The awards will icnldue a grand prize of $5,000. In total, $10,000 in cash prizes will be awarded to the best novel musical instruments and presented by Tech alumnus Richard Guthman in honor of his musician wife, Margaret.

Instruments will be judged on musicality, design and engineering by an expert panel including Tom Oberheim, inventor of the first polyphonic music synthesizer; Sergi Jorda, inventor of the reactable tabletop musical instrument; and Georgia Tech professor Jason Freeman.

The entries include Tulane graduate student Peter Leonard’s “Hula Hoop Controller,” which translates interaction with one or more hula hoops’ circular interfaces into computer-generated sounds. Also in the ring this year is German musician Jacob Sello’s “HexenKessel,” a timpani drum that uses advanced projection and multi-touch technology, and French group Interlude Consortium’s “MO Kitchen,” a software that enables music-making with everyday utensils such as cookware.

Phillip Hermans, Undergraduate Student
David Hyman, Graduate Student
Peter Leonard, Graduate Student
Tae Hong Park, Faculty

We will also be presenting our paper in electro-acoustic music analysis entitled "EASY-SQEMA." This paper will feature our research in computer-aided electro-acoustic music analysis via the EASY Toolbox and the SQEMA methodology.

1. Generation of audible sound by self-demodulation of an ultrasound signal during its propagation through air.
2. The condensation of the ultrasound energy in one spatial point generating a precise tactile reproduction of the audible sound (its temporal and harmonic texture)
3. The feed-forward method enabling a real-time intervention of the musician, by shaping the tactile (ultra)sound directly with his hands.

In addition to the presentation, the interface functionality will also be practically demonstrated

Date: December 8, 2010
Time: 5 PM
Place: Dixon Hall 206

----------------------

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki, best known for his Symphony 3 "Sorrowful Songs," has died in his home city of Katowice following a serious illness. He was 76.

Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa, director of Polish Radio orchestra in Katowice, told The Associated Press that Gorecki died Friday in the cardiology ward of a hospital in the city, in southern Poland. He was suffering from a number of ailments, chiefly a lung infection, she said.

Wnuk-Nazarowa said she and another Polish composer, Krzysztof Penderecki, had visited Gorecki in the hospital on Wednesday.

"Penderecki insisted on seeing him," Wnuk-Nazarowa said. "We tried to joke, make plans for the future. Penderecki promised he would direct (Gorecki's) 'Beatus vir' for the 80th birthday" that both would celebrate in 2013.

Gorecki was best known internationally for his Symphony 3, "Sorrowful Songs," for soprano solo and orchestra, which was published in the United States in 1994. It later became a best-selling recording, with more than one million copies sold.

Although his early works were more avant-garde, Gorecki was later influenced by traditional Polish music and themes of his nation's history, as reflected in works such as Symphony 3. In the second movement, the composer set to music a prayer inscribed by a prisoner on the wall of her cell in a German Nazi police prison during World War II.

"Beatus vir" — the work mentioned during the visit to Gorecki's hospital room — was commissioned by Karol Wojtyla before he became Pope John Paul II to mark 900 years since the death of Roman Catholic martyr, Stanislaw, bishop of Krakow — whom Pope John Paul II later made a saint. The composition, completed in 1979, is a psalm for baritone, choir and orchestra.

In awarding him an honorary fellowship in 2008, Cardiff University praised Gorecki for "his independence of thought and independence of spirit. His work is grounded in a profound humanity and is rooted in the folk and religious culture of his native Poland."

Gorecki was born Dec.6, 1933 in Czernica, near Rybnik in the coal mining Silesia region in southern Poland.

He is survived by his wife Jadwiga, a piano teacher, daughter Anna Gorecka-Stanczyk, a pianist, and son Mikolaj Gorecki, a composer.

By Wu Wen, 06/16/2010

I was lucky enough to get a reservation for last week’s talk at the American Academy in Berlin. An amazing facility formerly housing wealthy bankers and Nazi officials, the Hans Arnhold Center lays just outside of Berlin on Wannsee lake, offering an impressive view from the back yard.

