1.
Electronic music
–
In general, a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound producing devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, purely electronic sound production can be achieved using devices such as the theremin, sound synthesizer, and computer. During the 1920s and 1930s, electronic instruments were introduced and the first compositions for instruments were composed. Musique concrète, created in Paris in 1948, was based on editing together recorded fragments of natural and industrial sounds, Music produced solely from electronic generators was first produced in Germany in 1953. Electronic music was created in Japan and the United States beginning in the 1950s. An important new development was the advent of computers for the purpose of composing music, algorithmic composition was first demonstrated in Australia in 1951. In America and Europe, live electronics were pioneered in the early 1960s, during the 1970s to early 1980s, the monophonic Minimoog became once the most widely used synthesizer at that time in both popular and electronic art music. In the 1980s, electronic music became dominant in popular music, with a greater reliance on synthesizers, and the adoption of programmable drum machines. Electronically produced music became prevalent in the domain by the 1990s. Contemporary electronic music includes many varieties and ranges from art music to popular forms such as electronic dance music. Today, pop music is most recognizable in its 4/4 form. At the turn of the 20th century, experimentation with emerging electronics led to the first electronic musical instruments and these initial inventions were not sold, but were instead used in demonstrations and public performances. The audiences were presented with reproductions of existing music instead of new compositions for the instruments, while some were considered novelties and produced simple tones, the Telharmonium accurately synthesized the sound of orchestral instruments. It achieved viable public interest and made progress into streaming music through telephone networks. Critics of musical conventions at the time saw promise in these developments, ferruccio Busoni encouraged the composition of microtonal music allowed for by electronic instruments. He predicted the use of machines in future music, writing the influential Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, futurists such as Francesco Balilla Pratella and Luigi Russolo began composing music with acoustic noise to evoke the sound of machinery. They predicted expansions in timbre allowed for by electronics in the influential manifesto The Art of Noises, developments of the vacuum tube led to electronic instruments that were smaller, amplified, and more practical for performance. In particular, the theremin, ondes Martenot and trautonium were commercially produced by the early 1930s, from the late 1920s, the increased practicality of electronic instruments influenced composers such as Joseph Schillinger to adopt them
2.
Computer music
–
The field of computer music can trace its roots back to the origins of electronic music, and the very first experiments and innovations with electronic instruments at the turn of the 20th century. The worlds first computer to play music was CSIRAC, which was designed and built by Trevor Pearcey, mathematician Geoff Hill programmed the CSIRAC to play popular musical melodies from the very early 1950s. In 1951 it publicly played the Colonel Bogey March of which no known recordings exist, however, CSIRAC played standard repertoire and was not used to extend musical thinking or composition practice which is current computer-music practice. The oldest known recordings of computer generated music were played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer, the music program was written by Christopher Strachey. During a session recorded by the BBC, the managed to work its way through Baa Baa Black Sheep, God Save the King. Two further major 1950s developments were the origins of digital sound synthesis by computer, max Mathews at Bell Laboratories developed the influential MUSIC I program and its descendents, further popularising computer music through a 1963 article in Science. In Japan, experiments in computer music date back to 1962 and this resulted in a piece entitled TOSBAC Suite, influenced by the Illiac Suite. Later Japanese computer music compositions include a piece by Kenjiro Ezaki presented during Osaka Expo 70, Ezaki also published an article called Contemporary Music and Computers in 1970. Early computer-music programs typically did not run in real time, programs would run for hours or days, on multimillion-dollar computers, to generate a few minutes of music. One way around this was to use a system, most notably the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer. In addition to the Yamaha DX7, the advent of digital chips. By the early 1990s, the performance of microprocessor-based computers reached the point that real-time generation of music using more general programs and algorithms became possible. Interesting sounds must have a fluidity and changeability that allows them to remain fresh to the ear, advances in computing power and software for manipulation of digital media have dramatically affected the way computer music is generated and performed. Current-generation micro-computers are powerful enough to perform very sophisticated audio synthesis using a variety of algorithms. Computer-generated music is composed by, or with the extensive aid of. There is a genre of music that is organized, synthesized. Later, composers such as Gottfried Michael Koenig had computers generate the sounds of the composition as well as the score, Koenig produced algorithmic composition programs which were a generalisation of his own serial composition practice. This is not exactly similar to Xenakis work as he used mathematical abstractions, koenigs software translated the calculation of mathematical equations into codes which represented musical notation
3.
Musical improvisation
–
Sometimes musical ideas in improvisation are spontaneous, but may be based on chord changes in classical music, and many other kinds of music. One definition is a performance given extempore without planning or preparation, another definition is to play or sing extemporaneously, by inventing variations on a melody or creating new melodies, rhythms and harmonies. Improvisation is often done within a harmonic framework or chord progression. Improvisation is a part of some types of 20th-century music, such as blues, jazz. Throughout the eras of the Western art music tradition, including the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and many other famous composers and musicians were known especially for their improvisational skills. Improvisation might have played an important role in the monophonic period, the earliest treatises on polyphony, such as the Musica enchiriadis, indicate that added parts were improvised for centuries before the first notated examples. However, it was only in the century that theorists began making a hard distinction between improvised and written music. Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach all belonged to a tradition of solo keyboard improvisation, in the Baroque era, performers improvised ornaments and basso continuo keyboard players improvised chord voicings based on figured bass notation. At the same time, some contemporary composers from the 20th, in Indian classical music, improvisation is a core component and an essential criterion of performances. In Indian, Afghani, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi classical music, the Encyclopædia Britannica defines a raga as a melodic framework for improvisation and composition. Keyboard players likewise performed extempore, freely formed pieces, the pattern of chords in many baroque preludes, for example, can be played on keyboard and guitar over a pedal tone or repeated bass notes. Such progressions can be used in other structures and contexts, and are still found in Mozart. Bach, for example, was fond of the sound produced by the dominant seventh harmony played over, i. e. suspended against. This shift of roles between treble and bass is another definitive characteristic, finally, in keeping with this polarity, the kind of question and answer which appears in baroque music has the appearance of fugue or canon. This method was a favorite in compositions by Scarlatti and Handel especially at the beginning of a piece, improvised accompaniment over a figured bass was a common practice during the Baroque era, and to some extent the following periods. Improvisation remains a feature of playing in some church services and are regularly also performed at concerts. Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach were regarded in the Baroque period as highly skilled organ improvisers, maurice Duruflé, a great improviser himself, transcribed improvisations by Louis Vierne and Charles Tournemire. Olivier Latry later wrote his improvisations as a compositions, for example Salve Regina, Classical music departs from baroque style in that sometimes several voices may move together as chords involving both hands, to form brief phrases without any passing tones
4.
Timbre
–
The physical characteristics of sound that determine the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope. Singers and instrumental musicians can change the timbre of the music they are singing/playing by using different singing or playing techniques, for example, a violinist can use different bowing styles or play on different parts of the string to obtain different timbres. On electric guitar and electric piano, performers can change the timbre using effects units, in simple terms, timbre is what makes a particular musical sound have a different sound from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. For instance, it is the difference in sound between a guitar and a playing the same note at the same volume. Experienced musicians are able to distinguish between different instruments of the type based on their varied timbres, even if those instruments are playing notes at the same pitch. Tone quality and tone color are synonyms for timbre, as well as the attributed to a single instrument. However, the texture can also refer to the type of music, such as multiple. The sound of an instrument may be described with words such as bright, dark, warm, harsh. There are also colors of noise, such as pink and white, in visual representations of sound, timbre corresponds to the shape of the image. The Acoustical Society of America Acoustical Terminology definition 12, Timbre has been called. the psychoacousticians multidimensional waste-basket category for everything that cannot be labeled pitch or loudness. Many commentators have attempted to decompose timbre into component attributes, the richness of a sound or note a musical instrument produces is sometimes described in terms of a sum of a number of distinct frequencies. The lowest frequency is called the frequency, and the pitch it produces is used to name the note. The dominant frequency is the frequency that is most heard, for example, the dominant frequency for the transverse flute is double the fundamental frequency. Other significant frequencies are called overtones of the frequency, which may include harmonics. Harmonics are whole number multiples of the frequency, such as ×2, ×3, ×4. There are also sometimes subharmonics at whole number divisions of the fundamental frequency, most instruments produce harmonic sounds, but many instruments produce partials and inharmonic tones, such as cymbals and other indefinite-pitched instruments. When the tuning note in an orchestra or concert band is played, each instrument in the orchestra or concert band produces a different combination of these frequencies, as well as harmonics and overtones. The sound waves of the different frequencies overlap and combine, the timbre of a sound is also greatly affected by the following aspects of its envelope, attack time and characteristics, decay, sustain, release and transients
5.
