, or reduced to coloured noise and swept filters, this piece was at times loud and in parts almost 'boppy' but was always good-humoured and entirely captivating—just the thing for this point in the concert to re-engage the audience's attention. By the end, I found myself truly marvelling at the range of sounds a new-born can produce!
The work that followed, Map(a) by Portuguese-born Pedro Rebelo, was a study of granulated voices and bell sounds, interspersed with various percussive noises, these latter including tuned and untuned as well as entirely imaginary in nature. This was an interesting work which made good use of the hall, at times filling the space completely and also managing a more intimate sound than had been in evidence so far.
The concert concluded with a tape rendition of IV Felix Regula by Italian composer Roberto Doati. The programme notes described this as an 8-track version of a piece containing both 'live' instrument sounds and electronic computer-generated transformations of those sounds. I have to confess that the finer points of this work were entirely lost on me. I could hear nothing of the 8-track nature of the work, which sounded to me to be a fairly straightforward and unvarying stereo cacophany. Nor could I work out just how much of what I was hearing could be blamed on the computer and how much the orginal musicians were responsible for. But after just a couple of the work's 13 minutes I found that I wasn't really interested in knowing. By the time the work (and the concert) ended, I was only too ready to leave the hall and go off in search of something with a caffeine content!
Reviewed by Steve Benner
Following fairly hard on the heels of Concert 8, Concert 9 was a mid-afternoon event, featuring works by composers from the Americas, with a lone Japanese voice also present. It opened with the lengthy tape piece Straw-berri by Colombian composer Juan Reyes. The work used modelled flute sounds as well as sounds of a plucked nature to weave a complex but, I found, not entirely memorable sound world that did at least sit well in the lush acoustic of the Auditorium. Ron Parks' extended study of heavily processed double bass sounds, Residual, also worked well in the hall, and seemed much shorter than its true 6-and-a-half minutes. Which, sadly, is not something that could be said for Larry Polansky's work for voice and tape, Choir/Empi's Solo, which followed. The tape part of this piece is made up of vocal samples of Marie Pauline Esguerra, who was also the performer of the live component at the concert. Although the sound produced was pleasant enough (and Marie Pauline Esguerra undoubtedly very talented) it was hard to tell how much of what one was hearing was live and how much was on tape. The processing seemed to be little beyond some morphing and harmonic modulation—all very 'new age' and relaxing but somehow I was expecting something more. The final work in the first half of the concert was the tape piece engaging Causey by Jerry Tabor, a piece which the composer describes as borrowing from chaos theory for the derivation of an indeterminate score. Quite so. Perhaps I was suffering from computer music overload by this stage, but I'm afraid this work entirely failed to engage me! Or, I have to say, much of the rest of the audience.
The second half of the concert started with the tape piece Still, Yet, Again by Linda Antas. Consisting of sampled sounds from sources as diverse as bomber aircraft, PVC piping and piano, but generally processed more or less beyond the point of recognition, this is a highly evocative and absorbing work, at times dark and moody, at others fiercely aggressive but always interesting. It was also ideally suited to the performance space, able to flow effortlessly between the speakers to fill the hall with its drones and its crashings, or drift softly around the audience. 8-and-a-half minutes of this just wasn't enough!
I felt that Kazuo Uehara's piece Pont de l'Alma de Paris which followed, promised more than it delivered. Using concrete sounds collected in and around Paris, this short work (4:38) was conceived as a celebration of 50 years of musique concrète and the 40th anniversary of INA-GRM in Paris. A pleasant mix, the piece for me managed simultaneously to be both too short and too long. Too short, because I never felt that the composer had ever fully managed to say everything he had wanted to, and too long because I couldn't help thinking that some of the material had outstayed its welcome. As I have said, a pleasant piece but ultimately rather unsatisfying.
Barry Truax's setting of six Tennesse Williams' poems Androgyne, Mon Amour which followed, could hardly be described that way. As one would expect of Truax, the material here was fully worked out and expertly presented. And as one would also expect of Robert Black, the on-stage 'soloist' in this work, the performance in this semi-staged portrayal of an "intensely lyrical, intimate and erotic... celebration of gay love" was both absorbing and profoundly moving. Indeed, so expertly and convincingly did Black set about making love to his instrument, that the experience became uncomfortably voyeuristic at times, albeit poignant to the end. I have to confess that it was also difficult to recall much about the music afterwards, too...!
