a glimpse into a composer's workshop

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A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop Nigel Morgan www.nigel-morgan.co.uk

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A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop. Nigel Morgan. www.nigel-morgan.co.uk. A Glimpse into a Composer’s Workshop. Computer Assisted Composition The Composing Continuum A Glimpse into 3 Compositions Issues: Problems: Vision. Computer Aided Composition: A Definition. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Nigel Morgan

www.nigel-morgan.co.uk

Page 2: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Computer Assisted CompositionThe Composing Continuum

A Glimpse into 3 Compositions

Issues: Problems: Vision

A Glimpse into a Composer’s Workshop

Page 3: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

• CAC systems focus on the formal structure of music.

• We conceive a CAC environment as a programming language, enabling composers to constitute their personal universe.

- Carlos Agon, IRCAM, Paris

Index

Computer Aided Composition: A Definition

Page 4: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

• The Monte Carlo Method– Illiac Quartet

Lajaren Hiller & Leonard IsaacsonExperimental Music (1959) McGraw-Hill

• Stochastics– Pierre BarbaudBARBAUD P., Vademecum de l'ingénieur en musique, Springer, 1993, – Iannis Xenakis

• MIDI: The Composer’s Assistant– Morton Subotnik– Fred Lerhahl (IRCAM)– Robert Rowe– David Rosenboom

Index

Composers

Page 5: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

• The Spectral View– Tristran Murail & Gerard Grisey– Jonathan Harvey

• Fractals– Magnus Lindberg– Rolf Wallin

• Statistical Distribution– Richard Barratt– James Dillon

• Generative Music without Computers– Franco Donatoni– Milton Babbitt

Index

Composers

Page 6: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

• Pre-MIDI– Use of AMPLE

• MIDI– Logical (Boolean) editing: Cubase & Logic– M, Jam Factory, Real-Time– Programmable Variations Generator of Dr. T’s KCS– HMSL, Interactor, Cypher, MAX

• LISP & Smalltalk Composition Environments– Common Music– Symbolic Composer– Cecilia, D-MIX – Bol Processor– Patchwork & Open Music

• The use of Matlab– Matlab MIDI Toolkit

Index

Software

Page 7: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Follows this sequence:

Pre-composition

Audition and Simulation

The Notated Score

Index

The Composing Continuum

Page 8: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A blue-print of the composition containing the core materials required by the composer to 'make' the

composition.

From the semiotics of of Jean Molinopoietic composing

- the business and process of making a composition

Index

Pre-Composition

Page 9: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Eckhart Richter’s ‘A Glimpse into the Workshop of Paul Hindemith’ (Richter 1977:122) describes Hindemith’s working method as presented to a class at Yale in 1951.

1. The general determination of the character, medium and the basic purpose of the piece, as well as its expressive character, and even place of performance

2. A master plan of formal design, including the overall shape, the number and character of sections, changes in mode and tempo, rhythmic character, texture and the degree of activity . .

3. Then ‘came the tonal layout in which the basic tonalities of each section and their relative degrees of tonal stability and complexity, as well as the modulations, were mapped by means of

a diagram’.

4. Specific thematic material.

Index

The Hindemith Approach

Page 10: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Improvisation

Verbal Descriptions

Drawings and Diagrams

Plans, graphs, flow-charts

Sketches in graphic notations

MIDI recordings

Index

Before the Notes

Page 11: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Instruments and instrumentation

Duration

Context

Technical Ability

Index

Conditions Surrounding Performance & Performers

Page 12: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Traditional methods usually hide the techniques and the web of decisions that are engaged to produce a notated scoring of a complete musical section.

Decisions are kept on hold as long as possible:Very little evidence of what-ifs (the contents of the waste-paper bin!)

Index

From the Sketch to the Score

Page 13: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Parametric Thinking

The Hierarchy of ActionTraditional Practice

The Experience of the Ear and EyeInternalisation

Meta-composition

Generative Techniques(and the art of good continuation)

Index

Towards Programming for Music

Page 14: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Index

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Timbre

Parametric Thinking

Note-length is a virtual distance of a sounding pitch or chordDuration is associated with performance articulation of the Note-length

Page 15: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

The Beat/Space Concept

Index

Concerto N0.4 M1 (Instrumentarium Novum)

; | | | || | | | | |

w1 " - --- - - --- ------- -- -- ”

w2 " -- -- - - --- --- - --- - ---- -- ”

br " --- -- -- - -- -- ---- --- -- ---- - -- "

s1 " ---- - - -- -- - -- -- - --- --- ”

s2 "- -- -- - -- - ------- - - - - - ----- --- ”

pc "- -- -- - - - - ------ -- --- - --”

cn "------ - -- --- --------- - -- - --- - --- "

Quatour des Timbres Giuoco delle Coppie (4 Diverse instruments)

; | | | | | | | |

wd "--- --- - - - --- - - - ”

br " - - - - - - - -”

pc " ----- --- - -- - -----”

st "- ---- - - -- - ----- --- ”

template-based procedures(x = = x = = x x) > (a b c d) > (a = = b = = c d)

example of binary rhythmics (x = = x) or (x = x x = x x x)

Listen to Nigel Morgan’s Toccata for solo piano

Page 16: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

The Hierarchy of Action

A musical composition tends to display a hierarchy in the arrangement of parametric elements.