Amplifier
–
An amplifier, electronic amplifier or amp is an electronic device that can increase the power of a signal. An amplifier functions by taking power from a supply and controlling the output to match the input signal shape. In this sense, an amplifier modulates the output of the power supply based upon the properties of the input signal, an amplifier is effectively the opposite of an attenuator, while an amplifier provides gain, an attenuator provides loss. An amplifier can either be a piece of equipment or an electrical circuit contained within another device. Amplification is fundamental to modern electronics, and amplifiers are used in almost all electronic equipment. Amplifiers can be categorized in different ways, another is which quantity, voltage or current is being amplified, amplifiers can be divided into voltage amplifiers, current amplifiers, transconductance amplifiers, and transresistance amplifiers. A further distinction is whether the output is a linear or nonlinear representation of the input, amplifiers can also be categorized by their physical placement in the signal chain. The first practical device that could amplify was the triode vacuum tube, invented in 1906 by Lee De Forest. Vacuum tubes were used in almost all amplifiers until the 1960s–1970s when the transistor, invented in 1947, today most amplifiers use transistors, but vacuum tubes continue to be used in some applications. Before the invention of electronic amplifiers, mechanically coupled carbon microphones were used as amplifiers in telephone repeaters. After the turn of the century it was found that negative resistance mercury lamps could amplify, the first practical electronic device that could amplify was the Audion vacuum tube, invented in 1906 by Lee De Forest, which led to the first amplifiers around 1912. The terms amplifier and amplification were first used for this new capability around 1915 when triodes became widespread, the amplifying vacuum tube revolutionized electrical technology, creating the new field of electronics, the technology of active electrical devices. It made possible long distance lines, public address systems, radio broadcasting, talking motion pictures, practical audio recording, radar, television. For 50 years virtually all electronic devices used vacuum tubes. Early tube amplifiers often had positive feedback, which could increase gain but also make the amplifier unstable, much of the mathematical theory of amplifiers was developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories during the 1920s to 1940s. Other advances in the theory of amplification were made by Harry Nyquist, the vacuum tube was the only amplifying device for 40 years, and dominated electronics until 1947, when the first transistor, the BJT, was invented. Today most amplifiers use transistors, but vacuum tubes are used in some high power applications such as radio transmitters. All amplifiers have gain, a factor that relates the magnitude of some property of the output signal to a property of the input signal
6.
Electronic filter
–
Electronic filters are circuits which perform signal processing functions, specifically to remove unwanted frequency components from the signal, to enhance wanted ones, or both. Electronic filters can be, passive or active analog or digital high-pass, low-pass, band-pass, band-stop, see the article on linear filters for details on their design and analysis. The oldest forms of filters are passive analog linear filters. These are known as RC and RL single-pole filters respectively, more complex multipole LC filters have also existed for many years, and their operation is well understood. Hybrid filters are possible, typically involving a combination of analog amplifiers with mechanical resonators or delay lines. Other devices such as CCD delay lines have also used as discrete-time filters. With the availability of digital processing, active digital filters have become common. Passive implementations of filters are based on combinations of resistors, inductors and capacitors. These types are known as passive filters, because they do not depend upon an external power supply and/or they do not contain active components such as transistors. Inductors block high-frequency signals and conduct low-frequency signals, while capacitors do the reverse, the inductors and capacitors are the reactive elements of the filter. The number of elements determines the order of the filter, in this context, an LC tuned circuit being used in a band-pass or band-stop filter is considered a single element even though it consists of two components. At high frequencies, sometimes the inductors consist of single loops or strips of metal. These inductive or capacitive pieces of metal are called stubs, the simplest passive filters, RC and RL filters, include only one reactive element, except hybrid LC filter which is characterized by inductance and capacitance integrated in one element. An L filter consists of two elements, one in series and one in parallel. Three-element filters can have a T or π topology and in either geometries, the components can be chosen symmetric or not, depending on the required frequency characteristics. The high-pass T filter in the illustration, has a low impedance at high frequencies. That means that it can be inserted in a line, resulting in the high frequencies being passed. Likewise, for the illustrated low-pass π filter, the circuit can be connected to a line, transmitting low frequencies
7.
Ring modulation
–
Also a ring modulator as an effects unit is an application of it. It is referred to as ring modulation because the circuit of diodes originally used to implement this technique took the shape of a ring. This circuit is similar to a rectifier, except that instead of the diodes facing left or right. The carrier, which is AC, at a time, makes one pair of diodes conduct. The conducting pair carry the signal from the transformer secondary to the primary of the transformer at the right. If the left carrier terminal is positive, the top and bottom diodes conduct, if that terminal is negative, then the side diodes conduct, but create a polarity inversion between the transformers. This action is much like that of a DPDT switch wired for reversing connections, Ring modulators frequency mix or heterodyne two waveforms, and output the sum and difference of the frequencies present in each waveform. This process of ring modulation produces a signal rich in partials, as well, neither the carrier nor the incoming signal are prominent in the outputs, and ideally, not at all. When the oscillators frequencies are not harmonically related, ring modulation creates inharmonics, if the same signal is sent to both inputs of a ring modulator, the resultant harmonic spectrum is the original frequency domain doubled. Regarded as multiplication, this amounts to squaring. However, some distortion occurs due to the voltage drop of the diodes. Some modern ring modulators are implemented using digital signal processing techniques by simply multiplying the time domain signals, before digital music synthesizers became common, at least some analog synthesizers used analog multipliers for this purpose, they were closely related to those used in electronic analog computers. Multiplication in the domain is the same as convolution in the frequency domain, so the output waveform contains the sum. Thus, in the case where two sine waves of frequencies f1 and f2 are multiplied, two new sine waves are created, with one at f1 + f2 and the other at f2 - f1. The two new waves are unlikely to be related and the original signals are not present. It is this that gives the ring modulator its unique tones, intermodulation products can be generated by carefully selecting and changing the frequency of the two input waveforms. If the signals are processed digitally, the frequency-domain convolution becomes circular convolution, if the signals are wideband, this will cause aliasing distortion, so it is common to oversample the operation or low-pass filter the signals prior to ring modulation. The remaining difference frequencies have an inverted spectrum—High frequencies become low, on the C64 SID chip, ring modulation multiplies the triangle wave of oscillator 1 and oscillator 3
8.
Electronic circuit
–
In an integrated circuit or IC, the components and interconnections are formed on the same substrate, typically a semiconductor such as silicon or gallium arsenide. An electronic circuit can usually be categorized as an analog circuit, breadboards, perfboards, and stripboards are common for testing new designs. They allow the designer to make changes to the circuit during development. Analog electronic circuits are those in current or voltage may vary continuously with time to correspond to the information being represented. Analog circuitry is constructed from two building blocks, series and parallel circuits. In a series circuit, the current passes through a series of components. A string of Christmas lights is an example of a series circuit, if one goes out. In a parallel circuit, all the components are connected to the voltage. The basic components of analog circuits are wires, resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, analog circuits are very commonly represented in schematic diagrams, in which wires are shown as lines, and each component has a unique symbol. Analog circuit analysis employs Kirchhoffs circuit laws, all the currents at a node, wires are usually treated as ideal zero-voltage interconnections, any resistance or reactance is captured by explicitly adding a parasitic element, such as a discrete resistor or inductor. When the circuit size is comparable to a wavelength of the relevant signal frequency, wires are treated as transmission lines, with constant characteristic impedance, and the impedances at the start and end determine transmitted and reflected waves on the line. These values represent the information that is being processed, in the vast majority of cases, binary encoding is used, one voltage represents a binary 1 and another voltage represents a binary 0. Digital circuits make extensive use of transistors, interconnected to create gates that provide the functions of Boolean logic, AND, NAND, OR, NOR, XOR. Digital circuits therefore can provide both logic and memory, enabling them to perform arbitrary computational functions, the design process for digital circuits is fundamentally different from the process for analog circuits. Each logic gate regenerates the binary signal, so the designer need not account for distortion, gain control, offset voltages, as a consequence, extremely complex digital circuits, with billions of logic elements integrated on a single silicon chip, can be fabricated at low cost. Such digital integrated circuits are ubiquitous in electronic devices, such as calculators, mobile phone handsets. Digital circuitry is used to general purpose computing chips, such as microprocessors. Field-programmable gate arrays, chips with logic circuitry whose configuration can be modified after fabrication, are widely used in prototyping
9.
Live coding
–
Live coding is a performing arts form and a creativity technique centred upon the writing of source code and the use of interactive programming in an improvised way. Typically, the process of writing source code is visible by projecting the computer screen in the audience space. Live coding techniques are employed outside of performance, such as in producing sound for film or audiovisual work for interactive art installations. Also, the interconnection between computers makes possible to realize this practice networked in group, a range of techniques have been developed and appropriated for the purposes of live coding. The specific affordances of time-based media and live interaction with code has led to a number of novel developments, the ChucK language introduced an approach to strongly timed programming in 2002, embedding precision timing into control flow through a concise syntax. Temporal recursion was a term coined in relation to the Impromptu programming environment. Technical elements within a programming environment continue to locate compressors and recursion solutions, temporal recursion had repeatedly been used in SuperCollider and has since been implemented in the Fluxus environment, Overtone and the Extempore programming language. Republic is built into the SuperCollider language, and allows participants to collaboratively write live code that is distributed across the network of computers, there are similar efforts in other languages, such as the distributed tuple space used in the Impromptu language. Additionally Overtone, Impromptu and Extempore support multi-user sessions, in any number of programmers can intervene across the network in a given runtime process. The practice of writing code in group can be done in the room through a local network or from remote places accessing a common server. Terms like laptop band, laptop orchestra or collaborative live coding are used to frame a networked live coding practice both in a local or remote way, TOPLAP is an informal organization formed in February 2004 to bring together the various communities that had formed around live coding environments. The TOPLAP manifesto asserts several requirements for a TOPLAP compliant performance, in particular that performers screens should be projected, a number of research projects and research groups have been created to explore live coding, often taking interdisciplinary approaches bridging the humanities and sciences. This year the ICLC will be in Morelia, México, since 2015 a group of experimentation on free software called LiveCoding@MediaLab, organizes regular meetings in order to experiment with different live coding platforms and languages. In Mexico, a workshop of live coding take place in Instituto Politécnico Nacional at ESFM, herding Cats, Observing Live Coding in the Wild. Computer Music Journal Spring 2014, Vol.38, No, “Algorithms are Thoughts, Chainsaws are Tools. ”Critical Code Studies Workshop, March 2010. A short film on live coding and the TOPLAP manifesto, “Programming With Time, Cyber-physical programming with Impromptu. ”Arte, Cultura y Ciencias Sociales 2015, Vol.5, pp. 5–19. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Live Coding, official TOPLAP website /*vivo*/ symposium on live coding Live Code Research Network International Conference on Live Coding
10.