"Follow that!" I thought, as Truax and Black received their well-deserved and rapturous applause from the audience. Amazingly, Christopher Bailey managed it very well with his piece Duude. Cocking its snoot at both serious and pop musicians alike, this rabble-rousing "experiment in musical crudity" (as the composer calls it) is pure fun from beginning to end. And a great way to end a concert. Bravo!
Reviewed by Steve Benner
ICMC Concert 10 - The review for concert 10 will appear in the next issue
due to the reviewer's illness.
Katharine Norman's "Hard Cash (and small dreams of change)" opened the concert with sparkling chords of spun coin and speech from a range of ages and genders. The glamorous processed money sounds showered down, ironically juxtaposed against the intimacy of personal stories. Resting often on the edge of intelligibility as in a memory or dream, Norman's piece uses computer processing to alter reality, and thereby uncover hidden meaning. Joyce Tang's "Suite for Virtual Double Bass" offered grumbling, processed double bass licks and dancing col legno bounces. The structure was oriented towards short events as metaphors for body movement. "Vim", by Elizabeth Hoffman, was replete with fat, almost-retro synth sounds, but formed with a newer gestural vocabulary of granular techniques, giving the piece both familiarity and freshness. The clear, accumulative structure led ever upward in grand ascent nearing the apex of which, I felt as if I might shatter into fragments. "Music through Prisms" by Michael Kuehn opened with a noisy montage of instrumental fragments and bending synthetic timbres. The piece's heavily emphasized editing and rapidly flowing, disconnected stream of events made it seem sinister and dangerous, like a life flashing quickly before one's eyes. Lawrence Fritts' "Thought Forms" featured a caucophony of rapid-fire metallic gestures, balanced against slow, continuously evolving sounds in the middle. High frequencies were quite painful at several points. This unfortunate phenomenon continued, alas, through Scott Adamson's "scent of lilac drifts the bank of county 272" from which I had to protect myself with fingers. There were interesting interference patterns taking place in the air throughout this piece, though I'm not sure if the high level was needed to experience this.
Reviewed by Michael Barnhart
ICMC Concert 12 - The review for concert 12 will appear in the next issue
due to the reviewer's illness.
ICMC Concert 13: Tuesday, October 6, 8:00 pm. Concert 13 ICMC 1998's final concert began with 3+11 by Patrick Dorobisz, music for tape, silence, ethnic and European instruments (sometimes microtonal) and computer.
Paul Rudy's Parallax I Violin followed. This work is scored for violin and a tape built entirely from violin samples. The relation of violin to tape in the piece was essentially that of soloist/protagonist and accompaniment/environment, and the violins thematic gestures led the listener through an array of psychological states, from trepidation to open fury. Gabriel Bolkosky, the violinist, performed the work with an intensity that sustained ones attention continuously from beginning to end.
Ghosts, by Mark Bromwich, is a tape piece based on Aboriginal mythology. It employs samples of digeridoo and some spirit catchers to spin a colorful musical vision abstracted from Aboriginal impressions. The samples retain strong flavors of their origins, which gives the music a sense of being performed physically, which is quite engaging.
Andre Ruschkowski's Les pas intrieurs compares interestingly with the previous work, since it also makes clear references to physicality. In this tape piece, the physical activity is that of walking or running, as sounds of footsteps recur many times during the work. These sounds are contrasted by granular textures which are often quite appealing. However, to my ears the repeated use of the walking and running samples eventually became a bit tiring. It may be that if these were shown in more varied manners--i.e., processed, harmonized, rhythmically transformed, etc.--they would stay fresh to ones ear; but as it is this piece doesnt quite satisfy me, despite its interesting elements.
The next composition was a brief tape piece entitled bubbleWarp, written by Kim Cascone. This piece, while obviously relatively small in scope and duration, was refreshing, like a little scoop of sherbet between courses at a large meal. It featured a relatively small set of textures and sound shapes juxtaposed in a large number of combinations considering its 3.5 minute duration.