Bach's Prelude in C from WTK could be said to have this hierarchy:

Harmony

Harmonic Rhythm

Note-length

Pitch

Rhythm

CAC needs to allow the composing process to start from any parametric element.

Index

Page 17: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Traditional Practice

The need for a composer to really understand the elements commonly used in his/her composing.

"The problems of language, meaning, and form must remain central to the composer, and he has constantly to set himself up against the history of his own art."

Alexander Goehr in Finding the Key (1998)

This book contains some valuable descriptions of the composer’s own pre-composition processes and that of his teachers Richard Hall and Olivier Messiaen.

Index

Page 18: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

The Experience of the Ear and Eye

•Experience based on studies of existing scores and practice.

•What works well with performers - in slow/fast tempos?

•How are changing metres presented? (with time-signatures or the use of accents)

•The value of visual scanning to the process of building a musical structure of many parts and sections.

Index

Page 19: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Internalisation

How important is the ability to hear in one's imagination the detailed sound of the music as it develops?

Is the intervention of computer-assisted playback of musical elements helpful or a hindrance?

Are we only experiencing the outer layer of the musical message?

Index

Page 20: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Meta-composition

Index

Can we think about composition as a play of symbolic elements?

Can we work 'back to the notes' from speculative symbolic ideas?

Hindemith favoured a process of thinking about composition in which 'the notes' assumed the lowest position in the hierarchy of planning a musical work.

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Page 21: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Generative Techniques

What are the basic / essential generative techniques composers use during the pre-composition stage?

Can these techniques be defined as functions able to act on individual parametric elements?

What other techniques do we need to have available to enable 'good continuation' ?

How important is analysis in defining generative techniques?

Are we talking about reverse engineering?

Index

Page 22: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Audition and Simulation: During the Pre-composition process

Index

What is required, important, essential?

Auditioning discrete parametric material

The sonic sounding board (real instruments to sampled simulations)

The baggage of musical detail (necessary or not?)

Is MIDI the only protocol we can use here?

Page 23: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Audition and Simulation:During & After the Production of a Notated

Score

Value to performers.

A means of checking.

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Index

Page 24: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

The Notated Score & Summary

What are the mechanisms that enable the rendering of pre-compositional material into a notated performance score?

What are the expectations?

What are the common difficulties and anomalies?

Summary - The Composing Continuum• In the making of music for human performance a small, but significant number of composers use Computer Assisted Composition.

• Very few of these composers a) have sustained a long-term association with a CAC or b) acknowledge how and to what degree compositions are made with computer assistance.

• Informal and anecdotal evidence suggests that a) it is rare for a composer to even attempt the composing continuum (pre-composition to notated score), b) most use the CAC to generate unique material in one parametric element only - usually pitch.

• There remain unresolved issues in the translation from midifile (the favoured output of most CACs) to staff notation: time-signatures and metre zones (bars), tuplets or irrationals rhythmics, metrical modulations, microtones, articulations.

Index

Page 25: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions: Compass

(setq phrases (append (vector-to-symbol a l (gen-sin 0.1 0.1 60 180 (gen-ramp 10 0.1 60))) (vector-to-symbol a x (gen-sin 0.3 0.1 60 180 (gen-ramp 10 0.3 60))) (vector-to-symbol -l l (gen-sin 0.5 0.1 60 180 (gen-ramp 10 0.5 60))) (vector-to-symbol -o w (gen-sin 0.7 0.1 60 180 (gen-ramp 10 0.7 60)))) )

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Index

from Array, for solo violin

Page 26: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions: Compass

Index

from Array, for solo violin

Page 27: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:The Waterfall

Index

from Stone and Flower - for voice and keyboard

The Fall

It is the fall, the eternal fall of water,of rock, of wounded birds, and the wounded heart,the waterfall of freedom. Angels falllike lovers from the azure, separate,and die by that same death that ends us all.

