RE: [microsound] audio software environments

[ian stewart <artsonics@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Wright:
> In general i'd like to find out how much of peoples music is a consequence 
> of the software they use?  Are any of you proud to have a certain softwares 
> sound in the same way people are proud to use a 909, 303 etc?

Denis Smalley's attitude articulated in his concept of 'technological 
listening' may be relevant--

"The composer, or other listeners conversant with technology and techniques, 
cannot easily brush aside a particular listening mode which I call 
technological listening... Many methods and devices easily impose their own 
spectromorphological character and clichés on the music. Ideally the 
technology should be transparent, or at least, the music needs to be 
composed in such a way that the qualities of its invention override any 
tendency to listen primarily in a technological manner." DS, in 
'Spectromorphology: Explaining Sound-shapes'

This is the attitude of most (but not all) sonic artists (acousmatic 
composers/'computer music' people) I know- if the listeners hear the 
technology, they'll be distracted from the sound. I don't mean this in a 
normative or prescriptive way- there are certainly aesthetic agendas that 
may be well served by exposing the technology used in creation- but the 
question asked 'what the hell this whole computer music thing is about'.

> At what point does ownership stop and become more of a collaboration 
> between the user and the software programmer?

Using programs or algorithms is not unique to computer music. Composers like 
Xenakis or Babbitt have used rules or algorithms developed by others to 
generate some of the dots on the pages of their scores, but I wouldn't 
credit, say, Evariste Galois as a co-composer of Xenakis' Nomos Alpha just 
because Galois laid some of the foundation of group theory. In the same way, 
I usually wouldn't consider the software programmer a co-composer of works 
made with his or her software, unless that software were so restrictive that 
it essentially determined its own output, regardless of input. Then one 
could argue that the software was like a score in instrumental music, with 
the input generating a different 'performance', but how much software could 
legitimately be described this way? Concerning the 'sound' of a program, I 
think someone else pointed out that, after all, a violin has its own sound 
as well.

> Does audio software that requires high levels of user input produce 
> musically more valuable results than those that require little?

Depends on the user!

> Do you not find that you tend to change your way of thinking about a piece 
> after hearing the composers technical rundown on how it was created?

It's not the first thing I'd be concerned with on hearing a piece. It can 
create context- I'm more willing to forgive sound quality deficiencies in a 
Schaeffer piece than I am in something made today, for example.

> Do you favour speed of result over being closer to the machines language?

Not so concerned about either- favour quality of result over both.

Hope this is useful in some way,

Ian

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