I particularly enjoyed reading through this week’s readings, because it delves into the technicalities behind computer music pieces, and even went as far as teaching us how to tune a comb filter! I will write my reading response on principle 4.2, the comb filter, and principle 4.6.
I don’t think I could ever be reminded too much of Principle 4.2: SOUND IS MOTION, and that "programming sound is about programming time." (- Ge Wang)
Before realizing the importance of this idea, I interpreted music in smaller time fragments. For example, I would intentionally ask myself: "what am I hearing now?" – what harmony, instrumentations, what texture at this particular moment? And because I was asking myself to process so much information at a time, my working musical attention was usually very small, lasting at most a few seconds. I trained myself to develop good ears, and being the snobby teenager I was, I thought that was all I needed to be good at music.
In fact, it is perhaps pretty common for us to draw an equal sign between having good ears and good musical aesthetics, but as I tried to compose, I found it only partially true. Throughout my undergraduate composition struggles, I realized that having good ears != having good musical aesthetics.
As a trade-off for focusing too much on the details, I often lose track of larger scale time. I am still working on it, and thanks to this principle (and ChucK), I now have another way of reminding myself of the importance of time.
Another thing that I found very fun is the comb filter, which was a substantial element both in class and in the chapter. I first encountered the comb filter two years ago when I took a class in building synthesizer patches in serum, but I quickly got distracted by various other components of the synthesizers (envelopes, oscillators, additive waveforms, etc.). However, the examples I’ve seen this week reintroduced me to the power of subtractive synthesis, and I would really love to try using the comb filter in my next piece!
I would also love to listen to BEIJING. I wonder how this city I grew up in would sound like after it’s transformed by the computer.
… speaking of transformation, which leads to:
Principle 4.6: Use the computer as Agent of Transformation
This principle also inspired me because I think it outlines another important aspect of computer music, one that I rarely thought about before – using the computer as a musical medium allows us to think outside of the box of musical symbols!
As a classical music nerd (and a snobbish teenager who was very proud of being able to make accurate transcriptions), for the longest time I considered myself a passionate advocate for musical notations. However, what I’ve learned so far in this course made me think that, while its utility is undeniable, symbolic notations were created for the ease of passing musical information given the technological constraints of the time. Therefore, it is possible that it is NOT the best medium for computer music (throwback to Chapter 2: Form vs. Function), and there are so many more ways out there that we could use to express music.
I think this is an important takeaway :)