The computer as an Journal of New Music Research: Interlacing instruments and computer sounds; real-time and delayed synthesis; digital synthesis and processing; composition and performance
Titel:
The computer as an Journal of New Music Research: Interlacing instruments and computer sounds; real-time and delayed synthesis; digital synthesis and processing; composition and performance
Auteur:
Risset, Jean-Claude
Verschenen in:
Journal of new music research
Paginering:
Jaargang 21 (1992) nr. 1 pagina's 9-19
Jaar:
1992
Inhoud:
The advent of the computer opens a new era in many fields. More than a fast calculator, more than a tool or a machine, it is a workshop allowing us to deal in a similar way with intellectual and material processes, and offering unprecedented possibilities to represent and model complex situations. With its arbitrary coding and its programming variety, it can act as an Journal of New Music Research between different protocols and also between different human beings, in different places and at different times. Thus digital technology permits to build, sculpture or distort sounds in complex and controlled ways which can escape the limitations of acoustic production. Our hearing, however, is adapted to acoustic sources, and it is not uniformly sensitive to the possible diversity of digital sound. But the digital palette includes instrument-like sounds, which permits to set up close encounters. Real-time operation is invaluable but limiting. It can be articulated with delayed synthesis. Analysis-synthesis processes make digital processing close to synthesis, which may enable one to benefit from the richness of recorded sounds while controlling them compositionally, thus going beyond the respective limitations of electronic music and musique concrete. The activities of sound elaboration, music composition and performance can be interlaced. The computer thus helps to merge different fields of musical endeavour. At the same time it is becoming less and less conspicuous, to the extent that people tend to forget the intellectual investment involved in the preparation of a chip: more is involved than technological progress. The permeating presence of digital technology raises new challenges for musical creativity at the down of the 21st century. Among the most crucial, the challenge to make the exploration of the new musical possibilities a cooperative and cumulative effort: thus the synergy with the computers could leave way for individual expression and creation.
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