Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!carroll
From: carroll@ssc-vax (Jeff Carroll)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: reality and computer sound [was WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS NEWSGROUP?]
Keywords: question for discussion
Message-ID: <4207@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: 26 Jun 91 20:04:33 GMT
References: <1299@artsnet.UUCP> <4188@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP> <2271@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
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Reply-To: carroll@ssc-vax.UUCP (Jeff Carroll)
Organization: Boeing Aerospace & Electronics
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In article <2271@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> sandell@ils.nwu.edu (Greg Sandell) writes:
>
>Some questions:  do you recognize rec.music.synth as a viable place
>to talk about synthesizers?  Do you think that there is a reason to
>have a second group to talk about the same subjects?  

	I'm not a synth owner/user; my interest is definitely along
the more traditional lines of this group. (In fact I was a research
assistant at the Northwestern Computer Music Lab for a while back in
the late 70's when I was at NU.)

	Back then we didn't have digital synthesizers. (I also spent a
quarter up in the attic of the music building working on the Moog.) The
only digital synthesizer I remember seeing back then was the Synclavier
on display at the 1978 ICMC in Evanston.

	But technology marched on, and within a few years digital
synthesizers were in the hands of the public. This is a success story
that would be almost unparalleled in the history of technology, were
it not for the simultaneous introduction of affordable microcomputers.

>If rec.music.synth started filling up with questions about historical
>musicology, music education, ethnomusicology and manuscript verification,
>wouldn't you complain that it was getting hard to weed through all
>the extraneous postings?  Or would you protest against any such 
>complaints on the grounds that the arguments were petty, territorial and
>elite? (Not that you used these words, but someone else did.)

	Well, no, because I don't read rec.music.synth. (I find it
interesting that you made that assumption.) But I will point out that
none of the topics you happened to mention belong in comp.music, either.

>USENET, everybody knows, provides a variety of very specific topics
>of interest to computer users.  Specializing offshoots of groups happens 
>all the time on USENET, as I'm sure you know, and people take the trouble 
>to do so with a call for votes.  Take a look at how many specialized
>groups there are for the Macintosh (I count 11).  Comp.music was
>formed, I suspect, to handle the traffic from a certain subset of
>rec.music.synth posters which merited having a group of its own.   So 
>aren't its readers and contributors justified in complaining about material
>appear that looks just like the stuff that is available in another
>group?

I suspect that comp.music was not formed that way; certainly the academic
study of computer music predates the widespread availability of 
synthesizers. But what you are talking about is *not* computer music;
it is music theory in general, and thus doesn't belong in the "comp"
hierarchy. I don't know where it does belong, but not here.



-- 
Jeff Carroll		carroll@ssc-vax.boeing.com