2024_Fall

Electroacoustic Music

Defining Electroacoustic Music

New York City Electronic Music Festival (NYCEMF) definition:

Electroacoustic music is music whose sound incorporates electronic tools and instruments, including software, in its production or performance. Electroacoustic music often seeks to explore all the sonic possibilities of new technologies, and it includes both works performed live on stage and works created in the studio and played back in concert ...

Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) definition:

Electro-Acoustic music is a term used to describe those musics which are dependent on electronic technology for their creation and/or performance.

Grove Music Online

Music in which electronic technology, now primarily computer-based, is used to access, generate, explore and configure sound materials, and in which loudspeakers are the prime medium of transmission (see also Computers and music, §II). There are two main genres. Acousmatic music is intended for loudspeaker listening and exists only in recorded form (tape, compact disc, computer storage). In live electronic music the technology is used to generate, transform or trigger sounds (or a combination of these) in the act of performance; this may include generating sound with voices and traditional instruments, electro-acoustic instruments, or other devices and controls linked to computer-based systems. Both genres depend on loudspeaker transmission, and an electro-acoustic work can combine acousmatic and live elements.

Leigh Landy in his paper, Electroacoustic Music Studies and Accepted Terminology, discusses many other terms such as: Organized Sound, Sonic Art, Sound Art, Electronic Music, Musique Concréte/Acousmatic Music, Electroacoustic Music, Electronica, Computer Music

Skills of the Digital Musician (EA Composer)

  • aural awareness (an ability to hear and listen both widely and accurately, linked to an understanding of how sound behaves in space and time)

  • cultural knowledge (an understanding of one’s place within a local and global culture coupled with an ability to make critical judgements and a knowledge of recent cultural developments)

  • musical abilities (the ability to make music in various ways – performance, improvisation, composition, etc. – using the new technologies)

  • technical skills (skill in recording, producing, processing, manipulating and disseminating music and sound using digital technologies).

Hugill, Andrew. The Digital Musician. Taylor & Francis [CAM], 2008.

Select Works

Playing before class began = SUMMER by Sarah Belle Reid

  • 1948 - Pierre Schaeffer - Etude aux chemins de fer (trains)

    • Musique concréte = fixed - created from recorded sounds and synthesized sounds

  • 1954 - Stockhausen - Studie II

    • Elektronische Musik = fixed - based solely on the production and manipulation of electronically produced sounds rather than recorded sounds

  • 1970 - Mario Davidovsky - Synchronism No.6

    • "One of the central ideas of these pieces is the search to find ways of embedding both the acoustic and the electronic into a single, coherent musical and aesthetic space." - Davidovsky

    • Tape music = fixed

2008 - Tom Lopez = Crash Course: The Building Blocks of Acousmatic Music

Resources

  • Free Online Textbook = Introduction to Computer Music by Indiana Professor Jeffrey Haas

  • Free access for Baylor students = Composing Electronic Music by Curtis Roads (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) (I suggest at least the first two chapters)

    • "The point is that electronic technology is an opening to new musical possibilities. Thus technology has effectively liberated time, since any sound can be sped up, slowed down, played backward, or cut into tiny pieces to be stretched, shrunk, or scrambled. Pitch is liberated from 12-note equal temperament to any scale or no scale at all. It can flow into noise, slow into pulsation, or evaporate and coalesce. Timbre is liberated by the availability of dozens of synthesis toolkits, hundreds of sample libraries, and thousands of new software and hardware instruments. Space is liberated by a panoply of tools for choreographing sounds and the deployment of immersive multi-loudspeaker playback systems." (ch.1)

  • interactive tutorial = Learning Synths (by Ableton)

  • interactive presentation = How Generative Music Works (by Tero Parviainen)

  • granular synth in the browser = https://zya.github.io/granular/

  • Varese = Liberation of Sound (paper)

  • Software = some of the most commonly used software are:

  • ScoreFollower and Incipitisfy YouTube channels. Here's the owner describing the two channels:

    • They are simply different channels started by different people that are now owned by the score follower team. Incipitsify was given to the person behind score follower in 2015, necessitating additional members to help upkeep both of the channels, along with the channel mediated scores. We chose to keep the channels separate for multiple reasons—one of which being that upon ownership transfer, we had to go through all of the incipitsify videos and secure permissions and/or delete videos that did not follow our guidelines. We also did not want to zero-out views/likes and create hundreds of dead links by taking down incipitsify and Re-uploading to score follower. There’s no conscious aesthetic difference, although it is worth noting that score follower focuses on works from the last 10 years, and has a once-per-week upload schedule, while incipitsify is regarded as a larger archival repository with an upload schedule of twice per week.

  • Electrothéque music database (Baylor subscription)

Acoustic pieces played during lecture

Example Project for Junior High and High School Students: Soundscape composition

Many of the aspects of this project originate from Andrew Hugill's book, The Digital Musician, Taylor & Francis [CAM], 2008.

Learning Objectives:

  • begin developing your active listening skills

  • listen to sounds in ways you have been taught to analyze music

  • experience what it is like organize and manipulate sounds to create music

    • "The composer’s knowledge of the environmental and psychological context influences the shape of the composition at every level."

Detailed Requirements

  • Make a soundscape composition (either of a real location or of an impossible location made up of sounds from many environments)

  • length = 30seconds minimum

  • record all your own sounds (you may use your phone, but you will produce better recordings by using a dedicated device such as a Zoom portable recorder or microphone via a USB audio interface)

  • Use the online DAW Bandlab as the canvas of your project: a place to organize and manipulate all of your recordings

Tips

  • automate panning to give the perception that a sound is a moving sound in the environment

  • use the table below to connect the musical parameters you've studied and thought about to better understand the domains and continuums of those concepts in the composition of electoacoustic music

Table from Introducing Electronic Music in Undergraduate Music Theory: Pedagogy and Theory by Leon W. Couch III

How to Turn In

  • exit the mix view in Bandlab (looks like a DAW) which should enter the view of your single piece within your library

  • add your name and link to the following collaborative text editor = [a new link will be here each semester]

  • you and your instructors will be able to see everyone's piece in their mix view by clicking on the link to their projects and choosing to "fork" their project

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