Learning to Play and Perform on Synthetic Instruments
John ffitch
Julian Padget
Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, UK
Abstract
Centuries of experience with acoustic instruments
means there is a body of knowledge about and understanding of what can be done with a physical instrument, and this corpus of knowledge is refined and propagated through the interactions of teachers and pupils
through the ages. That experience seems to have nothing to tell us about computer-created instruments and
the one-off sounds for which such instruments are often
designed, nor about the instrument's sonic character,
which itself is rarely explored, and certainly the intuitive phrasing and shaping applied by a human player is
not even attempted. We advocate in this paper a new
research direction, linking computer science and musical research, building on current activities in agent
research and in performance knowledge, which could
lead us to a new kind of electro-acoustic music, both in
public performance and private listening.
1 Introduction
Man has been creating music from before written history; we do not know about the performance of the
caveman's music, but it is clear that in many cultures
the professional musician has been a feature for thousands of years. This has engendered the emergence
of virtuosi performers on a wide range of instruments,
where skills are passed from teacher to pupil, and are
gradually adapted and improved to meet changing circumstances, such as instrument variation and mechanical inventions that modify the character of the instrument.
From the standpoint of a composer within the Western art tradition this means that one can assume that
in writing for say a flute, that the performer will be
able to reproduce the intent, except in the most extreme circumstances, without the composer having to
explain everything. We can write notes in the knowledge that the performer knows the traditional notation, and will play in tune with the appropriate interpretation of loudness, crescendos and all the common
effects of the instrument. Even more strongly, we can
assume that the instrumentalist can and will interpret
the composer's intent in the light of a long tradition.
In writing for an unfamiliar instrument the performer
can tell the composer what is possible, identify effects
that may be what is sought, and act more as a collaborator than a dumb servant. There is nothing new or
exciting in this, as we would expect nothing less.
We wish to contrast this with the current state of
electro-acoustic music, and in so doing show how recent
technology that can be used to overcome these problems. We propose a line of research that can make the
technical detail of computer-composition easier, and,
also, identify a potential way in which the whole future
of 'canned' music in the home, on CD or its replacement, can become in a significant way alive.
2 The Trials of the
Electro
Acoustic Composer
2.1 Instrument Problems
While a composer may have a collection of favourite
sounds, on most occasions the instruments (that is the
specification of how the sound is created) are made
anew for the composition, and the full character of
this artificial instrument may not be understood. Furthermore, in the composition only a small range of the
potential is typically used.
In the early days of the use of computers in composition, the long period between writing the program
and listening to the resulting sound could serve as an
excuse for, or an explanation of the narrowness of the
exploration. As our computers become more powerful,
and at least some real-time synthesis is possible, it becomes more possible for the composer to begin that exploration. Boulanger has reported that now the sounds
he created for Trapped in Convert can be heard in realtime, and he discovered a much wider range of sounds
than he had supposed, and so 14 years later he wrote
At Last, Free which uses the self-same instruments but
in new sonic regions.
But even so the time scale is insignificant compared
with the years of experience of the main classical instruments, or even the more modern additions to the
orchestra. In practice it is not possible for a professional composer to discover much about his created
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