Telharmonium
–
The Telharmonium was an early electrical organ, developed by Thaddeus Cahill circa 1896 and patented in 1897. The electrical signal from the Telharmonium was transmitted over wires, it was heard on the end by means of horn speakers. Like the later Hammond organ, the Telharmonium used tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis and it is considered to be the first synthetic instrument due to its ability to generate sounds electromechanically because the sound is produced by moving parts rather than electronic oscillators. Cahill built three versions, The Mark I version weighed 7 tons, the Mark II version weighed almost 200 tons, as did the Mark III. Each was an advancement over the features of its predecessor. A small number of performances in front of an audience were given in addition to the telephone transmissions. Performances in New York City were well received by the public in 1906, the Telharmonium foreshadowed modern electronic musical equipment in a number of ways. For instance, its sound came in the form of connecting ordinary telephone receivers to large paper cones — a primitive form of loudspeaker. Indeed, Cahill was noted for saying that electromagnetic diaphragms were the most preferable means of outputting its distinctive sound, the Telharmoniums demise came for a number of reasons. Its immense size, weight and power consumption caused obvious problems, in addition, problems began to arise when telephone broadcasts of Telharmonium music were subject to crosstalk and unsuspecting telephone users would be interrupted by strange electronic music. By 1912, interest in this instrument had changed. Cahill died in 1934, his brother retained the Mark I for decades. This was the last version to be scrapped, in 1962, Telharmonium tones are clear and pure — referring to the electronic sine wave tones it was capable of producing. However, it was not restricted to such simple sounds, each tonewheel of the instrument corresponded to a single note, and, to broaden its possibilities, Cahill added several extra tonewheels to add harmonics to each note. The Telharmonium needed 670 kilowatts of power and had 153 keys that allowed it to work properly, refining Sound, A Practical Guide to Synthesis and Synthesizers. Patent Telharmonium, Audion Piano, Luigi Russsolo et les bruitistes sonhors. free. fr, French The Telharmonium the Telharmonium on 120 years Of Electronic Music
11.
Electric organ
–
An electronic organ is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally, it was designed to imitate the sound of pipe organs, theatre organs, band sounds, or orchestral sounds. In a fashion not totally unlike that of organs, reed organs generated sound by forcing air over a set of reeds by means of a bellows. While reed organs had limited tonal quality, they were small, inexpensive, self-powered, the reed organ was thus able to bring an organlike sound to venues that were incapable of housing or affording pipe organs. This concept was to play an important role in the development of the electric organ, pipe organ In the 1930s, several manufacturers developed electronic organs designed to imitate the function and sound of pipe organs. At the time, some thought that emulation of the pipe organ was the most promising route to take in the development of an electronic organ. Various types of organs have been brought to market over the years. Electricity arrived on the scene in the first decades of the 20th century. Electrically powered reed organs appeared during the first decades of electricity, cahills techniques were later used by Laurens Hammond in his organ design, and the 200-ton Telharmonium served as the worlds first demonstration of electrically produced music on a grand scale. Meanwhile, some experimentation with producing sound by electric impulses was taking place. Built in Belleville, Ontario, the Robb Wave Organ predates its much more successful competitor Hammond by patent and manufacture, the first widespread success in this field was a product of the Hammond Corporation in 1934. The Hammond organ quickly became the successor of the reed organ, from the start, electronic organs operated on a radically different principle from all previous organs. The organ was electrically powered, replacing the reed organs twin bellows pedals with a swell pedal more like that of a pipe organ. Instead of having to pump at a constant rate, as had been the case with the reed organ, from the beginning, the electronic organ had a second manual, also rare among reed organs. The most revolutionary difference in the Hammond, however, was its number of tonewheel settings. By using the drawbars, the organist could combine a variety of tones and harmonics in varying proportions. In all, the Hammond was capable of producing more than 250 million tones, the classic Hammond sound benefitted from the use of free-standing loudspeakers called tone cabinets that produced a higher-quality sound than small built-in speakers. The sound was further enhanced by rotating speaker units, usually manufactured by Leslie
12.
Thaddeus Cahill
–
Thaddeus Cahill was a prominent inventor of the early 20th century. He is widely credited with the invention of the first electromechanical musical instrument and he studied the physics of music at Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, Ohio. After working as a clerk for Congress in Washington D. C. to pay for his college studies and he became convinced that music could be made with electricity. He showed his first teleharmonium to Lord Kelvin in 1902 and that year he established a laboratory at Holyoke, where he was joined by his brother, Arthur T. Cahill. Cahill had tremendous ambitions for his invention, he wanted music to be broadcast into hotels, restaurants, theaters. At a starting weight of 7 tons and a tag of $200,000. His idea proved to be fruitful, nearly a century later, the Telharmonium, Electricitys Alliance with Music. The American monthly review of reviews, reynold Weidenaar, Magic Music from the Telharmonium, The Scarecrow Press Inc. Electronic Music Interfaces Thaddeus Cahills Telharmonium
13.
Electronic musical instrument
–
An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronics. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical signal that ultimately drives a loudspeaker. An electronic instrument might include a user interface for controlling its sound, often by adjusting the pitch, frequency, all electronic musical instruments can be viewed as a subset of audio signal processing applications. Simple electronic musical instruments are called sound effects, the border between sound effects and actual musical instruments is often hazy. Electronic musical instruments are now used in most styles of music. Development of new musical instruments, controllers, and synthesizers continues to be a highly active. In the 18th-century, musicians and composers adapted a number of instruments to exploit the novelty of electricity. The former instrument consisted of an instrument of over 700 strings. The latter was an instrument with plectra activated electrically. However, neither instrument used electricity as a sound-source, the first electric synthesizer was invented in 1876 by Elisha Gray. The Musical Telegraph used steel reeds oscillated by electromagnets and transmitted over a telephone line, Gray also built a simple loudspeaker device into later models, which consisted of a diaphragm vibrating in a magnetic field. A significant invention, which later had an effect on electronic music, was the audion in 1906. This was the first thermionic valve, or vacuum tube and which led to the generation and amplification of signals, radio broadcasting. Other early synthesizers included the Telharmonium, the Theremin, Jörg Magers Spharophon and Partiturophone, Taubmanns similar Electronde, Maurice Martenots ondes Martenot, only two models of this latter were built and the only surviving example is currently stored at the Lomonosov University in Moscow. It has been used in many Russian movies—like Solaris—to produce unusual, Hugh Le Caine, John Hanert, Raymond Scott, composer Percy Grainger, and others built a variety of automated electronic-music controllers during the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1959 Daphne Oram produced a method of synthesis, her Oramics technique, driven by drawings on a 35 mm film strip. In 1897 Thaddeus Cahill patented an instrument called the Telharmonium, using tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis, it was capable of producing any combination of notes and overtones, at any dynamic level. This technology was used to design the Hammond organ
14.
Theremin
–
The theremin is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the thereminist. It is named after the Westernized name of its Russian inventor, Léon Theremin, the electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. The theremin was used in soundtracks such as Miklós Rózsas Spellbound, The Lost Weekend. It has also used in theme songs for television shows such as the ITV drama Midsomer Murders. This has led to its association with eerie situations, Theremins are also used in concert music and in popular music genres such as rock. The theremin was originally the product of Soviet government-sponsored research into proximity sensors, the instrument was invented by a young Russian physicist named Lev Sergeyevich Termen in October 1920 after the outbreak of the Russian Civil War. After a lengthy tour of Europe, during which time he demonstrated his invention to packed houses, Theremin moved to the United States, subsequently, Theremin granted commercial production rights to RCA. Although the RCA Thereminvox, was not a success, it fascinated audiences in America. Clara Rockmore, a well-known thereminist, toured to wide acclaim, performing a repertoire in concert halls around the United States. In 1938, Theremin left the United States, though the circumstances related to his departure are in dispute. Many accounts claim he was taken from his New York City apartment by NKVD agents, taken back to the Soviet Union and made to work in a sharashka laboratory prison camp at Magadan, in any case, Theremin did not return to the United States until 1991. However, a niche interest in the theremin persisted, mostly among electronics enthusiasts, one of these electronics enthusiasts, Robert Moog, began building theremins in the 1950s, while he was a high-school student. Moog subsequently published a number of articles about building theremins, Moog credited what he learned from the experience as leading directly to his groundbreaking synthesizer, the Moog. Since the release of the film Theremin, An Electronic Odyssey in 1994, even though many theremin sounds can be approximated on many modern synthesizers, some musicians continue to appreciate the expressiveness, novelty, and uniqueness of using an actual theremin. The film itself has garnered excellent reviews, both theremin instruments and kits are available from manufacturers such as Moog Music Inc. Burns Theremins, Harrison Instruments, Inc. Theremaniacs LLC, PAiA Corporation USA, and Jaycar Electronics, the theremin is distinguished among musical instruments in that it is played without physical contact. The thereminist stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennas, the distance from one antenna determines frequency, and the distance from the other controls amplitude. Higher notes are played by moving the hand closer to the pitch antenna, louder notes are played by moving the hand away from the volume antenna
15.
