Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!ukma!rex!uflorida!haven!decuac!decwrl!shelby!eos!ames!sun-barr!newstop!sun!bartok.Eng.Sun.COM!bradr From: bradr@bartok.Eng.Sun.COM (Brad Rubenstein) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Music-Research Digest Vol. 5, #48 Message-ID: <136417@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 31 May 90 00:06:00 GMT Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: music-research%bartok.eng@sun.UUCP Lines: 341 Music-Research Digest Sun, 27 May 90 Volume 5 : Issue 48 Today's Topics: Administrivia: Organisation of next six issues Congratulations! Keynote 4.1 now available looking for a UK address Music manufactured by the yard, like cloth MusiCopy project MuTeX Request for recommendations Resource *** Send contributions to Music-Research@uk.ac.oxford.prg *** Send administrative requests to Music-Research-Request *** Overseas users should reverse UK addresses and give gateway if necessary *** e.g. Music-Research@prg.oxford.ac.uk *** or Music-Research%prg.oxford.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk *** Back issues, index, etc.: send "help" in a message to archive-server *** @uk.ac.oxford.prg (in the UK) or @bartok.sun.com (elsewhere) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 27 May 90 11:56:55 BST From: The Moderator (Stephen Page) Subject: Administrivia: Organisation of next six issues To: music-research Message-ID: <9005271056.AA14421@msc0.prg.ox.ac.uk> There has been a mail deluge. I have therefore organised the next few issues as follows, so people can throw away batches of material in which they are not interested: Vol 5 no 48: The usual miscellany 5 49: Conference announcements, and a proposal for MIDI file format 5 50: "Fruitful research areas", and Digest scope/policy 5 51 to 53: The debate on music semantics, symbolism, AI, etc. In order to get all this out I have had to break my usual rule of keeping Digest files to under 10-20k. This will mean that I get a few mail system failures, so if you are missing a copy please order it from the archive. VAX/VMS users please note: We would greatly asappreciate it if you could check your filestore quota from time to time. VMS puts incoming mail in your personal filestore, and we often get messages bounced because there is insufficient space allocated. If you find you are missing issues, this is probably the reason for it. UK users please note: the Archive has now changed machines. The addrss is the same, i.e. archive-server@uk.ac.oxford.prg. Please report any weird behaviour. The UK archive is also now accessible by NIFTP over JANET: details are given in the file "index music" available from the server. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 90 10:45:43 From: ray%hku@nl.nluug Subject: Congratulations! To: music-research%hp4nl@prg Message-ID: <9005152245.AA25471@hku> Congratulations, Sterling!!!! It's about time someone was heard from the otherside of the fence. I was pretty sick of the Lasky-bashing that was going on. It's about time some of us started speaking up. Lasky's contributions of the past 15 years are outstanding. If you publish as much as he does you are bound to be the target of some disagreements. However, His work is clearly valuable. This is coming from someone in the Visual Arts, not Music. His original work on musical grammars is a CLEAR contribution to your field. Now, I am going to take on the bunch of you, because some of your arguments seem to be so petty. You seem to have forgotten the fundamental motives of your field (making, composing, and apreciating music). Instead, you gotten dazzled by hardware & software gizmos. Your concerns seem to be closer to those of psychologists rather than musicians, or even computer scientists. In a previous letter, I suggested that what you guys need was a good dose of Barthes, Ecco and Derrida. I think that's still true. How about some contemporay musicology, here!!! Lasky has certainly made a contribution to the field and most of you seem to have missed it. - Ray Lauzzana, artist, critic, scientists. ------------------------------ Date: 13 May 90 00:21:48 GMT From: "timothy.j.thompson" Subject: Keynote 4.1 now available To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <1990May13.002148.22584@cbnewsh.att.com> Keynote version 4.1 is now available in the AT&T UNIX Toolchest. Keynote is the extensible graphical (piano-roll) editor and awk-like music language that I presented at the Winter 1990 USENIX Conference in Washington, D.C.. The abstract from that paper: Keynote is a programming language for manipulating and generating music