Wannsee Lake

The talk was called The Music-Technology “Big Bang”: A Personal History. This particular personal history belonging to Morton Subotnick, of Silver Apples on the Moon fame, and rather than a lecture it was more of an Inside-The-Actor’s Studio-esque interview, moderated by Volker Straebel (director of the Electronic Music Studio at the Technische Universität where I am taking classes this semester)

Outside of a short rant about Dr. Scholl’s shoe inserts (unfortunately not found in the the full video) there isn’t any discussion of “Big Bang” or reference to such an idea. After realizing that I wouldn't get to hear any cool analogies between cosmology and music technology, Subotnick began talking about the idea of how music functions as a cultural artifact and how he strived to break away from this and tradtional music practices. One of these breaks from tradition being music as a “studio art”, meaning music composed and completed in the studio that is intended for release onto LP or other fixed medium; music not to be interpreted by a performer.

In order to realize this "studio art" Subotnick wanted to use what he called a “sound easel”, a controller with which an average person without musical training could, as he put it, “actually paint music”. Realizing the power and affordability of the transistor, Subotnick began working with Ramón Sender (co-founder of the San Fransico Tape Music Center along with Subotnick), in order to develop what he called “the black box for composers”. Which would be a device used to generate musical sounds, with controls not resembling tradtional musical instruments.

            It was not until Subotnick and Sender met up with engineer Don Buchla that any prototypes of this “black box” were actually made, the first sounds being heard two years later. This led Buchla to the development of the Buchla Series 100 a synth commisioned by Subotnick and funded by a grant from the Rockefller Foundation. While Buchla’s synthesizers were not as commercially successful as Moog’s modular synth, Subotnick notes that the Buchla series actually predates Moog’s device, making it America’s first “modern synthesizer”.

            After Morton was done going down memory lane, he was kind enough to take questions from the audience. With responses including Dr. Scholl’s orthotics as an allegory for music history and the idea for a new product called an “iTooth” (a false tooth containing all the features of an iPod and iPhone, only inside a customer’s mouth) it became apparent that Morton was ready to bring the discussion to a close.

            During the reception, the guest’s were given a chance to ask questions more informally and take advantage of the free booze and salty snacks. Some of my German colleagues were not quick to call Morton a pioneer of electronic music, arguing that earlier, similar progress had been made in Cologne and in Paris. Following some persuasion in defense of my compatriot it was concluded that Subotnick’s efforts were not only useful in the development of music-technology but also influential on the public’s view of this newly emerging music form.

    Due to the success of Silver Apples on the Moon, Subotnick brought electronic music into many more homes than his contemporaries. Not only was he spreading ideas through record sales, he also spent time with other influential figures involved in the ‘60s New York and San Francisco scenes. Name-dropping the likes of The Mothers of Invention, The Grateful Dead and Andy Warhol as frequent visitors of his private studio, Morton Subotnick made it clear that he was a very hip dude back in the day.

-Phillip

----

April 22, 2010, 7:30 pm

Compose Your Own

My nine-month old son engages with music in a variety of ways as he moves through his daily life. He listens to music in the background while he focuses on other activities. He moves to music as my wife or I clap his hands and bounce him up and down in time to a song. And he creates music, banging his fists on a piano keyboard to play clusters of high and low notes. As judged by laughs and smiles, he likes all of these activities, but he enjoys creating music the most.

I similarly like to listen to music but enjoy creating it even more. I love to sing a soft lullaby to my son more than playing him a recording. I love to sit at the piano to play a familiar song more than listening to it on the stereo. And more than any of these things, I love to compose music. I love to start with some simple musical ideas and then experiment with them, gradually transforming them into something that captivates my imagination. I love to share this music with performers and audiences and to invite them to make their own sense of it.

These days, almost all of us consume music but few of us create it. According to a recent National Endowment for the Arts survey, only 12.6 percent of American adults play a musical instrument even once per year. The survey does not report how many of us compose music, but I suspect that percentage is even smaller.

It saddens me that so few of us make music. I believe that all of us are musically creative and have something interesting to say. I also wish that everyone could share in this experience that I find so fulfilling.

