Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!bartok!daemon From: daemon@bartok.Sun.COM Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Music-Research Digest Vol. 5, #21 Message-ID: <132393@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 1 Mar 90 21:12:29 GMT Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: music-research Lines: 246 Music-Research Digest Thu, 1 Mar 90 Volume 5 : Issue 21 Today's Topics: Electronic and Computer Music Eduation Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest Vol. 5, #18) More Knowledge Acquisition PNM address and information *** 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 25 Feb 90 10:49 EST From: FNELSON@EDU.OBERLIN.OCVAXA Subject: Electronic and Computer Music Eduation To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg I am involved in the definition of curricular goals for Oberlin's Bachelor of Music degree in electronic and computer music. I am wondering whether others in the music-research group are interested in starting a discussion about education of future professionals in the field. Oberlin has been teaching electronic and computer music since the late 60's with individual degree programs of all sorts. Oberlin graduates head companies like MacroMind and Twelve-Tone Systems. Others have worked on music projects at LucasFilm, Apple, Yamaha, and Sony. Many others have followed the academic route and currently run studios at colleges and universities. We now have a four-year curriculum in place and we are graduating our first seniors in May. We are not exactly new at this but the field is changing so quickly that we thought it would be a good time to have another look at what we are doing. The Context In our present program we try to balance the acquisition of technique with the creation of original music. We are, in fact, a composition department where all practical applications use technological media. We teach programming, recording technology, and even a course in analog and digital circuit design for music. We are not an engineering program and Oberlin has no engineering department. Our Computer Science Department is growing in both size and quality and many of our students take advantage of this resource. To get the discussion going, here are some questions we are asking: How much of the traditional music curriculum (theory, history, keyboard proficiency) should be maintained in an electronic and computer music degree? What are the career prospects for our graduates and what subject areas and skills are essential for professional preparation? How important are programming proficiency, recording technique, and engineering skills for the undergraduate? If you had the opportunity to interview high school students applying for a program like ours, what qualifications would you look for? What level of musical and technical preparation would you expect? What questions would you ask? If you had the opportunity to hire a new faculty member, what would you consider the essential (perhaps minimum) level of experience in computer programming and other technical skills? Thanks for your consideration. Gary Lee Nelson TIMARA Program Conservatory of Music Oberlin, OH 44074 ------------------------------ Date: 24 Feb 90 22:04:14 GMT From: Eliot Handelman Subject: Laske (was: Re: Music Research Digest Vol. 5, #18) To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg ;Date: Tue, 20 Feb 90 08:12:18 EST ;From: Otto Laske ;Subject: Subject: KA ;To: music-research ;Feb 20, 90 ; ; The discussion on knowledge acquisition in composition has shown ;itself to be an emotional topic (as evidenced by Stephen Pope's latest ;remarks, among others). This is understandable, but should not hide the ;fact that a community of inquiry is coming into being here which needs ;some solidarity. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Otto, what is being said here is that your views of knowledge engineering, your concept of how to do music and your concept of how to do anything else are far less interesting than you make them out to be. You can cite articles by yourself dating back three hundred years, and it wouldn't make any difference. You can write articles about your other articles, as you did in Perspectives of New Music V. 27 N. 2, in which you refer to yourself as "Laske," so that readers who have forgotten who wrote this article in the first place can think to themselves, "gee, the writer of this article has a high opinion of Otto Laske." You can claim, as you do in a previous Music Research digest, that the AI and Music workshop emphasizes knowledge engineering, but that's because you are the chairman of these damnably dull conferences and you decide which papers will be read, and you make sure that the overall picture supports your contentions about the existence of interest in your ideas. You can point to the dissertation of a lone computer science grad student whom you advised. You can point to Ron Roozendaal, who happened to send me the paper he wrote for the class he took with you when you taught in Utrecht. But the weight of opinion is that