Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!think.com!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!calvin.usc.edu!alves
From: alves@calvin.usc.edu (William Alves)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: reality and computer sound
Keywords: question for discussion
Message-ID: <33674@usc.edu>
Date: 17 Jun 91 17:44:56 GMT
References: <1871@culhua.prg.ox.ac.uk> <2100@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> <1991Jun14.164758.23557@agate.berkeley.edu>
Sender: news@usc.edu
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 62
Nntp-Posting-Host: calvin.usc.edu

In article <1991Jun14.164758.23557@agate.berkeley.edu> maverick@mahogany.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes:
>
>What is the relevance of real sounds to computer music?  Gerald Balzano
>took a radical position in his article "What Are Musical Pitch and
>Timbre?" [Music Perception 3(3), Spring 1986]: briefly, that the
>sensations of timbre are really a perception of the dynamic systems
>underlying the production of the sound, and thus that electronic music
>is doomed to sound "electronic", i.e. less than musical, unless we tap
>such dynamic systems in synthesis.  

I don't think this is such a radical position. I wouldn't go so far as to
equate timbre with the "perception of dynamic systems" in a sound, but as
timbre research has shown time and again, such attributes as attack tran-
sients and dynamic changes over the life of a note are very important to
our perception of timbre. It's obvious to my ears anyway that sounds that
are very complex and dynamic tend to sound more "warm" and interesting, 
while more static sounds tend to be "cold" and "electronic."

Now neither is aesthetically better or worse. If, like Herbert Eimert, you
have an aesthetic that prefers the purity of sine waves to "real" sounds,
then the good old days of tape splicing or the RCA synthesizer are the
just the technology for you.

Understanding the complexities that underlie real sounds and to be able
to apply that understanding is rather more of a tall order. Risset is an
example of a composer who took the brute force approach to this path.
Personally, I have been interested in sampling real sounds and modifying
them usually to the point where their relationship to the original sound
is unrecognizable. This way the warmth and complexities of the acoustic
sounds are maintained, and I still have great control over the timbre and
its musical use.

>I incline much more to the Jim
>Randall-type position that if some piece of music sounds "merely
>electronic", that's the fault of the composer or possibly the listener;
>that nothing intrinsic to "a timbre" prevents our learning to make its
>context make music of it.

Blaming the listener is very convenient, but ultimately useless. If a 
timbre sounds "electronic" when the composer doesn't intend it, then it
is certainly the composer's fault (or perhaps the limitations of the 
technology, though that, too, is a very convenient scapegoat). Maybe 
there's nothing contextually intrinsic in the timbre itself, but 
audiences have learned expectations about music, including what an 
"electronic" sound is. But that's just a common adjective. The
perceptual differences are still there.

(As a footnote, these expectations among the "average person" may be
changing. I think public perception has shifted from the "Forbidden Planet"
generation through the "Switched-On Bach" generation to the "Technopop"
generation that more or less takes synthesis for granted or doesn't even
know that each tune it hears on the radio is largely coming out of a 
computer.)

>Okay, enough maundering.  Help save comp.music -- pontificate today!
>
>	Vance


glad to.

Bill Alves