Yu-Chung Tseng's work Suite for Tape Alone consisted of two contrasting movements which utilized samples of piano in the first movement and water, a bicycle, bamboo chimes, electronic sounds, and voice during the second. Thus, the first movement sets up a very unified sound environment, which tends to make one focus on the pitch and time relations among events rather than their individual identities. Then, in the second movement, the use of many sound sources changes ones focus to listening to the sounds themselves and enjoying the timbral contrasts as well as rhythmic activity. The result is like two consecutive dreams played back for each listener to analyze for her/himself.
Semblance of Ritual II, by Jonathan Lee, is a tape piece that utilized extensive timbral transformations of samples from Tibetan Buddhist ritual music. Lee used software to alter the sounds beyond recognizable relation to their sources, reharmonize the timbre of the sounds to create clear harmonic progressions, and to effect timbral transformations between pairs of sounds. These were mixed together in an intricately composed piece that seemed to be in constant directional motion. The result was a highly evocative, lush and quite fascinating
Finally, the last work on the last concert of ICMC 1998 was One Divided, a work for trumpet and signal processor written by Gregory Laman and performed by Paul Bhasin. Unfortunately, compared to some of the other quite accomplished pieces on this program, this final work seemed a bit out of place and seemed to be a strange choice as the final piece of this festival. The work was a series of relatively short movements; in each, the trumpeter performed gestures which were processed in real time by the effects unit. Since many pieces have been written through the years utilizing this performance paradigm, one expects the concept of such a piece to subtly or cleverly employ the effects processing; but this piece seemed content to simply pick one effect per movement, using it constantly and similarly throughout.
Attendance at the Education Session was miserable. There may have been a handful of people besides myself who were not directly affiliated with a presentation, but even that may be generous. This was my first ICMC, so I hesitate to draw any conclusions from such apparent indifference, but I do believe this session showcased some projects worthy of more widespread attention.
First on the agenda was The Virtual Sound Project of the Edison Studio in Rome, Italy, presented by Alessandro Cipriani on behalf of himself and Riccardo Bianchini. This effort addresses the lack of educational materials on electroacoustic music in the Italian language, and intends to eventually include a series of textbooks, Internet courses, and CD-ROMs under the name Cinema per l'Orecchio (Ear Theatre). As of this writing, they have produced Il Suono Virtuale (Virtual Sound), the first Italian textbook on sound synthesis and audio processing. Published by ConTempo in May 1998, Il Suono Virtuale combines theory and practice by integrating lessons in synthesis and signal processing with extensive tutorials using Csound. The idea is that students will gain an understanding of electroacoustic music techniques as well as acquire specific hands-on knowledge of how to implement those techniques. The fundamentals of synthesis are covered, including additive, subtractive, granular, amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, waveshaping, FOF, physical modeling, and analysis/resynthesis. Many sound processing basics are also covered, including delay, echo, reverb, chorus, flanging, phasing, and convolution. Il Suono Virtuale attempts to guide the novice through all these techniques, with optional sections on advanced topics for more experienced or ambitious students. Appendices detail the mathematical knowledge required for a rational approach to Csound, and the WCShell application, a graphical front-end interface to Csound, written by Mr. Bianchini.
WCShell is based around a spreadsheet metaphor for organizing orchestra and score data, as well as providing drawing tools for envelope shaping and modification. The spreadsheet allows standard cell operations, including multiple copy/paste, data fills, and mathematical operators. I have precious little experience with Csound, do I don't feel qualified to judge the usefulness of WCShell, but the interface seemed straightforward, well-designed, and unusually polished for an early version. On the other hand, Richard Boulanger, now self-proclaimed Csound guru, arrived midway through the demonstration to interrupt with several curiously specific questions. I thought for a moment I might witness another mugging like Mr. Boulanger had perpetrated on Dr. Kia Ng during the Leeds Studio Report the day before. However, Mr. Cipriani's unflustered answers seemed to prove satisfactory, as Mr. Boulanger soon departed, allowing the demonstration to continue in a civilized fashion. If WCShell can stand up to such an assault, it's good enough for me.