Falling ten million years, we fling ourselvesagain into the inviting arms of time;our nuptial flight must end again in deaththat serves for freedom time and time againwhile the hard labouring mystic holds his breath.

The watching surface of the living seaever intact, smiles with the face of love,where living blood drowns in its ecstasy,impelled by nature that can mountains move,feeling most freedom when it least is free.

Shall we go down, shall we go down together?here on the mountain top, the wind and snowurge us to fall, and go the way they go.The way is clear, the end we shall not know,the sea will carry us where tides run and currents flow.

Page 28: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:The Waterfall - Page 1

Index

from Stone and Flower - for voice and keyboard

Page 29: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:Concerto 1

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Index

Process of Pitch Composition•Vector output from white noise fractal•Division into phrases•Phrases picked and randomised into new order•New order includes possibility of repeats

Orchestration•Stage 1 orchestration in 7 timbres•Wind 1&2, Brass, Strings 1&2, percussion, continuo•Array-base processing to define instrument activity•Production of timesheet

Page 30: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:Concerto 1 - rough prototyping i

Index

Page 31: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:Concerto 1 - rough prototyping ii

Index

Page 32: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:Concerto 1 - rough prototyping iii

Index

Page 33: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:Concerto 1 - full-score

Index

Page 34: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

A Glimpse into Three Compositions:Concerto 1- SCOM Workspace

Index

Page 35: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Issues: Problems: Vision

Index

IssuesEducation

Artistic Perceptions

ProblemsGaps in the Composing ContinuumThe MIDI (file)VisionEnabling work in Open-FormTowards a more dynamic relationship between composer and performerMPEG AHG on Music Notation

Page 36: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Issues 1

Index

The Effect of Digital Technology on Musical CreativityWhat has digital technology to offer the composer searching for the right note, the appropriate chord, the smooth transition from one idea to another? Are the current tools and systems, said to

make us more creative and productive, delivering the goods? Or, are there intrinsic problems that may be already having a serious

effect on the development of composers whose formative relationship with music composition has depended on interactions

with technology? To this end, the paper considers a study of undergraduate students working with computer sequencers and

describes research and development of new tools for music composition and its teaching and learning. It concludes with

recommendations that suggest composers empower themselves to take control of digital technology, rather than being controlled

by it; to move away from the emphasis on production and performance outcomes towards the development of personal

environments responsive to creative and critical thinking.

Abstract of paper delivered at Beyond Art? Digital Culture in the Twenty-first Century Colloquium The Oxford Union, 21st April, 1999

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/beyond/morgan.html

Page 37: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Issues 2

Index

Teaching Cycles in the Creative Community of InquiryNigel Morgan and John Cook

In this paper, five studies are described which investigated the way in which tutors (both human and computer-based) were used to support a ‘creative community of inquiry’ in undergraduate musical composition. Each study involved a cycle around some or all of the following four elements

• dialogue analysis • learning support system design• implementation of a learning support system• evaluation of the system plus reflection on the

implications for music composition teachingThe paper concludes with a reflection on the impact that this cyclical research and development has had on the practice of a composer-teacher (the first author).Abstract of a paper delivered at the ALT-C Music Workshop 2000 and published in Musicus 6 by PALATINE on-line

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/palatine/musicus6/morgancook.pdf

Page 38: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Composing: How and Why

Index

John Cook and Nigel Morgan are currently working on a book titled:

Composing: How and Why

Technology offers the promise of reinstating composing once more at the heart of musicianship. Just as visual arts practice and creative writing have been demystified by photography, the word processor and the internet, the complex skills and techniques surrounding music making are being redefined and made newly accessible by digital recording, interactive machine musicianship and synthesis. In the light of these new conditions revisiting and reinventing traditional forms of learning and thinking about music can offer us a lively way forward to developing the creative and critical tools to make and understand new music. The authors believe that interactive portals able to foster creative and critical thinking will soon be a part of new technologies that are responsive to an individual’s learning needs: to encourage self-explanation, speculation, and reflection about intention. We can even look forward to the machine becoming a kind of knowledge-mentor prompting us to explain our intentions, formulate our plans, recognise areas of weakness and review outcomes as part of the creative process.

Page 39: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Composing: How and Why

Index

Composing: How and Why examines the relationship of thinking to composing and how dialogue and self-explanation can mediate between listening and making one's own music. It examines how musical learning has traditionally employed modes of thinking and questioning and how these today might be remodeled and embedded within the technologies and media through which we will increasingly learn and gather information.