with MIDI-compatible equipment. It was designed for and in the style of the UNIX software system, as an application-specific ``little language'' and interactive shell. Most obviously used for algorithmic music composition, Keynote also serves as a more general utility for non-realtime and realtime MIDI data manipulation. By adding only a few functions to the language, a graphic interface was recently added. This built-in graphic interface did not, however, build-in any particular user interface. All the nested pop-up menus and operations of a graphical music editor have been implemented in the Keynote language itself. The result is an extensible tool, similar in spirit to the extensibility of emacs, easily modified and enhanced by end users. If you would like a hardcopy documentation package, which includes a reprint of the USENIX paper as well as a complete language reference manual, please send your postal address to tjt@twitch.att.com or Tim Thompson, AT&T Bell Labs, Room 3C-231, Crawfords Corner Road, Holmdel, New Jersey, 07733. The AT&T UNIX Toolchest contains only the source code for Keynote, although binaries for the Macintosh and Amiga are available on special request. Initial registration for the Toolchest is $100, and Keynote is $100. For more information on the Toolchest, dial 1-201-829-7256 at 1200/2400 bps and log in as "guest", or mail to tcadmin@pluto.att.com, or call 1-201-829-8843. Jon Backstrom is organizing a user group and is sub-licensing Keynote for binary redistribution. His announcement is included below. Thanks Jon! Thanks also to Steve Falco and Alan Bland who did the Mac and Amiga ports. ...Tim Thompson...AT&T Bell Labs/Holmdel/NJ...tjt@twitch.att.com... ========================================================================= A Keynote User's Group is being organized to provide a way for users to share new functions and example applications through a quarterly newsletter and a BBS archive. Keynote has also been sub-licensed, allowing the distribution of binaries directly to end users. This will be a much more convenient way of getting Keynote for many people, especially personal computer owners (Amiga, Macintosh, Atari ST, and IBM PC's). For more information, please contact: Jon W. Backstrom Applied Digital Arts P.O. Box 176 Bloomington, IN 47402-0176 (812) 336-3660 (after June 1, 1990) E-mail: Internet: media@silver.ucs.indiana.edu UUCP: {ames,rutgers,att}!iuvax!silver!media Membership in the Keynote User's Group is $20 annually, which includes a subscription to the quarterly newsletter and access to a growing library of Keynote functions and musical sequences. Sub-licensed Keynote binaries are being distributed for $49, including a one year membership in the Keynote User's Group. (Source code is only available directly from the AT&T UNIX Toolchest.) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 May 1990 9:36:33 CDT From: Alexander Rubli Subject: looking for a UK address To: Music-Research@prg Message-ID: <900515093633.126@UDLAPVMS.PUE.UDLAP.MX> From: ACADE::RUBLI "Alexander Rubli" 15-MAY-1990 09:07:40.83 To: SMTP%"Music-Research@uk.ac.oxford.prg" CC: RUBLI Subj: looking for a UK address Hi ! I established contact with a company called OPAL in london. I see on their post a E-mail address that is opal-uk. I asked them how can I reach them this way, but the usual mail is very slow and I haven't received any response. Does anybody know how can I reach them with E-mail ? Alexander rubli University of the americas, mexico BITNET: RUBLI@UDLAPVMS INTERNET: We are arranging our new address, but you can reply me to UDLA01@MTECV1.MTY.ITESM.MX thanx ------------------------------ Date: 12 May 90 04:12:13 GMT From: Mark Gresham Subject: Music manufactured by the yard, like cloth To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <824@artsnet.UUCP> In article <24558@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> maverick@fir.berkeley.edu (Vance Maverick) writes: > I won't claim that the sax hasn't been used to make noise by the yard; >but its construction at least entails some real-time physical >involvement with the sound. My problem with the proposal for automatic >four-part harmonizations of random bass lines was its lack of personal >involvement. I have no problem with algorithmic composition; it bothers >me, though, when people act as if music were purely a combinatorics of notes. A few years ago, in a letter, John Cage told me he was no longer interested in computer music except for interactive works where live performers are involved, having an impact on what the sonic outcome would be. (Considering his