Il Suono Virtuale is only the first step in The Virtual Sound Project. An English translation of the textbook is underway, due to be completed in mid-1999. Further textbooks dependent on additional funding will cover topics of acoustics, psychoacoustics, ear-training, spectromorphological comparison of acoustic and electronic sounds, studio techniques, multimedia practice, history of electroacoustic music, etc. An Internet component based on Il Suono Virtuale is also currently under development. Please check http://www.axnet.it/edison for further information.
The next presentation was given by Peter J. Raschke from the Center for Music Technology at Northwestern University, on Music Technology as a Tool for Exploring the Creative Aspects of Music. Mr. Raschke has developed several interactive music education applications for the Internet. First is "Exploring MIDI", a Web site which uses Java applets, embedded MIDI files, and MaxPlay patches to teach the basic concepts and practical implementation issues of MIDI. Exercises include routing MIDI cables in several virtual studios, converting MIDI note numbers to standard pitch names, and how to use MIDI on the Web. For the record, I could not get the Java applets to work with Netscape Navigator 4.07 under either MacOS or Windows NT, but non-interactive alternatives are provided also. "Score Scan" is a Web site that facilitates tonal analysis and annotation of a visual score. A Java applet enables students to mark up music with accidentals, chord symbols, Roman numerals, etc., and then compare their markings to the instructor's. Unfortunately, "Score Scan" cannot be demoed without installing custom Java classes. Presumably the class libraries are available upon request, as is a separate application for instructors with additional features. A third site, "Gregorian Chant, Christmas Mass", uses Voyager CD Link to play music examples from a local audio CD upon command from the Web site, circumventing the usual Internet trade-off between audio quality and available bandwidth. While the latter two sites are not currently usable by the general public, these three applications demonstrate some interesting possibilities for teaching music over the Internet. Even though technologies such as Java and Web audio are still moving targets, Mr. Raschke is clearly pursuing important objectives by exploring their educational potential. During the discussion period, there arose some concern that existing Web sites, lacking the dialogue of a traditional classroom, do not sufficiently encourage an inquiring attitude, nor motivate students to move beyond Internet-based materials towards more in-depth Resources. Of course, a Web site cannot replace an enthusiastic instructor, and all sites should provide references to textbooks and as many other information sources as possible. By integrating such sites into a well-designed curriculum, teachers can balance traditionally directed instruction with this more exploratory self-guided learning. For more information on this project, please check http://nuinfo.nwu.edu/musicschool/links/projects/projects.html.
The third presentation was given by Juan Reyes, from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia, on Education with Computer Music in Colombia. This paper was less about pushing the technological envelope and more about overcoming sociocultural and economic obstacles to computer music education. Mr. Reyes painted a somber picture of musical aspiration in Colombia--music education through high school is neither mandatory nor even offered at many schools, instrumental virtuosity is not emphasized, and music in general is seen as unnecessary, a luxury. He has witnessed a growing schism between the poor, who embrace a folk tradition of music as a component of everyday life, and the "managers", who believe music is useful only as a marketing tool. Obviously, in order to advance the progress of musical thought and practice, the former approach is too na.ve, the latter too cynical. In order to address these myriad issues, Mr. Reyes has developed and taught an extensive curriculum in computer music at the Universidad de Los Andes since 1992. By introducing students to the principles and techniques of electroacoustic music, he has successfully ignited their latent musical interest and talent, in addition to inspiring the collaboration between artists and engineers crucial to a vigorous computer music atmosphere. The curriculum reflects most of the common practice approaches to computer music taught in the United States, starting with MIDI as the most accessible and easily understood musical abstraction, and moving through the physics of sound, mathematical analysis, algorithmic composition, psychoacoustics, interactive performance, etc. While Mr. Reyes suggested the application of his approach to nascent electroacoustic music programs in other countries with similar obstacles as Colombia, I gather the real magic lies in convincing university administrators to fund such initiatives. To this end, Mr. Reyes suggested emphasizing the usefulness of computers as "teaching assistants". For example, computers are excellent tools for ear training, providing "music-minus-one" accompaniment, recording and editing performances, and other obviously useful labor-saving tasks. Once in the classroom, a little extra hardware here and some extra software there can create a pretty decent environment for teaching computer music. If you are reading this and wondering how you might get started with such a program, I suggest you get in touch with Mr. Reyes at jreyes@uniandes.edu.co. And we here in the States, perhaps a little complacent in our Moore's law universe, should reach out to our colleagues in less privileged sociocultural environments, with ideas, collaboration, and whatever other support we can offer.
