I really loved how this chapter started off with the shout out to Ada Lovelace and a focus on women’s contribution to the world of computer music. I have personally felt really inspired by seeing how many women there are not only in our course 256A but also in CCRMA at large. I do a lot of work in terms of advocating for having more women, girls, trans and queer folks in tech, and so to see that reflected in our course materials and in the classroom feels really good. It feels like the reality we are all pushing for.
Diversity in programmers matters because it only richens the creative pool in terms of what can be done with computer music. The more different the backgrounds of programmers are, the more we experience the breadth of what computers can produce in terms of music, soundscapes and immersive experiences.
I want to focus my fourth reading response on Principle 4.9, which to me is about using computers to make something the world has not yet heard before. I loved the example of the kitchen table, and when Ge talks about how the scene can be recreated in ChucK without the downside of breaking a bunch of dishes! Programing electronic music allows us not only to emulate real world sounds, instruments and experiences, but it also allows us to manipulate them, push them forward, and re-imagine their potential.
It has been really enjoyable to code different beats in ChucK, pushing frequencies into white noise and playing them on the down beat to create a “snare drum”, or to experiment with Ge’s “Unclap” starter code, or of course to write the narrative for my visualizer. As a creative person, using computer code to generate sound feels like I am learning a new instrument with which I can express myself and push my own ideas forward. Coding also forces me to be more detailed and specific with my choices sculpting the sounds as a designer. When I am less specific, happy accidents might happen, but when I am more specific, I find myself actually becoming a better musician because the computer is relying on me to input as many aspects of the sound in motion over time as possible (Principle 4.2).
To that end, I really resonated with Principle 4.5 as well: “Design things with a computer that would not be possible without.” I really resonate with this because it pushes us past the simple use case of trying to use computers to synthesize the sound of a violin or human voice, and more into achieving new music production techniques that are undiscovered and exciting to the human ear. When I am producing my music in Ableton Live, I think a lot about how I can use editing tools to play drums and percussion in a way that a human percussionist typically would not. For example, I will select arbitrary parts of the percussion part to speed up and slow down, creating unique “fills” that intuitively would not have come to me as a drummer. Similarly using ChucK code, we can play with time, sound, textures and ideas that are produced because of the nature of the technology rather than based on the limits of a human instrument player. Technology has always informed the music of the time (scratches on a DJ turntable, risers and synths in EDM music, singles-oriented releases instead of album-oriented releases etc), and it is clear how ChucK would influence the kinds of music soundscapes that can be generated as a creator with programming capabilities.