extensive earlier experimentation with electronics and computers, it's an opinion worth hearing. But then, since the notion of computer-generated synthesis is so much in vogue these days, it's not surprising that Cage would lose interest!) Cheers, --Mark ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ======================================== ------------------------------ Date: 24 May 90 08:39:27 GMT From: Timo Knuutila Subject: MusiCopy project To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <1990May24.083927.23270@utu.fi> Howdy netters! Does someone know something about a music-printing project called 'MusiCopy'? I read recently an (old) article in Communications of ACM titled 'A Language for Music Printing' (May -86). The story was written by John S. Gourlay from Ohio State University and it described the outlines of a music-printing project including a syntax for a music-description language. The immediate plan of the project was to (i) prototype the system around TeX (something like MuTeX???) and (ii) make it public domain. Please answer directly to: knuutila@cs.utu.fi P.S. Comments about the MuTeX-system are welcome, too (I've had much problems with triplets).). [ A reference to one of the papers published at Ohio State University on the MusiCopy project appears in Volume 2, issue 9 of the Digest. Sadly, the project was disbanded (I think) a year or so ago, when the project researchers moved on to other places/things. However, several valuable papers were produced and can be obtained from OSU. - S ] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 17 May 90 10:41:02 BST From: Steve Townsend Subject: MuTeX To: Music-Research@prg Message-ID: <9005170941.AA06482@eagle> Re: >The MuTeX package, copyright by Andrea Steinbach and Angelika Schofer, >is a set of macros allowing TeX to typeset beautiful music. It is the >outcome of a Master's thesis at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms >University. MuTeX can be obtained by anonymous ftp. Contact cs.ubc.ca. I have been trying to get the MuTeX package by ftp, but have encountered insurmountable network problems - a remote gateway that I can't penetrate. Has anyone successfully brought this over to UK yet, who would be willing to channel it to others? ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 90 23:49:54 GMT From: Vance Maverick Subject: Request for recommendations To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <25086@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> I'm working on a set of programming languages for computer composition. I'd like the scoring language to handle some of the basic "music-theory" facts of the composer's musical language, in the case where these are known and fixed. For example, a tonally-minded composer might like the language to know the standard set of note names; the set of intervals, and rules for adding notes and intervals (G + minor third = Bb, G + augmented second = A#); also rules for assigning pitches to notes (depending on the period and medium, A = 440 Hz; A = any of (F * 5/4), (D * 3/2), etc., at the composer's choice; other compromises and defaults ad infinitum). Obviously, I don't want to enforce a single set of these facts, and I do want to support systems arbitrarily far from Western convention, so I need a way for the composer to express these things symbolically. Do any existing computer music systems provide this kind of flexibility? I'm sure lots of work in this line has been done, but I don't know where to begin. Please e-mail me whatever recommendations come to mind. Thanks, Vance ------------------------------ Date: 15 May 90 18:01:35 GMT From: Roger Lustig Subject: Resource To: music-research@prg Message-ID: <16380@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> The following has appeared at our library: Computing in Musicology: A Directory of Research ed. Walter B. Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge-Field Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities 525 Middlefield Road, Suite 120 Menlo Park, CA 94025 (415) 322-7050 XB.L36@stanford.bitnet The book discusses available databases and other resources. Many readers of this group will be interested in the music-printing section, which provides comparative examples of at least 10 types of software. I have met Dr. Selfridge-Field; we spent more time on baroque opera (which we both specialize in) than on this stuff; but I'm told that she has a good grasp of available resources. Roger ------------------------------ End of Music-Research Digest -- ---Brad Rubenstein-----Sun Microsystems Inc.-----bradr@sun.com---