The final presentation, on MusicWeb Den Haag--Developing New Tools for Higher Music Education, Using Wide-Area Networks and Hypermedia Technology, was delivered by Karst de Jong, from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands, on behalf of himself and Carola Boehm. Unfortunately, the presentation was hampered by technical difficulties, yet another reinforcement of the fact that technology is certain to betray us in our most vulnerable moments. However, even despite the problems, the demonstration was quite impressive, with a sophisticated interface design and rich functional depth beyond any Web-based musical resource I have seen. The MusicWeb project was started three and a half years ago as an international collaboration between the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the Musikhochschule in Hannover, Germany. The project infrastructure is distributed, with primary technical responsibility at Glasgow, research and theoretical investigation at Hannover, and content development at The Hague. I won't delve into the technical details of the wide-area client/server database, other than to note that their implementation strategies seem consistent with high-end industry practices for storing and manipulating various media data types with maximum flexibility. Using this powerful back-end, the project team at The Hague has developed a very intuitive interface for interacting with musical information. The main screen consists of a three-pane frameset: the left pane shows a standard Finder-like hierarchical menu for navigation, the large center pane displays the current module including text, graphics, musical examples, etc., and the right pane shows footnotes, annotations, and other pertinent references. In addition, the center pane can be split in two to accommodate comparison between separate modules, such as two different musical passages. This interface allows linear progression through each module while still taking advantage of contextual supplemental material and intermodule links. A set of publishing tools has also been developed, providing templates and wizards for relatively painless conversion of courses into the system's format. MusicWeb is still a work in progress, with testing and evaluation of students in beta during the current academic year. Also, the somewhat proprietary nature of the database limits its use to properly configured clients. Right now, it can be fully accessed only internally at The Hague, but the plan is to ultimately form an international consortium of institutions to share Resources and responsibilities for continued development, presumably including an open client that would function with a standard browser. One possible direction under consideration would be a central "service bureau" that would facilitate the conversion of curricula for teachers without the time or technical inclination to publish their own Web-based materials. While it's always exciting to witness well-executed application of new technology, I can only hope MusicWeb quickly expands its scope to include more than the lucky few at The Hague. If I were a music teacher at this moment, I would be desperate to get my hands on such an elegant resource with so much potential. For more information, and to ask these folks to let the rest of us into the loop, please go to http://sun1.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/musicweb/.
Reviewed by John Paul Young
The first paper session of the 1998 ICMC was entitled Interactive Systems I: Accompaniment Systems. The first two of these were both presented by Dan Gang of Hebrew University, and both utilized neural network methodologies to enable the computer to devise musical accompaniments. The first paper contained a system that followed harmonic patterns to guess meter; it was fairly interesting, and appeared effective within the given constraints.
Gangs second paper trained a neural network with melodies and their harmonizations, and then gave the network new melodies to harmonize in real time, based on the learned patterns. This work was clearly well done, but the limitations put upon the music used for the algorithm seemed a bit excessive; hopefully we will see a more sophisticated version of this system next year.
The third paper was presented by Masataka Goto of Waseda University. Gotos paper was a real multimedia experience, combining complex realtime computer animation and coordinated musical input. His goal was to track beats from realtime digital audio input, and he utilitzed a system of multiple competing agents to analyze the audio and find the most accurate representation of the beat. First he demonstrated this process by playing a pop song through the system, which displayed animated icons racing across the screen to represent the competing agents. The he showed a possible application of this ability, by displaying a group of animated stick figures that dance to realtime audio input using the beat tracking information from his agents. After this demonstration one audience member asked who had choreographed the dancers; Goto happily replied that he had done it himself.
Next, John Lawter and Barry Moon presented a new Max MSP object they had created to track a performers position within an open form piece of music. This object worked well within Moons score, but had some limitations: It tracked ones position in the piece by buffering the most recent five notes, which were then compared to sets of notes in the score. The sets within the score were graded 1-5 based upon their similarity to what had been played, and the winner among these became the computers guess for where in the score the performer was. However, some audience members suggested that it would probably be more efficient to simply scan the entire score to find the current position; also, if a composition contained many repeated notes and motives, tracking only the last five notes would not be sufficient.
