I’ve played the flute since I was nine years old, both solo and in chamber groups and orchestras. To be frank, I have never used computers (to my knowledge) in my music-making process. While the notion of computer music is not new to me, I dismissed it immediately (and in hindsight, unfairly). Part of me felt offended by the idea that a computer, without having to practice everyday or sit in rush hour traffic to get to private lessons or spend weekend afternoons at orchestra rehearsal, might play music better than me. But I realize now how ignorant that sounds. There are real people behind those machines who work tirelessly and are creative in a different way, and their goal is not to compete with a classical musician or replace traditional music in any way. I resonate a lot with how Ge describes his original preconceptions of computerized sounds: that they have to be “cold and mechanical.” I’ve also thought of computer music as “cold and mechanical” or, even harsher, “not real music,” not realizing that many of the sounds I’ve become so used to are in fact computer generated. Thus I especially liked Ge’s revised statement about creating sounds that are both “familiar” and “fantastical,” connecting the otherworldly to everyday life. I always knew deep down that there was aesthetic value in computer music, but I didn’t have the tools or the language to reason about it, let alone appreciate it. I hope that through this class I can expand my definition of art and learn more about general design principles. After taking traditional computer science classes for so long, I want to apply those programming skills to a different field where I can challenge myself creatively.
When I think of “computer sounds,” this type of sound, reminiscent of helicopters whirring during an alien attack, immediately comes to mind. I had a lot of fun experimenting with changing the parameters. In particular, the value passed into the pit shift in particular was very unpredictable to me. Minor changes had a large impact on the sound. Unlike much of the code I’ve written in the past, this program reinforced one of the principles introduced in class: it can be very difficult to tell what something is supposed to sound like just by looking at the code; you have to be hands-on and iterate many times.
My family used to have an electronic keyboard at home, and when I was young I loved playing around with the random sound settings and then pressing somewhat randomly on the keys from low to high. This sound reminds me of my pre-musical-training days. When programming this, I was debating whether I should go by actual note pitches, but I decided ultimately to go with something that sounds more messy and childish.
Several years ago, I was wandering around the San Francisco Chinatown and stopped by one of those typical overpriced souvenir shops. I picked up a print of the Chinese character for the word “dream” (meng), mostly because I liked how the character looked and also because it wasn’t as cliché as “peace” or “love.” The print now sits on the bookshelf next to my bed in my dorm room, and here is my sound logo for a dream. It starts out with the well-known tune of Brahms’s lullaby, played on a plucked instrument, and gradually fades into a dream-like state.
The main challenge for me when writing this piece is that I had a lot of sounds in mind that I would have wanted to include, but 20-30 seconds isn’t as much time as it seems. At times I wanted to imbue more personal aspects into the sound logo, like the sound of my alarm in the morning or the sound of my neighbors blasting music, but that ultimately would have cluttered the logo. In its present state it is more simple and surreal. One technical aspect that I struggled with was that I wanted to make the blow bottles swell more (i.e. get louder in the middle). I tried playing around with the .volume field which takes a number from 0 to 1, but the change in volume turned out more subtle than I would have liked. Additionally, since this is my first time ever coding in ChucK, I’m not sure if my code is the most efficient or the most elegant, and I’m not yet familiar with the full extent of its features. I’ve already learned a lot from this first assignment though, and I’m excited to explore more in the near future.