To come closer to realizing that wish, I am inviting readers of The Score to compose their own music and share it. How? Read on.

As a music professor at Georgia Tech, I want all of my students to experience creating music. I push them to compose even if they do not play a musical instrument, cannot read notation and fear they have nothing valuable to say. Technology serves as a creative gateway for many of these students. I help them to learn about music production software and programming languages and I encourage them to think about questions of aesthetics, technique and structure. Often, students who have little prior experience make the music I find most compelling.

As a composer, I want my audiences to experience creating music. In my work, I blur the traditional divisions between composer, performer and listener, inviting others to make the music along with me. It is not enough for me to share only a polished performance or a mastered audio recording. I want to share the experience of composing music.

Beginning in the 1950s, several avant-garde composers developed a fascinating technique through which to share their creative process with others. Their “open” musical scores included elements that could change with each performance.

Many open scores consist of musical fragments whose order may be reconfigured in performance. Karlheinz Stockhausen placed fragments of notation on the page and invited pianists to play them in any order. Terry Riley composed a set of repeating musical motives and asked each member of an ensemble to move through them at his own pace. Earle Brown wrote scores in which conductors chose the order of sections during each performance. These open scores share part of the experience of composition with performers, inviting them to help create the music as they play it. In a sense, each performance is a new remix of the score.

(The scores for Riley’s “In C” and Brown’s “Available Forms I” are just two examples.)

While the novel design of these open scores engages performers as compositional collaborators, audiences have no way to take part. They sit in the concert hall or listen to a recording, much the same as they would with other music. The open score and the performers’ unique role often remain a mystery.

In “Piano Etudes” (2009), I use technology to make the open score accessible not only to performers but also to audiences, inviting everyone to experience and participate in the work’s creative process. I notated these four short piano pieces as sets of musical fragments connected by arrows. The structure is reminiscent of a choose-your-own-adventure novel, of a flow chart, or of the hyperlinked structure of the Internet. Each version of the piece simply follows the arrows to create a unique path through the score. There are an almost infinite number of possible versions.

Since this printed score is only accessible to musicians who play the piano and read music notation, I also developed an interactive Web site in collaboration with Akito Van Troyer. On the site, anyone can create a remix regardless of musical experience: the notation is graphical and you can hear your version as you build it. You can share your versions on social networks or on the site’s gallery, download them as audio files, and print them out as musical scores for live performance by a pianist.

I have also made a dedicated page for readers of The Score to create their own versions of each etude. By following the link and the instructions on the page, you can compose your own version and share it with other readers. (Please note that you will be leaving The Times Web site to do this.) Once a reasonable number of versions have been posted by readers, I will select one version of each etude to be performed by the pianist Jenny Lin. Both the digital and live versions of these pieces will be posted subsequently on The Score, and we will invite comments from the readers and the composers who created them.

I am excited to hear how you remix these etudes.

Jason Freeman has written music for the American Composers Orchestra and created Internet art for Rhizome and Turbulence. He lives in Atlanta, where he is an assistant professor at the Center for Music Technology at Georgia Tech. His Web site is jasonfreeman.net.

###

   I’m in Berlin. While not eating more than my fair share of Gummi Bears or trying to navigate my way through the complicated bureaucracy

of the Berlin tertiary school system, I like to take advantage of some of the benefits of being a student in Germany. Namely, free museum visits

on Thursday evenings. One of my recent trips was to the Berlin Music Instrument Museum, and I’d like to share some of the interesting

instruments I observed there. The descriptions are a combination of notes I made while at the museum and further independent research.

Aeolian Harp

   Taking its name from the Greek god of wind, Aeolus, the aeolian harp (or wind harp) is an ancient string instrument which is sounded

by exposure to air currents. The device consists of a sounding board with strings of varying thicknesses that are tuned to the same

fundamental pitch. The harp was commonly placed near an open window so that the strings would resonate from the blowing wind,

the driving mechanism being the Kármán vortex street effect.

   This unique design causes a similarly unique sound, with fluctuating timbre and loudness determined by the differing overtones of the

individual strings and the unpredictable movement of the wind. This characteristic sound has been assigned mystic qualities in the past

with one of the German names, Geisterharf, literally meaning “spirits’ harp”.