The last paper of session one, entitled A Multi-Modal Conducting Simulator, was given by Satoshing Usa of Kogakuin University and the Yamaha corporation. This system placed accelerometers on conducting the conductors baton to capture beat patterns, followed eye-based cues toward different areas of a video display of an orchestra by placing eye camera goggles onto the conductors face, and placed sensors around the conductors chest to measure breathing patterns via changes in chest girth. This system presented a promising integration of data regarding the art of conducting, but the authors readily admitted that it is a trial development which still has some serious limitations, especially in the comfort and precision of control with the goggles and breath sensors.
Reviewed by Doug Geers, Columbia University
The first paper of session two was entitled, A New Interactive Performance System for Real-Time Sound Synthesis, and was presented by Giorgio Nottoli of the Conservatorio di Musica L. Refice. Nottolis team has created a new DSP chip, named Orion, specifically designed for high performance usage of common computer music synthesis algorithms. They then use eight of the Orion chips as the center of the Betel Orionis system, a programmable synthesis unit that can be controlled from a personal computer or MIDI device.
Next, Lorin Grubb of Carnegie Mellon University discussed his work tracking live vocal performances. This is a continuation of earlier work, and now tracks not only fundamental pitch, but also spectral features of the notes and amplitude changes. This data is stochastically analyzed to determine score position and cue an accompaniment MIDI file. Grubbs presentation was quite well done, and included video of a singer using the system. However, the video also indicated that while this system can locate the correct position in the score for the most part, its sense of timing is still noticeably different than that of a good human accompanist.
The last paper of this session was delivered by Karen Kahn of The University of Virginia, who presented her ideas regarding the use of the female voice in computer music. Kahn had formulated insightful ideas on this topic, and related them to pieces by Larry Austin, Luke DuBois, and Paul Lansky. However, the number of facets and repercussions of this topic that she mentioned produced the result that none of them was investigated deeply, which might have been more fulfilling for the audience. It is laudable that someone investigate these issues, and Kahn seems to have a serious interest in bringing them forth for examination and discussion.
Reviewed by Doug Geers, Columbia University
Session Three began with Rafael Irizarry (CNMAT). Irizarry had developed software to examine digital audio signals and use analysis data to additively resynthesize the sound using dynamic window size selection. Window sizes changed based on the frequency content, allowing for the more accurate resynthesis for each window. The algorithm for determining window size also had built-in penalties for excessively small window sizes and excessively large numbers of partials within a window. The best demonstration of this work was Irizarrys resynthesis of a shakuhachi note, which contained both harmonic and noise information.
Next, Davide Rocchesso of the University of Verona presented an interesting and well done study of physical models of piano tones. The purpose of this work was to determine whether there may be a frequency above which one need not calculate the non-harmonic variances in the spectrum of a piano note and, if this exists, where it is located. Several tones were synthesized, each using a different modification of the original frequency data. Subjects--all musicians--then listened to the tones and rated them, focusing on the decay stage of the notes. The resulting data provided insight into which freqency areas do and do not need to be resynthesized with great accuracy.
The third paper, by Roger Dannenberg of Carnegie Mellon University, investigated how provide appropriate amplitude envelopes for synthesized trumpet tones according to musical context. While others have succeeded in creating realistic synthesized trumpet notes, Dannenbergs goal is to synthesize tones in such a way that each individual note is articulated in the way a live performer would play it as part of a musical phrase. He began by analyzing 125 live trumpet performances to collect data about when different kinds of amplitude envelopes typically occur. This data showed specific tendencies for envelope shape depending upon the articulation type, dynamic level, and melodic contour given. This data was then used to synthesize performances, which were played, along with MIDI performances of the same tunes. Dannenbergs synthesized material was clearly more natural sounding than the MIDI performances, but did not yet pass for a real instrument.
Cyril Drame and David Wessel of CNMAT presented the fourth paper of this session, which compared neural network and machine learning methods for additively synthesizing instrumental tones from spectral models in realtime. They presented examples of material synthesized by each method, and pointed out the advantages of each. While the tones sythesized by both methods were interesting, the material created by the network method did sound better. However, I wondered whether more accurate results could be obtained if the researchers did not limit themselves to realtime synthesis.