Spharophon
–
The Sphärophon or a Spherophone is an electrical musical instrument that was first made as the Electrophon around 1921 by Jörg Mager, later modified, renamed and exhibited in 1926. Mager invented two different variants of the Sphärophon, the first version was similar to a Theremin, but Magers design had the capability to change the timbre of the sound that was produced as well as utilize discrete pitches. His second prototype was keyboard-based but used a radio frequency oscillator as well and this instrument was capable of producing quarter tones of an octave. In many of his instruments, including the Spharophon, Mager experimented with the drivers in the loudspeakers to achieve different sounds as well, Mager premiered his special new instrument at the Donaueschingen Festival, Germany in 1926. There are no Spharophons in existence today because they were all destroyed along with all of Mager’s instruments such as the Partiturophon, ondes Martenot, a keyboard-based instrument using the heterodyning method Jörg Magers instruments at 120 Years of Electronic Music
16.
Ondes Martenot
–
The ondes Martenot, also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales, is an early electronic musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot. The original design was similar in sound to the theremin, the sonic capabilities of the instrument were later expanded by the addition of timbral controls and switchable loudspeakers. The instruments eerie wavering notes are produced by varying the frequency of oscillation in vacuum tubes, the production of the instrument stopped in 1988, but several conservatories in France still offer instruction to students of the instrument. In 1997 the Ondéa project began designing an instrument based on the ondes Martenot, since the Martenot name is still protected, the new instrument is called Ondéa, but has the playing and operational characteristics of the original ondes Martenot. In 2001 a completed prototype was first used in concerts and these instruments have been in regular use since 2005. In 2016, ASADEN, a company based in Asakusa, Japan. The Ondomo is a smaller, analog ondes Martenot instrument that has been in prototyping stages for several years, the ondes Martenot has been used by many composers, most notably Olivier Messiaen. His opera Saint-François dAssise requires three of the instruments, the composers widow, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen arranged and edited four unpublished Feuillets inedits for ondes Martenot and piano which were published in 2001. The ondes Martenot has also used occasionally in transcriptions, Leopold Stokowski used the instrument in his ethereal orchestration of Buxtehudes Sarabande. André Jolivet wrote a prominent concerto for it in 1947, bohuslav Martinů authorized the adaptation of his Fantasie to the use of the ondes Martenot when it proved difficult to perform on the Theremin, for which it was originally written. Estimates of the number of written for ondes Martenot vary. Jacques Tchamkertens provisional catalogue of works for ondes, included in the current reprinting of Loriods Technique, in 1936 Adolphe Borchard used it in Sacha Guitrys Le roman dun tricheur, played by Martenots sister, Ginette. It was used by composer Brian Easdale in the music for The Red Shoes. It was frequently used in horror and science fiction movies and television, in 1962 French composer Maurice Jarre introduced the ondes Martenot to American cinema in his score for Lawrence of Arabia. Later, the English composer Richard Rodney Bennett used it for such diverse scores as Billion Dollar Brain and Secret Ceremony. It was through him that Elmer Bernstein first learned about the instrument, and later used it in films, among them Heavy Metal, Ghostbusters, The Black Cauldron. Other film scores using the ondes Martenot include There Will Be Blood by Jonny Greenwood, barry Gray used Ondes Martenot for his film and television soundtracks of the 1950s and 1960s. David Fanshawe incorporated the ondes into his theme and score for the Yorkshire Television series Flambards
17.
Trautonium
–
The Trautonium is a monophonic electronic musical instrument invented about 1929 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschules music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Salas death in 2002, instead of a keyboard, its manual is made of a resistor wire over a metal plate, which is pressed to create a sound. Expressive playing was possible with this wire by gliding on it, volume was controlled by the pressure of the finger on the wire and board. The first Trautoniums were marketed by Telefunken from 1933–35, the sounds were at first produced by neon-tube relaxation oscillators, which produced sawtooth-like waveforms. The pitch was determined by the amount of wire chosen by the performer. The oscillator output was fed into two parallel resonant filter circuits, a footpedal controlled the volume ratio of the output of the two filters, which was sent to an amplifier. On 20 June 1930 Oskar Sala and Paul Hindemith gave a performance at the Berliner Musikhochschule Hall called “Neue Musik Berlin 1930″ to introduce the Trautonium. Later, Oskar Sala toured Germany with the Trautonium, in 1931 he was the soloist in a performance of Hindemiths Concert for Trautonium with String Quartet and he also soloed in the debut of Hindemiths student Harald Genzmers “Concert for Trautonium AND Orchestra”. Paul Hindemith wrote several short trios for three Trautoniums with three different tunings, bass, middle, and high voice and his student, Harald Genzmer, wrote two concertos with orchestra, one for the monophonic Trautonium and, later, one for Oskar Salas Mixtur-Trautonium. One of the first additions of Sala was to add a switch for changing the static tuning, later he added a noise generator and an envelope generator, formant filter and the subharmonic oscillators. These oscillators generate a main pitch and several subharmonics, which are not multiples of the fundamental tone, for any of the now two manuals, four of these waves can be mixed and the player can switch through these predefined settings. Thus, it was called the Mixtur-Trautonium, Oskar Sala composed music for industrial films, but the most famous was the bird noises for Alfred Hitchcocks The Birds. The German manufacturer Doepfer sells some devices for the market to allow for Trautonium-like synthesizer control. The German manufacturer trautoniks sells custom made Trautoniums, although Oskar Sala developed the Trautonium further, he did not teach his art to any pupil. However, Peter Pichler, a Munich musician and artist, had heard the sound of the Trautonium when he was a man and was fascinated by its emotional impact. Pichler found he could not forget the unique sound, he searched obsessively for anyone who could help him understand the instrument, in 1996 the two met in Salas studio in Berlin, and the result was the preservation of much of Salas knowledge. Pichler was transformed by the experience but he had to wait fifteen years before he could afford to commission his own Mixturtrautonium from the company Trautoniks. He wrote a musical piece about the fathers of the Trautonium, Wiedersehen in Trautonien
18.
Joseph Schillinger
–
Joseph Moiseyevich Schillinger was a composer, music theorist, and composition teacher who originated the Schillinger System of Musical Composition. He was born in Kharkiv, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire, Schillinger came from this background, dedicated to creating truly professional musicians, having been a student of the St Petersburg Imperial Conservatory of Music. George Gershwin spent four years studying with Schillinger, during this period, he composed Porgy and Bess and consulted Schillinger on matters concerning the opera, particularly its orchestration. There has been disagreement about the nature of Schillingers influence on Gershwin. A third account of Gershwins musical relationship with his teacher was written by Gershwins close friend Vernon Duke, also a Schillinger student, Some of Gershwins notebooks from his studies with Joseph Schillinger can be found at the Library of Congress. In the field of music, Schillinger collaborated with Léon Theremin, the inventor of an early electronic musical instrument. Schillinger wrote his First Airphonic Suite for Léon Theremin, who played the instrument at the premiere in 1929 with the Cleveland Orchestra and his mathematical principles were applied to various fields other than music. For example, Schillinger collaborated with the film maker Mary Ellen Bute, Schillinger House opened in 1945 and later became the Berklee College of Music where the System survived in the curriculum until the 1960s. There has been debate surrounding how many teachers were certified by Schillinger himself, the numbers cited range from seven to twelve certified teachers. Yet, to date, only seven certified teachers of the Schillinger System have been substantiated, two certified teachers were Asher Zlotnik of Baltimore, Maryland, a student and personal friend of Lyle Dowling and Edwin Gerschefski. Schillinger System of musical composition Anderson, Ruth, jeremy, Keys to the Schillinger System, course B, Basic principles and foundations. “Joseph Schillinger, Music Science Promethean” American Music 21/1, 45-73, a Dictionary of American Composers, Garland,1984. Great Jews in Music, J. D. Publishers,1986, the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Schillinger. J, The Schillinger System of Musical Composition, Rose Books 2005, ISBN 1-59386-028-5 Sitsky, Music of the repressed Russian avant-garde, 1900–1929, Greenwood Press,1994. A Brief Note on the Schillinger System, “The Schillinger Case, Fallacy of the Mechanistic Approach. ”“The Schillinger Case, Charting the Musical Range, ” Modern Music 23/3, 226-8 Cowell, Henry. “Joseph Schillinger as Composer, ” Music News 39/3, 5-6 Duke, “Gershwin, Schillinger, Dukelsky, Some Reminiscences, ” Musical Quarterly 33/1, 102-115 Human, Alfred. Schillinger Challenges Genius, Musical Digest 29/8, 12-14,16, “Schillinger’s Influence on Film Music, ” Music News 39/3, 39-40. “Schillinger of Russia and the World, ” Music News 39/3, New York, Greenberg,1949 Solomon, Seymour
19.