   The Aeolian harp is also considered a symbol for inspiration (or afflatus) in both the poetic and religious realms. The word afflatus,

which can be traced back to Cicero’s figurative usage, means literally (more or less) “to be blown into by a divine wind”. This connection

to the Aeolian harp is not only for figurative reason of divine inspiration, but also because of its relation to wind and the wind god Aeolus.

Examples of the harps inspiration can be found in works by prominent literary and musical figures since ancient times.

(ex. Homer, Goethe, Shakespeare, Robert Schuman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herny Cowell…)

Stockgeige

            These instruments, made around the Biedermeier period, are great examples of German craftsmanship and “insane-practicality”.

Made mainly for fun, these curiosities allowed a hiker to bring an instrument along with to play music in nature. Stockgeige, meaning

“cane-violin”, is a collapsible walking stick containing a violin and bow on the inside. Becoming a seemingly regular fashion accessory,

a similar instrument was also available in earlier times, the Stockflöte, literally “cane-flute”.

   Also having an effect of literature, the poet Ludwig Uhland mentions the walking stick flute in his poem “Das Schifflein” (The Little Boat):

“…

Von seinem Wanderstabe

Schraubt jener Stift und Habe,

Und mischt mit Flötentönen

Sich in des Hornes Dröhnen.

…”

(poorly translated by me):

From his walking cane

He takes out what’s contained

And mixes the flute’s tone

With the horn’s drone

Mighty Wurlitzer

            This mammoth of an organ is the largest of its kind in Europe. It was purchased by the uncle of the

Siemens Conglomerate founder, and now resides in the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum. Built in the good ol’ US of A

(North Tonawanda, NY), the organ has over 1200 pipes and 200 registers. Not only does it have the traditional horn and

wind instrument sounds, this bad boy has a fully equipped percussion section including marimba and glockenspiel.

            The guts of the beast are housed behind Plexiglas windows so that museum visitors can see the inner workings of the instrument.

I was lucky enough to hear a performance on the organ during my visit in the gallery. Watching the various bells and whistles (literally)

blowing along with the hammering of the drums and cymbals was like witnessing some sort of Willy-Wonka-Rube-Goldberg-musical carnival.

To say the least I was entertained.

Electronic Instruments

            The museum doesn’t only house ancient oddities and enormous organs, but also some more contemporary

electronic instruments that I was slightly surprised to recognize.

Electronic Music Studios VCS 3 Mark II

            This thing just looks like fun. The VCS means “voltage controlled studio” and the 3 represents the 3 oscillators it has.

This acronym, however, isn’t long enough to include the other functions: ring modulator, noise generator, two input amplifiers,

envelope generator, voltage controlled spring reverb generator and a joystick controller. Which altogether would be one hell of

an acronym. (VCS 3 RMNG2IAEGVCSRGJC Mark II ???)

   Used by both Pink Floyd and Brian Eno, and since I’m in Germany I guess I’m obligated to say Tangerine Dream, this one is definitely

a coveted cult classic. I unfortunately was not allowed to play with it or hear any psychedelic ambience.

Mixtur-Trautonium

            Developed from one of the Berlin’s (and the world’s) earliest electronic music instruments, the monophonic Trautonium,

the Mixtur-Trautonium is a synthesizer that produces tones by means of subharmonic synthesis. Controlled by two metal wires acting

as variable resistors, the pitch of  two oscillators can be controlled with the hands, similar to the Electro-Theremin or “The Box”

(popularized by the Beach Boy’s “Good Vibrations”)

            The process of subharmonic synthesis in the Mixtur-Trautonium, explained to me in German, more or less functions like this:

One root tone is divided into 4 subharmonics (integer divisions of the root tone’s pitch), and the 4 new tones are then altered by the

various signal-processing devices in the machine, and finally remixed. This allows rich and complex chords and tones to be developed

from only one input source.