The final paper of session three was delivered by Bernd Schoner of MIT. This study attempted to realize a realtime synthesized violin sound. First, a violinist was recorded while playing an instrument that had sensors attached to it which measured bow position, bow velocity, bow pressure, and distance between the bow and violin bridge. The recorded digital audio was analyzed, and a large set of spectral frames was created, in which each frame was tagged with values regarding the state of the violin when it was originally played. Then, a reseacher played a violin-like controller that fed input data into an algorithm which determined which frames of the spectral analysis to use for synthesis. The concepts under study here seemed promising, but the musical result wasnt totally convincing and exhibited noticable latency.
Reviewed by Doug Geers ,Columbia University
The first paper of this session was presented by Shlomo Dubnov of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Working with Xavier Rodet of IRCAM, Dubnov created a method for analyzing timbres from performances and capturing data regarding the temporal evolution of the sound. Essentially, this method creates a series of spectral envelopes from an analysis of the source and then uses spectral derivatives to smooth over the highly inaccurate areas of the envelopes. Miller Puckette of UC San Diego presented the second paper, demonstrating two audio analysis tools for Pd and MSP, Fiddle and Bonk. Fiddle is a pitch detector which Puckette humbly declares ...does fairly well in some cases. Bonk is an algorithm to detect percussive attacks in a live performance by looking at bands of the spectrum and detecting fast rises in amplitude occurring in each of these. The spectrum is filtered into 11 bands, so based on what combination of bands rise in amplitude one may guess what instrument has been hit. Furthermore, the system can build a sound template for each instrument to enable this timbre differentiation. Puckette played with the Bonk instrument during his talk, and this was both hilarious and quite an impressive demo of Bonks capabilities.
Amar Chaudhary of CNMATthen gave the third paper of this session, discussing his software OpenSoundEdit, which was the most immediately impressive and well-built package that I witnessed at this years ICMC. OpenSoundEdit presents a three-dimensional graphic interface for editing, analysis, and processing of sounds. The interface itself is a wonderful realization of something I personally have wanted for years: a representation of sound that is three-dimensional, flexible, logical, and easy to understand. Not only is the representation 3D, but the user can rotate the view along each axis, and zoom in and out to specific points. Interestingly, a background of ground and sky exist behind the sound; these help the user to retain a constant sense of perspective. In addition, a moveable frame runs accross two dimensions of the sound, allowing the user to select a specific slice of it to view or modify. There are more features to the program than I can mention here, and most of them display both a musical approach to the data and also a creative, masterful programming talent. The only problems with the software are that as far as I know it is not yet available to the public and that it may require more computing power than a typical user currently has on her or his desktop. Hopefully, both of these shortcomings will disappear quickly!
Next, Damian Keller and Barry Truax of Simon Fraser University presented a method for ecologically-based granular synthesis. This is an attempt to use granular synthesis to produce reproductions of environmentql sounds, using short-duration sampled sounds with complex spectral dynamics as the source material for the synthesis to create new sounds that range in duration from 10 milliseconds to several seconds. First samples were collected and analyzed regarding their temporal patterns and spectral characteristics. Then control functions were employed to shape the granular material into new events, and the new material was synthesized using Csound. Keller played several examples of synthesized events, including a metallic ball bounce and a stream of water. To myself, the idea of creating musical events that were modelled on natural events was intriguing, and I look forward to hearing more sophisticated results from this method.
The final paper of this session was given by Richard Boulanger of the Berklee College of Music and John Fitch of the University of Bath, who discussed their work to create a set of preset physical model synthesis instruments for users of Csound. These instruments are based on synthesis algorithms devised by Perry Cook of Princeton University. The intent of Boulanger and Fitch is to expand the existing number of usefulinstruments primarily aimed at novice users of Csound. This goal seems laudable, and I hope that they continue this work. However, some aspects of their presentation were a bit distracting. For instance, at the beginning of the presentation they played some music created with these instruments, which was a fun introduction to their presentation. However, during the talk a small group of soundfiles was played repeatedly, ad nauseum--this not only was distracting but also actually made it difficult to understand the text of the presentation, which was quite frustrating.
Reviewed by Doug Geers, Columbia University