Cleveland Orchestra
–
The Cleveland Orchestra, based in Cleveland, is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the Big Five. Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, as of 2016, the incumbent music director is Franz Welser-Möst. In 2012 Gramophone Magazine ranked the Cleveland Orchestra number 7 on its list of 20 of the worlds greatest orchestras, the orchestra was founded in 1918 by Adella Prentiss Hughes, with Nikolai Sokoloff as its principal conductor. From early in its existence, it toured throughout the eastern United States, made radio broadcasts, subsequent principal conductors, with the title of Music Director, were Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, and Christoph von Dohnányi. Franz Welser-Möst has been Music Director since 2002 and is contracted to remain through the 2021-2022 season, George Szells long reign as Music Director has been largely credited for the orchestras rise to eminence. He reformed the orchestra in the late-1940s, firing a dozen musicians in the process with a dozen more leaving of their own volition, Szell is also credited with giving the orchestra its distinct, European sound. He pushed an ambitious recording schedule with the orchestra, bringing its music to millions worldwide, Szells influence has continued, even decades after his death. Cleveland is the smallest city amongst the traditional Big Five orchestras, the others are based in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. However, musicians in Cleveland are often treated as local celebrities, clevelanders are proud that their city boasts an orchestra that has several times been touted as Americas finest, and compared favorably to many of the great orchestras in Central Europe. In the 1960s fans were known to have airport rallies when the orchestra comes home from tour chant, past assistant conductors of the Cleveland Orchestra include Matthias Bamert, James Levine, Alan Gilbert, James Judd and Michael Stern. Severance Hall is the Cleveland Orchestras home and it was built for the orchestra in 1931. The orchestra performs the majority of its concerts at Severance and also uses the hall for rehearsals, the concert organ there is by Ernest M. Skinner IV-94. During the summer months, the orchestra presents their annual Blossom Festival at the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, until 2005, the Blossom Festival had its own music director. The last person to serve in that capacity was Jahja Ling, after he stepped down from that position, the orchestra eliminated the post, and now has current music director Franz Welser-Möst in charge of the classical music concerts at the Blossom Festival. The orchestra also has long-term performing relationships in Lucerne, Vienna, New York City, a residency in Miami, the Cleveland Orchestra Official website Cleveland Orchestra history at the Wayback Machine from the Telarc website. Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra Cleveland Orchestra Musicians
20.
Percy Grainger
–
Percy Aldridge Grainger was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the years of the 20th century. He also made many adaptations of composers works. Although much of his work was experimental and unusual, the piece with which he is most generally associated is his arrangement of the folk-dance tune Country Gardens. Grainger left Australia at the age of 13 to attend the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, between 1901 and 1914 he was based in London, where he established himself first as a society pianist and later as a concert performer, composer and collector of original folk melodies. As his reputation grew he met many of the significant figures in European music, forming important friendships with Frederick Delius and he became a champion of Nordic music and culture, his enthusiasm for which he often expressed in private letters. In 1914, Grainger moved to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life, though he travelled widely in Europe and he served briefly as a bandsman in the United States Army during 1917–18, and took American citizenship in 1918. After his mothers suicide in 1922 he became involved in educational work. He also experimented with music machines that he hoped would supersede human interpretation, in the 1930s he set up the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, his birthplace, as a monument to his life and works and as a future research archive. As he grew older he continued to concerts and to revise and rearrange his own compositions. After the Second World War, ill health reduced his levels of activity and he gave his last concert in 1960, less than a year before his death. Percy Graingers father, John Grainger, was an English-born architect who emigrated to Australia in 1877 and he won professional recognition for his design of the Princes Bridge across the Yarra River in Melbourne. In October 1880 he married Rose Annie Aldridge, daughter of Adelaide hotelier George Aldridge, the couple settled in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne where their only son, christened George Percy Grainger, was born on 8 July 1882. John Grainger was an accomplished artist, with cultural interests. These included David Mitchell, whose daughter Helen later gained fame as an operatic soprano under the name Nellie Melba. Johns claims to have discovered her are unfounded, although he may have offered her encouragement, John was a heavy drinker and a womaniser who, Rose learned after the marriage, had fathered a child in England before coming to Australia. His promiscuity placed heavy strains upon the relationship, particularly when Rose discovered shortly after Percys birth that she had contracted a form of syphilis from her husband, despite this, the Graingers stayed together until 1890, when John went to England for medical treatment. After his return to Australia they lived apart, the burden of raising Percy fell to Rose and he also designed Nellie Melbas home, Coombe Cottage, at Coldstream
21.
Olivier Messiaen
–
Olivier-Eugène-Prosper-Charles Messiaen was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is complex, harmonically and melodically it often uses modes of limited transposition. Messiaen also drew on his Roman Catholic faith for his pieces and he travelled widely and wrote works inspired by diverse influences such as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He said he perceived colours when he heard certain musical chords, combinations of these colours, for a short period Messiaen experimented with the parametrisation associated with total serialism, in which field he is often cited as an innovator. His style absorbed many global musical influences such as Indonesian gamelan, Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and was taught by Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in 1931. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s, the piece was first performed by Messiaen and fellow prisoners for an audience of inmates and prison guards. He was appointed professor of harmony soon after his release in 1941 and his many distinguished pupils included Quincy Jones, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Yvonne Loriod, who became his second wife. He found birdsong fascinating, notating bird songs worldwide and incorporating birdsong transcriptions into his music and his innovative use of colour, his conception of the relationship between time and music, and his use of birdsong are among the features that make Messiaens music distinctive. Olivier-Eugène-Prosper-Charles Messiaen was born December 10,1908 in Avignon, France and he was the elder of two sons of Cécile Sauvage, a poet, and Pierre Messiaen, a teacher of English who translated the plays of William Shakespeare into French. Messiaens mother published a sequence of poems, Lâme en bourgeon, the last chapter of Tandis que la terre tourne, Messiaen later said this sequence of poems influenced him deeply and he cited it as prophetic of his future artistic career. At the outbreak of World War I, Pierre Messiaen enlisted, there Messiaen became fascinated with drama, reciting Shakespeare to his brother with the help of a home-made toy theatre with translucent backdrops made from old cellophane wrappers. At this time he adopted the Roman Catholic faith. Later, Messiaen felt most at home in the Alps of the Dauphiné and he took piano lessons having already taught himself to play. His interest included the recent music of French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, around this time he began to compose. In 1918 his father returned from the war and the moved to Nantes. The following year Pierre Messiaen gained a teaching post in Paris, Messiaen entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1919, aged 11. At the Conservatoire, Messiaen made excellent academic progress, in 1924, aged 15, he was awarded second prize in harmony, having been taught in that subject by professor Jean Gallon
22.
Shiraz Arts Festival
–
The Shiraz-Persepolis Festival of Arts was an international summer arts festival, bringing about the encounter between the East and the West. It was held annually for years from 1967 to 1977 in the city of Shiraz. Accompanied by symposia and debates, the program included music, dance, drama and film, performed in a variety of locations in Shiraz. The young masters included Hossein Alizadeh, Dariush Talai, Mohammad-Reza Lotfi, Majid Kiani, Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, Parisa, indian classical musicians who appeared were Vilayat Khan, Bismillah Khan, Sharan Rani, Pran Nath, Sundaram Balachander, Ravi Shankar, Ram Narayan, Chaurasia and Dagar. In the field of Western music Yehudi Menuhin, Christian Ferras, Martha Argerich, Arthur Rubinstein, the National Iranian Radio & Television Chamber Orchestra was a regular. Other participants in this field from Iran were Morteza Hannaneh, the twelfth festival was cancelled at the onset of the Islamic Revolution in 1978 out of concern for the safety of the performers. Sound the Trumpets, Beat the Drums, Tony Williams film documentary of the 1969 festival
23.
Mantra (Stockhausen)
–
Mantra is a composition by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was composed in 1970 and premiered in autumn of the year in Donaueschingen. In his catalogue of works, the composer designated it as work number 32, Stockhausen had been interested for several years in writing something for the Kontarsky piano duo, and by early 1969 he had become determined to do so (Blumröder 1976,94, Toop 1986,194. He jotted the melody down on an envelope at that time, Stockhausen later recalled that this was early in September 1969, but the sketch is in fact dated 26 February. Intervall, eventually premiered by Roger Woodward and Jerzy Romaniuk, later part of Stockhausens second cycle of intuitive-music compositions. He then completed the score in a stretch of work at his home in Kürten from 10 July to 18 August 1970. The score first appeared in print only in 1975, as one of the first publications of the newly founded Stockhausen-Verlag. The piece is the first determinate work that Stockhausen composed after a phase of indeterminate compositions. This work involves the expansion and contraction of a pair of melodies. In this particular work, Stockhausen chose the term mantra in order to avoid the words theme, row or subject, as in a fugue, in Mantra, the two-strand formula is stated near the outset of the piece by piano I. The comparatively strict predetermination of the plan is occasionally broken and altered through the use of insertions, additions. The mantra is made of an upper and lower voice, it is divided temporally into 4 segments with rests of 3,2,1, the 13 notes of the mantras upper voice form a 12-tone row where the 13th note returns to the first note A. The pitches are shown in the example to the right, each cycle is dominated by its corresponding note and characteristic. In this way, a statement of the mantra is spread over the length of the entire composition. The sounds of each piano are picked up by microphones and fed into an apparatus at the left side. This is called a Modul 69 B and was built for Mantra to the composers specification by the Lawo company from Rastatt. It consists of an amplifier with three microphone inputs, a compressor, a filter, a ring modulator, a scaled sine-wave generator. The first pianist presents the upper thirteen tones, the second pianist the lower thirteen tones, because the starting/ending pitch of the mantra is successively transposed onto these central pitches, they sound completely consonant, like ordinary piano tones
24.