            Oskar Sala was the force behind the invention of the Mixtur-Trautonium and also one of the only people who could actually play

it well. It was famously used to make the menacing bird sounds in Alfred Hitchcock’s film “The Birds”. After seeing this subharmonic synth

in the museum I came across this great article discussing both the instrument and Oskar Scala, I’d recommend you reading it

in addition to this recording of one of Sala's performances.

-Phillip

Musicians have long known that the more a stringed instrument is used, the more responsive and resonant it becomes. But for those who cannot afford a vintage violin, cello or guitar and who lack the patience to wait years for the tone of a new one to develop, there is an electronic humming device.

The ToneRite slips over the strings of an idle instrument and begins emitting subsonic noise that is intended to mimic the physics of actual music making. The result, the maker claims, is a greatly accelerated breaking-in period.

“You can’t take a cheap plywood guitar and turn it into a vintage Martin,” said Ryan Frankel, chief executive of ToneRite of Gainesville, Fla. “But the fullness and the warmth of a good instrument will really come alive.”

While there is no scientific study to back up its claims, a number of musicians think the device works. John Sherba, a Grammy-winning violinist with the Kronos Quartet, said that the results were subtle but noticeable especially on a newer instrument.

“I found the fiddle just rang more,” he said.

ToneRite was started in 2007 by Agapitus Lye, known as Augi, a musician and electrical engineer who had been working on systems for unmanned intelligence drones at Prioria Robotics in Gainesville, when he bought a new cello. Too busy to break it in himself, he remembered a newspaper article about a museum in Italy that paid musicians to keep its priceless instruments in shape. Inspired, he began to tinker.

The rudimentary device he put together improved the instrument’s tone enough after a month that the cello’s maker, or luthier, encouraged Mr. Lye to patent and market it.

With the help of Mr. Frankel and Hans Yeakel, guitarists and engineers who also worked at Prioria, Mr. Lye has been refining his invention ever since. The three men work out of an office in downtown Gainesville that Mr. Lye calls “typical of small start-ups — coffee cups everywhere, late nights, jury-rigged stuff.”

They have sold thousands of the vibrating gadgets that fit violins, violas, cellos, double basses, guitars and mandolins. Prices range from $186 to $311.

They plan to release the third generation of the ToneRite with redesigned “feet” to better transfer the vibrations.

Any fine stringed instrument is built of precisely calibrated and meticulously joined wooden parts, all of which must “learn” to vibrate sympathetically. Mr. Frankel said he and his colleagues had experimented to pinpoint the frequencies to speed that process and how best to transfer them to the instrument.

Musicians continue to debate the effectiveness of the device. Paul Helou, a guitarist in Sea Cliff, N.Y., remained somewhat skeptical after a weeklong treatment. “It was only a slight difference, to my ears,” he said.

But Jeffrey Zeigler, a cellist with the Kronos Quartet, thinks it simulates heavy playing. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t simulate practice,” he said. “You still have to do that yourself.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/technology/05tonerite.html?src=me&ref=technology

The goal of this thesis was to design a software tool that would assist me in composing music achieved through the application of custom made digital signal processing algorithms. It was also my goal, as an artist, who has used numerous software and hardware samplers, to design, develop and implement, a software system that best fit my needs, while at the same time, allowing me to learn the fundamentals of how such a program is made. Sampling audio is one of the key aspects of the music I make under the pseudonym “Airman Our Pal,” from which this system derives its name. I would describe the genre of music I am currently interested in, as sample-based electronic music. The use of audio samples, in many cases, are the sole source materials of my compositions. The samples and their creative use are therefore very important. The key techniques of sample modulation that I use are transposing and looping. Transposing the sample will change the pitch, while looping will repeat desired sections forward or backward in time in the timedomain. Some of the hardware I have used to create this music in the past is now old and antiquated, but even more modern samplers often do not have the specific functionality or features that I desire. Thus, my goal was to design my own custom sampler that will include all the functionality required to facilitate the creation of my compositions. This thesis is divided into three parts: 1) a brief introduction to the sampler, 2) software design and implementation, and 3) the creation of a composition via this new tool.

Date: Wed, March 24, 2010
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Dixon 207

Faculty, students, and the general public are invited.

Advisor: Prof. Tae Hong Park

http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/111809_electronic_sound.cfm