This is the first of a two-quarter sequence exploring the role of electronics in new music. This quarter is designed to introduce a range of electronic music possibilities without going too deeply down any one path. We'll look at nine important pieces in the electronic music repertory. In some cases we look at an implementation of the entire piece; for others, a study 'patch' demonstrates the techniques used.
Each class session is divided into two parts: first, a look at a technique and piece using a pre-prepared patch, and second, a workshop on patch design that, if followed for both quarters, should prepare students to realize their own ideas.
A tentative list of pieces (and techniques):
Chowning, Stria (microtonal scales)
Stockhausen, Mantra (ring modulation)
Tenney, Collage #1 (classic montage)
Risset, Duet for One Pianist (MIDI transformation)
Harvey, Mortuous Plango, Vivos Voco (sinusoidal analysis/additive synthesis)
Manoury, Pluton (several real-time audio processing techniques)
Boulez, Dialogue de l'Ombre Double (spatialization)
Steiger, 13 loops (using instrumental ensembles)
Yuasa, Toward the Midnight Sun (graphical score notation)
The term assignment is either to: (a) develop one of these easy-to-use patches into your own musical sketch; or (b) make your own patch that implements some other known technique (but talk to me first to make sure your idea looks feasible). You can download the patches to run them on your own Mac, PC, or linux machine. To do this, get version 0.45 of Pd (available on https://msp.ucsd.edu/software.html . Then get the PDRP patches from: https://msp.ucsd.edu/pdrp/latest/ .
Here is
documentation for the patches.