Delay (audio effect)
–
Delay is an audio effect and an effects unit which records an input signal to an audio storage medium, and then plays it back after a period of time. The delayed signal may either be played multiple times, or played back into the recording again. Delay effects range from an echo effect to a pronounced blending of previous sounds with new sounds. The first delay effects were achieved using tape loops improvised on reel-to-reel magnetic recording systems, by shortening or lengthening the loop of tape and adjusting the read and write heads, the nature of the delayed echo could be controlled. Audio engineers working in music quickly adapted similar techniques, to augment their use of plate reverb. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, several sound engineers began making devices for use in recording studios, guitarist and instrument designer Les Paul was an early pioneer in delay devices. A landmark device was the EchoSonic made by American Ray Butts and it is a portable guitar amplifier with a built-in tape echo, which became used widely in country music and especially in rock and roll. Tape echoes became commercially available in the 1950s, an echo machine is the early name for a sound processing device used with electronic instruments to repeat the sound and produce a simulated echo. The device was popular with guitarists and was used by Brian May, Jimmy Page, One example is the Echoplex which used a tape loop. The length of delay was adjusted by changing the distance between the record and playback heads. Another example is the Roland Space Echo with a record and multiple tape heads. The time between echo repeats was adjusted by varying the tape speed, the length or intensity of the echo effect was adjusted by changing the amount of echo signal was fed back into the pre-echo signal. Different effects could be created by combining the different playback heads, some models also included a spring reverb. Before the invention of audio technology, music employing a delayed echo had to be recorded in a naturally reverberant space, often an inconvenience for musicians. The presence of multiple taps made it possible to have delays at varying rhythmic intervals, many delay processors based on analog tape recording, such as Ray Butts EchoSonic, Mike Battles Echoplex, or the Roland Space Echo, used magnetic tape as their recording and playback medium. Electric motors guided a tape loop through a device with a variety of mechanisms allowing modification of the effects parameters, in the Space Echo, all of the heads are fixed, but the speed of the tape could be adjusted, changing the delay time. Thin magnetic tape was not entirely suited for operation, however. Several designs were made, the 1959 Ecco-Fonic had a spinning head, many were temperamental, such as the Vox Echomatic
25.
Pierre Schaeffer
–
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician. The genre emerged in Europe from the utilization of new technology developed in the post-Nazi Germany era. Schaeffers writings are often oriented towards his development of the genre, as well as the theoretics and his collaborative endeavors are considered milestones in the histories of electronic and experimental music. Schaeffer was born in Nancy in 1910 and his parents were both musicians, and at first it seemed that Pierre would also take on music as a career. However his parents discouraged his musical pursuits from childhood and had him educated in engineering and he studied at several universities in this inclination, the first of which was Lycée Saint-Sigisbert located in his hometown of Nancy. Afterwards he moved westwards in 1929 to the École Polytechnique in Paris and finally completed his education in the capital at the École supérieure délectricité, Schaeffer received a diploma in radio broadcasting from the École Polytechnique. Later in 1934 Schaeffer entered his first employment as an engineer, in 1935 he began a relationship with a woman named Elisabeth Schmitt, and later in the year married her and with her had his first child, Marie-Claire Schaeffer. He and his new family then relocated to Paris where he joined the Radiodiffusion Française in 1936 and began his work in radio broadcasting. It was there that he began to move away from his interests in telecommunications and to pursue music instead. This period of experimentation was significant for Schaeffers development, bringing forward many fundamental questions he had on the limits of modern musical expression. In these experiments, Pierre tried playing sounds backwards, slowing them down, speeding them up and juxtaposing them with other sounds and he had begun working with new contemporaries whom he had met through RTF, and as such his experimentation deepened. Schaeffers work gradually became more avant-garde, as he challenged traditional musical style with the use of devices and practices. In 1938 Schaeffer began his career as a writer, penning various articles and essays for the Revue Musicale and his first column, Basic Truths, provided a critical examination of musical aspects of the time. A known ardent Catholic, Schaeffer began to write minor religiously-based pieces and this gave him a new studio, which included a tape recorder. This was a significant development for Schaeffer, who previously had to work with phonographs, Schaeffer is generally acknowledged as being the first composer to make music using magnetic tape. His continued experimentation led him to publish À la Recherche dune Musique Concrète in 1952 and his only opera, Orphée 53, premiered in 1953. Schaeffer left the GRMC in 1953 and reformed the group in 1958 as the Groupe de Recherche Musicale and his last etude came in 1959, the Study of Objects. In 1954 Schaeffer founded traditional music label Ocora alongside composer, pianist and musicologist Charles Duvelle, Ocora also served as a facility to train technicians in African national broadcasting services
26.
Mauricio Kagel
–
Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance, Kagel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into a Jewish family which fled from Russia in the 1920s. He studied music, history of literature, and philosophy in Buenos Aires, in 1957 he came as a scholar to Cologne, Germany, where he lived until his death. From 1960–66 and 1972–76, he taught at the International Summer School at Darmstadt and he taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1964 to 1965 as Slee Professor of music theory and at the Berlin Film and Television Academy as a visiting lecturer. He served as director of courses for new music in Gothenburg and he was professor for new music theatre at the Cologne Conservatory from 1974 to 1997. Invited by Walter Fink, he was the composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 1991. In 2000 he received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, among his students were Maria de Alvear, Carola Bauckholt, Branimir Krstić, David Sawer, Rickard Scheffer, Juan Maria Solare, Gerald Barry, and Chao-Ming Tung. See, List of music students by teacher, K to M#Mauricio Kagel and he died in Cologne on September 18,2008 after a long illness, at the age of 76. His work is comparable to the Theatre of the Absurd, staatstheater is probably the piece that most clearly shows his absurdist tendency. This work is described as a ballet for non-dancers, though in many ways is more like an opera, as the work progresses, the piece itself, and opera and ballet in general, becomes its own subject matter. Similar is the radio play Ein Aufnahmezustand which is about the surrounding the recording of a radio play. Kagel also made films, with one of the best known being Ludwig van, in it, a reproduction of Beethovens studio is seen, as part of a fictive visit of the Beethoven House in Bonn. Everything in it is papered with sheet music of Beethovens pieces, the soundtrack of the film is a piano playing the music as it appears in each shot. Because the music has been wrapped around curves and edges, it is somewhat distorted, in other parts, the film contains parodies of radio or TV broadcasts connected with the Beethoven Year 1770. Kagel also wrote a number of more conventional, pure pieces, including orchestral music, chamber music. Many of these also make references to music of the past by, amongst others, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and he has been regarded by music historians as deploying a critical intelligence interrogating the position of music in society. Six duos for two percussionists Ludwig Van Anon. n. d, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. Liszts Nuages gris and Kagels Unguis incarnatus est, A Model and Its Issue, a Concise History of Modern Music, From Debussy to Boulez
27.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
–
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him one of the visionaries of 20th-century music. He is known for his work in electronic music, aleatory in serial composition. He was educated at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and the University of Cologne, later studying with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and with Werner Meyer-Eppler at the University of Bonn. One of the figures of the Darmstadt School, his compositions and theories were and remain widely influential, not only on composers of art music. His works, composed over a period of sixty years. His theoretical and other writings comprise ten large volumes and he received numerous prizes and distinctions for his compositions, recordings, and for the scores produced by his publishing company. He died of heart failure at the age of 79, on 5 December 2007 at his home in Kürten. Stockhausen was born in Burg Mödrath, the castle of the village of Mödrath, the village, located near Kerpen in the Cologne region, was displaced in 1956 to make way for lignite strip mining, but the castle itself still stands. Despite its name, the building is not actually a castle at all, because of its imposing size, locals began calling it Burg Mödrath. From 1925 to 1932 it was the maternity home of the Bergheim district, in 1950, the owners, the Düsseldorf chapter of the Knights of Malta, turned it into an orphanage, but it has subsequently returned to private ownership and is today a private residence again. His father, Simon Stockhausen, was a schoolteacher, and his mother Gertrud was the daughter of a family of farmers in Neurath in the Cologne Bight. A daughter, Katherina, was born the year after Karlheinz, from the age of seven, Stockhausen lived in Altenberg, where he received his first piano lessons from the Protestant organist of the Altenberg Cathedral, Franz-Josef Kloth. His new wife, Luzia, had been the familys housekeeper, in 1941 he learned that his mother had died, ostensibly from leukemia, although everyone at the same hospital had supposedly died of the same disease. It was generally understood that she had been a victim of the Nazi policy of killing useless eaters, Stockhausen dramatized his mothers death in hospital by lethal injection, in Act 1 scene 2 of the opera Donnerstag aus Licht. In the autumn of 1944, he was conscripted to serve as a bearer in Bedburg. In February 1945, he met his father for the last time in Altenberg, Simon, who was on leave from the front, told his son, Im not coming back. By the end of the war, his father was regarded as missing in action, a comrade later reported to Karlheinz that he saw his father wounded in action
28.