knowledge engineering is not a good approach to the study of music. ; My general feeling is that it would be beneficial to let the ;pressure off "KA in composition" and broaden one's views by getting ;to know other fields of design, such as architecture, and try to cut ;out this romantic notion of the composer that is so European. My goal ;has always been to de-mystify composition, or art generally, because ;I thought that only by making it transparent scientifically as much ;as one can, one can point to what cannot be grasped scientifically. ;This is different from proclaiming composition to be untouchable by ;scientific understanding. ; Otto Laske It's most unclear to me what Laske means in asserting that "art" should be "de-mystified." It's equally unclear what Laske means by "scientific understanding." And it's completely unclear who Laske thinks he's adressing in recommending that "this romantic notion of the composer that is so European" ought to be cut out, or why these people should study architecture. I would argue this out here if I thought it worthwhile. Let me merely indicate that I take this all to be vacuous gibberish, the results of associations forged in the early 60's during the heyday of serial music, when one or two reputable european composers did think that the dilettante perusal of architecture manuals would pay off compositionally, that composition should be rationalized, and that scientific understanding should be brought to bear on matters musical and compositional. The period is historically interesting, but the importation of its dogma has be regarded as suspect. There can be no "definition" of the scope, ambitions and limitations of "art" that need have much validity over and beyond whichever products grew up under the sign of that definition. As a man who claims for himself the title of musicologist, Laske shows himself to be impervious to the historical context of the lean and vitamin-starved ideas he advocates. ------------------------------ Date: 26 February 1990 8:21:48 am From: Stephen Travis Pope Subject: More Knowledge Acquisition To: Music-Research@uk.ac.oxford.prg Hello, I'd like to make a few comments and respond to several points that my recent posting brought up. With respect to Stephen Smoliar's questions in MRD V5#18. He asks, "To what extent has your design of tools been guided by prior decisions of the nature of the actions you *wish* to take?" A large part of the design of the my tools (the HyperScore ToolKit), is based on the wonderful quote of yours "what a composer does is to do crazy stuff," i.e., the attempt was made to have no "coloring" in the environment. There are no fixed notions of sections/tracks/voices/measures/events/parameters, but rather the system can be easily transformed to meet the needs of the composer in his/her current situation. The system's input language and user interface are also designed to be rebuilt on-the-fly (as frequently as necessary). The compositional methodology that the system is made to support is rapid prototyping and incremental refinement of musical structures, which is itself rather generic and can look quite different in different hands. The issue of backing it all up with musical examples is quite important. Whenever I give live presentations I try to play at least a few extended examples to demonstrate the points under discussion. It's unfortunate that we cannot do this in MRD (as yet). Regarding Robert Row's comments in V5#19 Otto Laske's challenge was to come up with "..an alternative KA, leading to a model of theory-in-use of composers." The hypermedia scores I mentioned do not by any stretch of the imagination represent a model. They are data structures. Robert Rowe mentions knowledge stored in people's "programs." I believe it is important to differentiate between programs and scores (i.e., behavior and state). In my case, I believe that the HyperScore ToolKit is relatively "transparent," and has no compositional theory or direction in and of itself. The knowledge (if any), of my recent work is encapsulated in the scores (hypermedia documents) of these pieces, which are not "programs" in the stricter sense of the word. stp ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Feb 90 14:46:20 -0800 From: John Rahn Subject: PNM address and information To: music-research@uk.ac.oxford.prg in re: James Symon's query to: symon@cs.unc.edu and Oxford network The email address for Perspectives of New Music is pnm@milton.u.washington.edu (As remarked earlier, English email scrambles the order.) The paper mail address is: Perspectives of New Music School of Music DN-10 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 USA phone: (206) 543-0196 An individual subscription for one year is US$30. This includes two issues plus a Compact Disc. For overseas postage, add US$2. Checks should be made out to Perspectives of New Music at the above address. The student rate is $20, and the institutional rate is $60. John Rahn, Editor Jerome Kohl, Managing Editor pnm@milton.u.washington.edu ------------------------------ End of Music-Research Digest