Page 40: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Problems 1

Index

Gaps in the Composing Continuum

* The interpretation of time signatures* The representation of irrational groupings (tuplets) - including compound or nested irrationals/tuplets* The interpretation of complex time-signatures (where tuplet values are represented as denominator)* Metrical Modulation* Musical Spelling* Metre Groupings* The simulation/audition of microtones

Page 41: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Problems 2

Index

The MIDIfile

UnfortunatelyMIDIiscurrentlystillthemostpracticalformatevenwithits shortcomingsandrestrictions

TheresultisthatwestaywithMidiforthetimebeingbutresearchhastobe doneforahigher levelrepresentation thatinserts itselfwellintothecomposer's andmusical assistant'swork.

Requirements for Music Notation regarding Music-to-Score Following and Music Alignment

Diemo Schwarz IRCAM (2003)

Page 42: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Vision 1

Index

Touching the Distance - for solo piano (open-form version for Disklavier)

Composition devised for an action research project with pianist Joan Dixon (York University)

Getting your hands on the music - paper delivered at the Leaving The 20 Century conference

at Bretton Hall College 1996 Available with interactive musical illustrations

@ www.nigel-morgan.co.uk

Self-Portrait (2002) - for seven musiciansOpen-form composition for members of BBCNOW

Interactive web tool devised to enable performers to audition open-form possibilities

Page 43: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Vision 2

Index

Many contemporary scores offer few clues to their pre-compositional activity and their ‘making’ process.

Much new music requires in its execution a high degree of technical precision leaving very little interpretative space for a performer to bring his/her experience to bear on the music.

An effective

Pre-Composition- Audition/Simulation - Notation Continuum offers possibilities for musicians to gain access to the content

and workings of musical compositions.

Musicians able to render new and alternative versions of musical compositions suitable for particular and different

performance contexts.

Page 44: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Vision 3

Index

The MPEG Ad Hoc Group on Symbolic Music Representation

Created by MPEG the basis of the request of members of the MUSICNETWORK which is a large network in which are present more

than 850 participants and more than 400 institutions and companies.

Maxwell and Ornstein’s groundbreaking Mockingbird music editor pioneered the approach of storing independently information about the logical, performance (also called gestural), and graphic aspects of music. NIFF, as well as Nightingale and other programs, adopted

that approach; SMDL added a fourth “domain,” for analytic information. We strongly advocate this independent-domain model.

http://www.interactivemusicnetwork.org/mpeg-ahg/

Page 45: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Resources & References

Index

ICCMR University of PlymouthResearch Seminars

Wednesday 19 April

You can download the slides used in this seminar here

http://www.nigel-morgan.co.uk/files/futurelab.ppt

Study-Scores and MP3s of the compositions discussed are available here

http://www.nigel-morgan.co.uk

Page 46: A Glimpse into a Composer's Workshop

Resources & References

Index

Agon, C (2006). Mixing Visual Programs and Music Notation in Open Music in Mazzola/Noll/Lluis-Puebla (ed) Perspectives in Mathematical and Computational Music Theory. EposBarbaud, P.(1993) Vademecum de l'ingénieur en musique, Springer, Cook, J. and Morgan, N. (1998). Coleridge: a computer tool for assisting musical reflection and self-explanation. Association for Learning Technology Journal, 6/1, 102–8.Cook, J. (1999). MetaMuse: A teaching agent for supporting musical problem-seeking and creative reflection. Proceedings of AISB’99 Symposium on Musical Creativity, pp. 89-95. The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour.Goehr, A (1998). Finding the Key. Faber Music.Hiller, L. and Issacson, L. (1952) Experimental Music.McGraw-Hill.Hindemith, P. (1973). Hindemith Jahrbuch/Annales-Hindemith 3. Mainz: SchottLerdahl, F. (1988). Cognitive constraints on compositional systems. In Sloboda, J. (Ed.), Generative Processes in Music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Lipman, M. (1991). Thinking in Education. New York: Cambridge University Press.Morgan, N. (1992). Transcript of tutorial sessions with undergraduate composers at Dartington College of Arts. Research Report, Dartington College of Arts Library, Dartington, Devon, UK.Morgan, N. (1993) Rhythmic Mnemonics in the Acquisition of Composition Skills. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Music Education: An Artificial Intelligence Approach. AI-ED 93 World Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Education.Morgan, N. and Dixon, J. (1995). Getting your hands on the music. Conference Proceedings: Leaving the 20C, Bretton College Univeristy of Leeds, UK.Papert, S. (1980) Mindstorms. Brighton: Harvester Press.Richter, E. (1977) A Glimpse into the Workshop of Paul Hindemith. Hindemith Jahrbuch/Annales-Hindemith 6. Mainz: SchottSchwarz, D. (2003) Requirements for music notation in music-to-score following and music alignment.Slonimsky, N. (1975). Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. London: Duckworth.