Category: Composition

Algorithmic Composition by Autonomous Systems with Multiple Time-Scales

Dynamic systems have found their use in sound synthesis as well as score synthesis. These levels can be integrated in monolithic autonomous systems in a novel approach to algorithmic composition that shares certain aesthetic motivations with some work with autonomous music systems, such as the search for emergence. We discuss various strategies for achieving variation on multiple time-scales by using slow-fast, hybrid dynamic systems, and statistical feedback. The ideas are illustrated with a case study.

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Farewell to Humans: An Interview with Liza Lim

The Anthropocene, oceans full of plastic debris, climate change, beauty, rituals and magic. As an artist, Liza Lim deals with subjects which might be considered to be way too complex for a single composition. The composer grew up in different cultures and came to prominence in an era of global problems. In almost every work, she deals with extramusical ideas. Her works carry messages, but at the same time she explores sound, experiments with playing techniques, and the possibilities of communication among musicians on stage. Despite this article being titled ‘Farewell to Humans’, Liza Lim does not say farewell to humanity, even in works where she explores dimensions beyond our civilisation.

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Nõ Music for Abandoned Airports (The Stupefied Landscape…It’s Fake, But It Works)

This paper briefly speculates on a philosophical paradox concerning Brian Eno’s use of the word ambient in relation to his compositional work between 1975 and 1982 and indeed, what ambient has come to mean in a broader cultural sense in 2018. Three important definitions of the word are considered for this argument. 1) The Latin root of ambient (ambire) is discussed with particular reference to Eno’s various press statements c. 1978 that Ambient music is intended to produce calm and a space to think. 2) Music for Airports is identified as an example of monocratic composition (one that subtly reinforces borders) within an historical timeline beginning in 1975 and is juxtaposed with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, which is considered as a parallel (albeit unintended) Ambient experiment and identified as a mutable composition (one that subtly annihilates borders). 3) The broader, philosophical implications of ambient are addressed in particular reference to current notions of dark ecology.

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Music to die to

With a touch of irony, Brian Eno tells a story about waiting in Cologne airport where awful piped music provoked him to compose Music for Airports. Prompting reflections on mortality, the forcefully happy melodies he heard in the departure lounge and aeroplane comprised music designed to inoculate against panic. “I thought it was much better to have music that said, ‘Well, if you die it doesn’t really matter’ … I wanted to create a different feeling that you were sort of suspended in the universe and your life or death wasn’t so important”.

By playing and discussing vinyl records that attempt the instrumentation of airborne death I will treat Music for Airports as Eno intended—as music to die to.

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Tambambient: sound mixtures in surf, dip and bit dilations

Brian Eno’s Discreet Music and Music for Airports have, since their publication in the 1970s, opened up new ways to conceive sonic worlds that listeners could “swim in, float in, get lost inside” (Eno B. , 2017), using a vast electronic palette of sound.  Different senses of the immersive experience evoked by Eno have inspired our composition Tamba.  In Tamba, we explore the possibility of generating electronic sonic temporal dilations of an immersive experience, using synthesized sounds programmed in Pure Data. 

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