Mikrophonie (Stockhausen)
–
Mikrophonie is the title given by Karlheinz Stockhausen to two of his compositions, written in 1964 and 1965, in which “normally inaudible vibrations. Similar to a group of three of the works from the previous decade, Gruppen, Zeitmaße, and Gesang der Jünglinge, there is one work each for orchestral, chamber. Stockhausen uses the term microphony here as the analog to microscopy in the optical realm. That is, the microphone is used investigatively, to make perceptible objects usually beneath our notice, like one of the micronauts in the film The Fantastic Voyage. I searched for ways to compose—flexibly—also the process of microphone recording, would have to become a musical instrument and, on the other hand, through its manipulation, influence all the characteristics of the sounds. Mikrophonie I, for tamtam,2 microphones,2 filters, and controllers, is an example of moment form, polyvalent form, variable form, in Mikrophonie I two percussionists play a large tam-tam with a variety of implements. Another pair of players use hand-held microphones to amplify subtle details and noises, the last two performers, seated in the audience, apply resonant bandpass filters to the microphone outputs and distribute the resulting sounds to a quadraphonic speaker system. My collaborator Spek was in the house and changed the filter settings, at the same time, we recorded the result on tape. The tape recording of this first microphony experiment was for me a discovery of the greatest importance, in a scale of 36 steps from the darkest and lowest to the brightest and highest sounds. This successful fusion of abstract theory and expression makes Mikrophonie I a work of singular importance, “Someone said, must it be a tam-tam. Mikrophonie I was first performed in Brussels on 9 December 1964, the score is dedicated to the composers godson, Alexander Schlee. The durations of these moments are made according to the Fibonacci series, Stockhausens original idea had been to combine a choir with the tamtam from Mikrophonie I but the sounds proved too contrary, and so he settled on the Hammond organ instead. The text used is Helmut Heißenbüttel’s nonsense poem, Einfache grammatische Meditationen, from Textbuch 1. The choir consists only of high and low voices, two each of sopranos and basses, who sit in an arc with their backs to the audience. Each section is picked up by a microphone and the signal is fed into one side of a ring modulator, vocal music of my past sounds through time-windows into the vocal music of my present. In the seventh time-window, music from Carré and Gesang der Jünglinge sounds simultaneously, the world première of Mikrophonie II took place on 11 June 1965 in a Musik der Zeit concert at the Große Sendesaal of WDR in Cologne. The score is dedicated to Judith Frehm, aloys Kontarsky and Alfred Alings, tam-tam, Johannes G. Fritsch and Harald Bojé, microphones, Hugh Davies and Jaap Spek, filters, Karlheinz Stockhausen, sound projection. The performers in Mikrophonie II are, Members of the WDR Choir and of the Studio Choir for New Music, Cologne, herbert Schernus, Alfons Kontarsky, Hammond organ, Johannes G. Fritsch, timer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, sound projection
29.
Mixtur
–
It exists in three versions, the original version for full orchestra, a reduced scoring made in 1967, and a re-notated version of the reduced scoring, made in 2003 and titled Mixtur 2003, Nr. 16⅔. Mixtur is one of the earliest compositions for orchestra with live electronics, the original version for large orchestra was premiered on 9 November 1965 at the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Hamburg. Beginning in the late 1990s, Stockhausen revised a number of his earlier scores, making versions in which the details were worked out. The last of these was Mixtur, reworked in 2003, in several moments of the original version, the players choose what they play from a selection of written material. Mixtur 2003 eliminates such indeterminacy by completely writing out all the parts, the overall form is also fixed in the new version, which eliminates the movability of some moments permitted in the two previous versions. Many earlier performances had presented two different versions, usually the backwards version first, followed by the forwards version, the score of Mixtur 2003 is written out twice, first in the forwards and then in the backwards version. In a programme note Stockhausen characterised this back-and-forth motion as a metaphor for the interplay between life and death, the world premiere of the new version took place at the Salzburg Festival on 30 August 2006. Stockhausen was to have conducted, but was forced to cancel because of an attack of sciatica, the performers were the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with electronics by the Experimentalstudio für akustische Kunst Freiburg, supervised by André Richard. Mixtur is an example of moment form, made up of twenty formal units called moments, each of which is recognizable by a personal and unmistakable character. It possesses at the time a polyvalent form, in which the components may be performed in different sequences. In other moments, the frequencies are directly connected to the larger-scale structure. In Spiegel, for example, the sine tones focus on the octave of the central tone. The division of the orchestra into five groups is decisive for the form of the composition. The numbers of units per moment are taken from five steps of a scale proportioned according to the Fibonacci series,2,3,5,8, and 13, with each value multiplied by 6,12,18,30,48, and 78. The usefulness of this lies in the roughly constant proportion between successive members—the deviations of which diminish as the series is extended. The twenty moments can be played in order, ascending or descending. The former is referred to as the version, the latter as the backwards version. The sequence of events within each moment, however, is the same in either version, certain moments may also be exchanged, no.1 with 5,11 with 16, and 15 with either 3 or 20
30.
Concert
–
A concert is a live music performance in front of an audience. A recital is a concert by a soloist or small group which follows a program, a recitalist is a musician who gives frequent recitals. The invention of the piano recital has been attributed to Franz Liszt. The performance may be by a musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, choir. Indoor concerts held in the largest venues are sometimes called arena concerts or amphitheatre concerts, informal names for a concert include show and gig. Regardless of the venue, musicians perform on a stage. Concerts often require live event support with professional audio equipment, before recorded music, concerts provided the main opportunity to hear musicians play. The nature of a concert varies by musical genre, individual performers, concerts by a small jazz combo or small bluegrass band may have the same order of program, mood, and volume—but vary in music and dress. In a similar way, a musician, band, or genre of music might attract concert attendees with similar dress, hairstyle. For example, concert goers in the 1960s often had hair, sandals. Regular attendees to a concert venue might also have a style that comprises that venues scene. Other Types of concerts, To plan or arrange by mutual agreement, some performers or groups put on very elaborate and expensive shows. To create a memorable and exciting atmosphere and increase the spectacle, some singers, especially popular music, augment concert sound with pre-recorded accompaniment, back-up dancers, and even broadcast vocal tracks of the singers own voice. Activities during these concerts can include dancing, sing-alongs, and moshing, concerts involving a greater number of artists, especially those that last for multiple days, are known as festivals. Unlike other concerts, which remain in a single genre of music or work of a particular artist, festivals often cover a broad scope of music. Due to their size, festivals are almost exclusively held outdoors, new platforms for festivals are becoming increasingly popular such as Jam Cruise, which is a festival held on a cruise ship, as well as Mayan Holidaze, which is a destination festival held in Tulum. Often concert tours are named, to differentiate different tours by the same artist, different segments of longer concert tours are known as legs. In the largest concert tours it is becoming common for different legs to employ separate touring production crews and equipment
31.
Jean-Michel Jarre
–
Jean-Michel Jarre is a French composer, performer, and record producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient, and new-age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and grandparents, and trained on the piano. From an early age, he was introduced to a variety of art forms, including those of street performers, jazz musicians, and the artist Pierre Soulages. He played guitar in a band, but his style was perhaps most heavily influenced by Pierre Schaeffer. His first mainstream success was the 1976 album Oxygène, recorded in a makeshift studio at his home, the album sold an estimated 12 million copies. More albums were to follow, but his 1979 concert served as a blueprint for his performances around the world. Several of his albums have been released to coincide with large-scale outdoor events, as of 2004, Jarre had sold an estimated 80 million albums. He was the first Western musician officially invited to perform in the Peoples Republic of China, Jean-Michel Jarre was born in Lyon on 24 August 1948, to France Pejot, a French Resistance member and concentration camp survivor, and composer Maurice Jarre. When Jarre was five, his parents split up and his moved to America. He did not see his father again until reaching the age of 18, for the first eight years of his life, Jarre spent six months each year at his maternal grandparents flat on the Cours de Verdun, in the Perrache district of Lyon. Jarres grandfather was a player, engineer and inventor, designing an early audio mixer used at Radio Lyon. He also gave Jean-Michel his first record player, from his vantage point high above the pavement, the young French boy was able to watch street performers at work, an experience he later cited as proving influential on his art. Jarre struggled with classical studies, although he later changed teachers. A more general interest in musical instruments was sparked by his discovery at the Saint-Ouen flea market and these early jazz experiences suggested to him that music may be descriptive, without lyrics. He was also influenced by the work of French artist Pierre Soulages, Soulages paintings used multiple textured layers, and Jarre realised that for the first time in music, you could act as a painter with frequencies and sounds. I also saw the last concert by the great Arabic singer Om Khalsoum and she is the goddess, the Maria Callas of the Orient. Then I heard Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles, and I realised that music can talk to your tummy, I was so impressed by the organic sensuality coming from Ray Charless music – there was no intellectual process and it was great. As a young man Jarre earned money by selling his paintings, exhibiting some of his works at the Lyon Gallery – LŒil écoute, and by playing in a band called Mystère IV
32.
Farmers Manual
–
Farmers Manual is an electronic music and visual art group, founded in Vienna in the beginning of the 1990s. The core members of the collective are Mathias Gmachl, Stefan Possert, Oswald Berthold, Gert Brantner and their CDs, published through avant-garde labels such as Mego, Tray or OR, often contained multimedia content. As visual artists, Farmers Manual have been included in international festivals, such as FCMM, Avanto. Farmers Manual discography on discogs. com Farmers Manual biography on mego. at Recent Live Archive on archive. org
33.
