MiltOnNotes-Sound, Music & Technology

8/3/2019 MiltOnNotes-Sound, Music & Technology

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Sound, Mus ic & Technology

Milton [email protected]

MILTON OTES An open-ea red exploration ofcomposition in theory & practice.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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This episode

Entire serieshttp://open.spotify.com/user/miltonline/playlist/35NLay3D8FdSFU45xYYjcv

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Key Historical Events inContemporary Computer Music

Dawn of Music Notation

Iraq:1800BC Cuneiform (melody in 3rds)

The representation of music

Ancient Greece: c.600BC Pitch and rhythm


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Teaching behind the veil-readopted by Schaeffer as the veil of speakersThe concept of sound as divorced from source

The appreciation of sound for its own sake regardless of origin

A numerical basis of sound

c. 500BC Acousmatic

Pythagorus, Ionian philosopher, mathematician andmusician (c.570-c.495BC)


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Development of Music Notation

Byzantine Empire : c. 390AD differential pitch

The grid

Middle Ages Europe: c.850AD Grid system


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Randomness in Music

Mozarts Dice Game (1787) A Musical game for composing minuets and trios from dice rolls

http://sunsite.univie.ac.at/Mozart/dice/
http://sunsite.univie.ac.at/Mozart/dice/http://sunsite.univie.ac.at/Mozart/dice/


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1857 E. Leon Scotts Phonautograph

Sound can now be made permanent, with one slight problem.


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1861 Philip Reis Telephone

Sound can now be transmitted across distances rapidly


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1863 Helmholtz publishesOn the Sensation of Tone as a Physiological Basis

for the Theory of Music

Basis of additive synthesis

Any sound can - in theory - be constructed


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1874 Elisha Grays Musical Telegraph

Transmission of electronic polyphonic music


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1876 Thomas Edisons Phonograph

Sound can be recorded and reproduced


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Solidied sound wave


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Ocean of Sound and the birth of Ambient music

1889 Claude Debussy at LExposition Universelle


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1895 Thaddeus Cahills Telharmonium

The rst synthesiser


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1907 Busonis Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music

The promise of electronic music


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1913 Russolos The Art of Noises

The democratising of all sound and the destruction of musical elitism


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1913 Russolos The Art of Noises

Wicked noise-makers


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1915 Varse moves to New York in search of a new music

An organiser of sound

I dream of instruments obedient to my thoughts and which withtheir contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds,will lend themselves to theexigencies of my inner rhythm

Our musical alphabet must beenriched, I refuse to limit myself to sounds that have already been heard...What I am looking for is new mechanical mediums whichwill lend themselves to every expression of thought and

keep up with thought


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1915 Lee De Forest patents vacuum tube

Miniaturisation of electronics


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1929 RCA releases the Theremin

Commercialisation of electronic instrument and in the 1930s theTerpsitone and Rhythmicon


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1924 Respighis The Pines of Rome

Blending of live and pre-recorded music


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1930 Hindemith and Tochs Grammophonmusik

Audio manipulation


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1948 Schaeffers Etude aux Chemin de Fer Musique Concrte

Found sound, sampling, looping, ltering reverb and the sound object


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1948 Nancarrows Studies for Player Piano

Bionic virtuosity


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1952 Cages 433

All sound considered


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433 live version


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1952 Luening and Ussachevsky

Live effects


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1956 Louis & Bebe Barrons Forbidden Planet score

A working electronic music studio


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1957 The IIliac Suite The Birth of Computer Music

Live effects


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1958 Varses Pome Electronique

Major display of electronic work a graphic score with a familiar look


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1958 Dissevelts Whirling

Birth of pop electronic music


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1959 Cindy Electronium

Raymond Scott (1908-94) was a Jazz musician, jingle writer, electronicartist and inventor, and one of the earliest to fully adopt the

music technology as a useful -and protable-part of the composer tool-kit rather than esoteric experimentalism - similarly Stevie Wonder

in the early 70s embraced the studio to make more efcient thecompositional process


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1964 The Moog

The development of synthesis


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1971 NHK rst digital recording

The extraordinary rate of development of processors allows sound to bemanipulated beyond physical constraints. And what used to be housed

in 200 tons of hardware can be emulated while checking email.If cars developed like computers they would travel at 470,000 mph, get100,000 miles to the litre, cost 2p, and could balance on a matchstick.


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1983 MIDI patented

A musical language for computers


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Now


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Applied vs. Pure Music

How does computer composing differ from composing?


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Additional Reading

Holmes, T., (2008) Electronic and Experimental Music , revised3rd edition. New York: Routledge.

Manning, P. (2004) Electronic and Computer Music .Oxford:Clarendon Press.

Toop, D. (2001) Ocean of Sound. Serpents Tail.

MiltOnNotes-Sound, Music & Technology

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