Portmanteau
–
In linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph that represents two or more morphemes. A portmanteau also differs from a compound, which not involve the truncation of parts of the stems of the blended words. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a portmanteau, of star and fish, whereas a hypothetical portmanteau of star and fish might be stish. Humpty Dumpty explains the practice of combining words in various ways by telling Alice, for instance, take the two words fuming and furious. Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first … if you have the rarest of gifts, in then-contemporary English, a portmanteau was a suitcase that opened into two equal sections. The etymology of the word is the French porte-manteau, from porter, to carry, in modern French, a porte-manteau is a clothes valet, a coat-tree or similar article of furniture for hanging up jackets, hats, umbrellas and the like. It has also used especially in Europe as a formal description for hat racks from the French words porter. An occasional synonym for portmanteau word is frankenword, an autological word exemplifying the phenomenon it describes, blending Frankenstein, many neologisms are examples of blends, but many blends have become part of the lexicon. In Punch in 1896, the word brunch was introduced as a portmanteau word, in 1964, the newly independent African republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar chose the portmanteau word Tanzania as its name. Similarly Eurasia is a portmanteau of Europe and Asia, a scientific example is a liger, which is a cross between a male lion and a female tiger. Jeoportmanteau. is a category on the American television quiz show Jeopardy. The categorys name is itself a portmanteau of the words Jeopardy, responses in the category are portmanteaus constructed by fitting two words together. The term gerrymander has itself contributed to portmanteau terms bjelkemander and playmander, oxbridge is a common portmanteau for the UKs two oldest universities, those of Oxford and Cambridge. Many portmanteau words receive some use but do not appear in all dictionaries, for example, a spork is an eating utensil that is a combination of a spoon and a fork, and a skort is an item of clothing that is part skirt, part shorts. On the other hand, turducken, a made by inserting a chicken into a duck. Similarly, the word refudiate was first used by Sarah Palin when she misspoke, though initially a gaffe, the word was recognized as the New Oxford American Dictionarys Word of the Year in 2010. The business lexicon is replete with newly coined portmanteau words like permalance, advertainment, advertorial, infotainment, a company name may also be portmanteau as well as a product name. By contrast, the public, including the media, use portmanteaux to refer to their favorite pairings as a way to. giv people an essence of who they are within the same name and this is particularly seen in cases of fictional and real-life supercouples
34.
Academy (educational institution)
–
Academy is a type of secondary or tertiary education institutions. The word comes from the Academy in ancient Greece, which derives from the Athenian hero, outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had formerly been an olive grove, in these gardens, the philosopher Plato conversed with followers. Plato developed his sessions into a method of teaching philosophy and in 387 BC, by extension academia has come to mean the cultural accumulation of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations and its practitioners and transmitters. In the 17th century, British, Italian and French scholars used the term to describe types of institutions of higher learning, in ancient Greece, after the establishment of the original Academy, Platos colleagues and pupils developed spin-offs of his method. Arcesilaus, a Greek student of Plato established the Middle Academy, carneades, another student, established the New Academy. In 335 BC, Aristotle refined the method with his own theories, the library of Alexandria in Egypt was frequented by intellectuals from Africa, Europe and Asia studying various aspects of philosophy, language and mathematics. The University of Timbuktu was a university in Timbuktu, present-day Mali. During its zenith, the university had an attendance of around 25,000 students within a city of around 100,000 people. In China a higher education institution Shang Xiang was founded by Shun in the Youyu era before the 21st century BC, in the 8th century another kind of institution of learning emerged, named Shuyuan, which were generally privately owned. There were thousands of Shuyuan recorded in ancient times, the degrees from them varied from one to another and those advanced Shuyuan such as Bailudong Shuyuan and Yuelu Shuyuan can be classified as higher institutions of learning. Taxila or Takshashila, in ancient India, modern-day Pakistan, was an early Buddhist centre of learning and it is considered as one of the ancient universities of the world. According to scattered references which were only fixed a millennium later it may have dated back to at least the 5th century BC, some scholars date Takshashilas existence back to the 6th century BC. The school consisted of several monasteries without large dormitories or lecture halls where the instruction was most likely still provided on an individualistic basis. Takshashila is described in detail in later Jātaka tales, written in Sri Lanka around the 5th century AD. It became a centre of learning at least several centuries BC. Takshashila is perhaps best known because of its association with Chanakya, the famous treatise Arthashastra by Chanakya, is said to have been composed in Takshashila itself. Chanakya, the Maurya Emperor Chandragupta and the Ayurvedic healer Charaka studied at Taxila, generally, a student entered Takshashila at the age of sixteen
35.
Laptop orchestra
–
The Electro-Acoustic Ensemble is a laptop-based ensemble at Loyola University New Orleans. The ensemble was formed in January 2009 by professor Paul J. Botelho and is composed of thirteen performers, custom software instruments are developed for the ensemble primarily using the ChucK and Java programming languages. The ensemble focuses on contemporary and classical works and performs in a variety of situations with a special focus on guerrilla performance. Futurist Manifesto was premiered at a guest lecture by philosopher Slavoj Žižek at Loyola University New Orleans on November 17,2009, the work was based on the manifest of the Italian Futurists and included live recitation of the manifesto with computer manipulation. This work was performed at the New Orleans Museum of Art on April 1,2011 as a part of the museums Where YArt. series. On December 4,2009, the ensemble performed a twenty-four-hour meta-performance of Erik Saties Vexations at Loyola University New Orleans, notably, one audience member, pianist Michael Bennett, remained for the entire twenty-four hour performance. The ensemble performed a concert at McKeowns Books and Difficult Music, New Orleans, LA on March 26,2011
36.
Algorave
–
An Algorave is an event where people dance to music generated from algorithms, often using live coding techniques, and short for algorithmic rave. Alex McLean of Slub and Nick Collins coined the word algorave and it has since become a movement, with algoraves taking place around the world. An algorave is an event where people dance to music generated from algorithms, algoraves can include a range of styles, including a complex form of minimal techno, and has been described as a meeting point of hacker philosophy, geek culture, and clubbing. Although algorave musicians have been compared with DJs, they are in fact live musicians or improvisers, creating music live, usually by writing or modifying code, Algorithmic approaches have long been applied in electronic dance music, including by Farmers Manual, Autechre, and Aphex Twin. Traditional use of algorithms include Maypole dancing, where they are applied to the dance itself as a form of Algorithmic Choreography, the first self-proclaimed algorave was held in London as a warmup concert for the SuperCollider Symposium 2012. However the name was first coined in 2011, after live coders Nick Collins, since then, Algorave has been growing into an international movement, with algoraves having been held mainly in Europe and Asia, and few events in Australia and North America. Algorave can also be considered a music movement with a community of electronic musicians, visual artists. Media related to Algorave at Wikimedia Commons Algorave. com
37.
Impromptu (programming environment)
–
Impromptu is a Mac OS X programming environment for live coding. Impromptu is built around the Scheme language, which is a member of the Lisp family of languages, the source code of its core has been opened as the Extempore project. The environment allows to make changes to a program at runtime, so variables and functions may be redefined, a programmer can also create and schedule code for future execution, as well as data events such as notes and graphics objects. Once an event is scheduled, execution continues, looping is performed by using an idiom called temporal recursion which works by having a function asynchronously schedule a future call to itself as its final action. The library allows communicating with Audio Units for audio synthesis, and with graphics layers such as QuickTime, Quartz, Core Image, code written in Objective-C can be called from the editor, and also Objective-C frameworks can perform calls to the Scheme interpreter. Impromptus Scheme interpreter was initially built from the TinyScheme 1.35 baseline, a real-time garbage collector, and Objective-C integration were added. Also, a new statically typed language called the Extempore Language has been integrated to the system and this language is syntactically Scheme-like, but semantically closer to C, and is designed for real-time sound synthesis and other computationally heavy tasks. It provides type inference and is compiled to machine language by LLVM, a Study in Keith is a live coding performance in Impromptu by Andrew Sorensen. The first two minutes are silent, while the performer writes the program that will produce the introduction of the piece, from then on, he modifies the code on the fly to evolve the composition. The core of Impromptu has been released as Extempore under a BSD style licence and it runs under both Linux and Mac OS X. It includes the Scheme interpreter, the Extempore Language compiler and the scheduler, the bindings to Apple libraries are absent, but the environment can interface with dynamic libraries. Impromptu, An interactive programming environment for composition and performance a paper presented to the Australasian Computer Music Conference 2005, Brisbane, ACMA, pp. 149–153
38.
Improvisation
–
Improvisation is the term for the action of improvising. In a technical context, this can mean adapting a device for use other than that which it was designed for, or building a device from unusual components in an ad-hoc fashion. Improvisation, within the context of performing arts, is a spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to different faculties, across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic. Musical improvisation is usually defined as the composition of music, without prior preparation, improvisational comedy is a theatre art performed throughout the world and has had on-again, off-again status throughout history. Dance improvisation is frequently used as a choreographic tool, choreography is also frequently used as a tool for improvisation. Improvisation also exists outside the arts, Improvisation in engineering is to solve a problem with the tools and materials immediately at hand. Improvised weapons are used by guerrillas, insurgents and criminals. Improvisation in engineering is to solve a problem with the tools and materials immediately at hand, engineering improvisations may be needed because of emergencies, embargo, obsolescence of a product and the loss of manufacturer support, or just a lack of funding appropriate for a better solution. Users of motor vehicles in parts of Africa develop improvised solutions where it is not feasible to obtain manufacturer-approved spare parts. The popular television program MacGyver used as its gimmick a hero who could solve almost any problem with jury rigged devices from everyday materials, a Swiss Army knife and some duct tape. Improvisation can be thought of as an on the spot or off the cuff spontaneous moment of sudden inventiveness that can just come to mind, body, no preparation or training is needed. However, improvisation in any life or art form, can more often if it is practiced as a way of encouraging creative behavior. That practice includes learning to use ones intuition, as well as learning a technical understanding of the necessary skills and this can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act. Improvisation was originally used on dramatic television. Techniques of improvisation are used in training for performing arts or entertainment, for example, music, theatre. To extemporize or ad lib is basically the same as improvising, colloquial terms such as lets play it by the ear, take it as it comes, and make it up as we go along are all used to describe improvisation. Where the improvisation is intended to solve a problem on a temporary basis and this applies to the field of engineering
